..Garage Floor Coating..

[Bruce Jibboo]

Looking to coat the garage floor with epoxy or (whatever).. anyone do this? recommend product? pics? DIY or have someone come in and do it?

something like this..

Click to read more...

 

[Gav'sPurpleZ]

I did my garage when i bought my house. I used rustoleum epoxy and clearcoat from menards. its better to do it when its warm out, the temperature affects the "potlife" once the epoxy is mixed. cost a couple hundred bucks and I havent had any problems. i use 4 carpet tiles ( carpet side down ) for where i park the camaro.

it does get slippery when wet/winter depending on your shoes. the clearcoat i used has "anti slip" granules but i dont think they make that big of a different.

 

[Euro]

We used that same brand in our basement work room, and yeah temperature of the surface and prep of the surface are huge factors in durability. Ours has held up nicely overall, except for a couple places where something sharp dug into the coating(like a bike kickstand)

 

[greasy]

You will need to acid wash/scrub the floor prior to applying the epoxy coat.

 

[GTwolf]

Word of advice, DON'T cheap out when you're doing this. My old boss kept having me get the cheap shit to coat the showroom floor and he would have to redo it like every two weeks because the cars driving over the cheap stuff all the time makes it peel.

 

[Vogz]

PREP, PREP, PREP!

Most of the product out there is nearly the same, what you do to your floor before you apply the epoxy will determine if it stays put for a year or ten plus years.

The ONLY way to make sure that the epoxy properly adheres to the concrete is to use an industrial diamond tip grinder on the floor. Acid etching will not guarantee adhesion.

The previous owner of my house did a rustoleum coating himself about a year before I bought the house in 2006. He used the acid etch method to prep. The floor was already starting to peel where car tires sat about a year after he applied the coating. Fast forward to this year. The peeling was getting really bad, so I hired a handy man that does floor coating on the side to re-do the floor the RIGHT way. He ground the floor, power washed it and applied one coat of grey epoxy, and two coats of clear epoxy. I am VERY happy with the results and he guaranteed that it will not lift or peel for at least 10 years or he'll re-do it for free.

It wasn't cheap, but it was worth it.

 

[Vogz]

Great article on the PROPER way to install a floor coating...

http://www.squidoo.com/epoxyfloorprep

 

[Gav'sPurpleZ]

i frequented garagejournal.com when i was researching this.
i used the powdered acid etch product that was in the same aisle as the epoxy.

my house was/is new so the concrete slab was fresh. the house had been sitting for about a year. grinding the floor will created deeper nooks and crannies for adhesion but if you are a budget and you do it correctly it can be done for cheap

 

[B serious]

I did my own flooring when the house was purchased. The house was new when we moved in. It was nice to have a fresh floor to start with. I would assume that a floor that already had oil/grease on it would be more difficult to work with. The key is to use the recommended amount of product and not "thin" it out over a large area. You want the coating thick enough to last years.

My floor definitely looks "worked on"...mainly because it is. I'm in the garage more than in the house. But it still looks good when cleaned up...and cleaning it is still easy.

 

[Gav'sPurpleZ]

another piece of info from my experience. I applied the epoxy on a saturday. i did not apply the clear coat until the following wednesday evening. and i did not drive any vehicles on the floor for about 2 weeks after that..... maybe even 3 weeks.