Countertop nightmares!

They'll never be done!!!! We have an inspection deadline, thanksgiving is coming, my kitchen is covered in tarps, and I got less than 4 hours of sleep! I feel like I can't take it anymore!

Tonight was our second late night in a row. The grinder seems to be failing on us. We purchased it new, and it is a heavy-duty, professional grade tool so there is no reason for it to be failing after less than one job. We used it for over 12 hours on Sunday with no problem. Tonight we used it for about an hour and it got hot so we took a break. When we went back to work, it quit after 11 minutes.

We pulled the instructions out to see if we could figure out the problem. I was/am really concerned about this. If we have to exchange this tool, it will delay us at least a few days and this will cause permit problems. Trying to fix the grinder was quite frustrating. The instructions were horrible. Why is it so difficult to write decent instructions? It described a part called a carbon brush, which wasn't a brush at all, but a block of carbon on a wire. The instructions said if the carbon brush wears down too low, it will cause the grinder to fail. What's too low? What does the brush even do? How do you know if it is the brush? After following the poorly written instructions on how to take the cover off, we found the brush and decided to try replacing one of them which had a lot of countertop gunk on it (some of the water from the grinding got in to the tool carrying concrete dust with it). We pulled the wire to remove the brush as instructed and it came out of the brush! Now the brush was stuck in a four-sided bracket (think about a block inside a box just big enough to hold it). There was no way to pry or tweeze it out. We ended up having to get a drill and drill the block to disintegrate it, while not damaging the drill. We got the new brush installed and cleaned the inside of the grinder with a new paintbrush.

I think the tool has a bad design and doesn't tolerate water well. It is a wet grinder and is supposed to be used with water, but it doesn't like getting wet. How do you keep it dry when the very action of the grinder sprays water everywhere? Also, the case comes in two tubular pieces, a front and a back piece. The pieces fit together with a slight overlap (like the sections of a vacuum cleaner hose). The spraying water is at the front, so the smart design would be to have the front piece fit over the back piece (as opposed to slipping inside the back piece) so the water wouldn't have an easy way in. Instead it is designed with the back piece fitting over the front, so the water spraying from the front hits a seam. It's really frustrating to buy a tool and use it for it's intended purposed and find out it doesn't work very well for that purpose.

We finally finished fixing the grinder a little before 2 am, and the grinder had to dry out before we could use it again so we were forced to quit. We got almost no work done on the countertops. It was discouraging because it takes about 2 hours to tarp for a grinding session, so to get nothing out of that was a bummer. We are going to have to do another late night work session tomorrow night.

On a plus note, we are learning with each session. Tonight was my best tarping job yet. Also, we learned that we can use a lot less water by turning off the grinder's water feed and using a squirt bottle and squeegie to keep the area wet. By using the squeegie, I can recycle the same water over and over until it is too sludgy with concrete dust to use. As C noted, the way we were doing it before was at cross-purposes. The grinder was constanty spraying water and I was constantly squeegie-ing to remove it. This makes any leak a lot worse and requires us to stop and empty the collections tubs and wring out the towels a lot more often. We think we'll be a lot more efficient this way.