Float pans sit under the trowel blades and spread the machine's weight, so finishers can get on a slab earlier than bare blades allow. Panning cuts down high spots, fills lows and pulls up paste, and on flatness-critical floors it is what produces high FF numbers. Crews use it as a verb too: pan it, double-pan it, get the pans on.
North end will take the pans now, do two passes crosswise and then switch to combo blades.
Also heard as
- float pan
- panning
- pan float
Related terms
Power trowel
A gas or electric machine with rotating blades that floats and trowels large concrete slabs.
Floating
The finishing step that levels, compacts and opens the surface of a slab once the bleed water is gone.
F-numbers
FF and FL, the paired numbers that measure how flat and how level a concrete floor is.
Burn
To steel-trowel a slab again and again at high blade pitch until it turns hard, dark and glossy.