Floor coatings

Does anyone have any suggestions for a grassroots concrete floor coating? My wife and I are building a new house and I want to put a coating on the garage floor. I have been looking at the U-Coat it product but it is pricey. About $2000.00 for what I want to do. Rustoleum is priced better but I don’t have any feed back on it. Behr Epoxy Colors is even better priced but I don’t have any feed back on it either. Anyone used any of these? Do they hold up well? Hot tire lift? Staining? Slippery when wet? I need to cover about 2500 square feet.

Slowly I've been coating my garage with spilled oil. Not the color I wanted but it seems to stay pretty permenantly

Are you looking for color or just sealing and protection for the concrete? If the latter I'll dig up the name of the stuff I've used on my driveway, works really, really well and brings up the color and texture in the stamping I had done nicely too. Another option is to color the concrete and then seal it.

Scott

I'm an advocate of the bare polished concrete floor. There's a reason real shops are bare polished concrete, and nifty coatings are sold to home owners.

Coatings prevent oil from soaking into the cement. I put Behr stain on my polished floor in '95. It has stood up well to oil, brake fliud, dragging crap across it, but tires have pulled it up. After about 13 years it looks pretty tired but still comes clean when scrubbed.

foxtrapper wrote: I'm an advocate of the bare polished concrete floor. There's a reason real shops are bare polished concrete, and nifty coatings are sold to home owners.

I've had bad experiences with floor coatings in industrial settings. Even trowel down 1/2" thick industrial epoxy. I agree with 'trapper.

Wally wrote: Slowly I've been coating my garage with spilled oil. Not the color I wanted but it seems to stay pretty permenantly

I use the same product on my driveway. I get the RED version, with the flakes of metal. I know it's a little flashy but nothing is too good to park my Saturn on.

I used the Rustoleum Epoxyshield Professional (solvent based) floor coating on my shop floor. In general, it has held up extremely well under very hard use, with no lifting in the past 4 years that it's been down. It's not very glossy, unlike some of the others, but that was a plus for me. My only complaint is that some types of stains are pretty hard to get clean, especially rust stains. My shop is 1200 sq ft, and four years ago it cost me $375 to do it. I would never recommend using a water based floor paint - My experience is that they just don't hold up. The cheapest place I found to buy it from is this:

http://www.loghomesupply.com/epoxyshield-professional-floor_575_p.htm

I don't know if they are still the cheapest or not. I'm going to repaint it this summer to change the color, and am happy enough with this product to use it again. -Jim

I'm an advocate of bare polished too.

OTOH - I used to sell and install epoxy coating and lining systems and applied correctly, they are awesome, far better than concrete, but you will have to pay to play. 15+ years ago, it was $3-$5/sq. ft. to do it right.

Jack

garagejournal.com has a whole flooring forum that debates this ad nauseum. Go lurk over there for a bit and draw your own conclusions.

I have been on the cusp of remodeling a carport (into a garage) off the end of my house for a while now (other stuff just keeps coming up...), and have about decided that epoxy will all eventually fail, no matter what, and that unless you're using it on a super-pristine prepped-to-the-hilt brand-new slab, it'll fail pretty quick. Polished concrete is the way to go, IMHO- if you spill something, clean it up. If you have a leaky car, get a mat to go under it.

Has anyone on here actually planned for this before construction? I've heard tale that there are some additives for concrete but have no first hand knowledge. I'm trying to plan ahead for this when I retire and build my shop/garage.

I asked my concrete contractor and builder about polished concrete and found that it is prohibitively expensive for the additive and the labor to polish it. It certainly wasn’t grassroots. I am pretty much set on 2-part epoxy for the shop and possibly for the garage as well. I had forgotten about garagejournal thanks.

I coated my garage floor with Quikrete's 2-part epoxy. 2.5 years later and I really can't complain. I've put it through 3 challenge builds, 3 other engine swaps, and numerous heavy item drags, fluid spills, etc. The floor coating looks a bit rough due to general grime, but it's still intact aside from heavy drops that actually chipped the concrete. I have yet to find a chemical that will damage it. Furthermore, grip is good I have yet to find the surface slick when it is wet (aside from oil of course). Just prepare the concrete properly and it'll bond well.

I did mine with a kit from epoxy-coat

it came out better than expected. house was newly built with a fresh slab so maybe that has a lot to do with it.

no peeling or problems after 2+ yrs, is great for cleaning up fluid spills and generally easier to sweep up dry debris & dust. i did chip a small spot when a breaker bar fell but that's it.

and it looks pretty sweet to boot

kcbhiw, did you put any of the anti slip coating in the top coat? Did you clear coat it. Aside from the usual prep what steps did you take and how many coats?

The kit I used only came with paint flakes to add a speckled finish, which I didn't use. I neither added an anti-slip additive nor clear coat. Before I applied the epoxy, the concrete was new and I just used the cleaning/etching prep materials (muriatic acid?) that were supplied with the kit. However, I did scrub the surface quite well with a stiff bristled brush. I only applied a single coat.

foxtrapper wrote: I'm an advocate of the bare polished concrete floor. There's a reason real shops are bare polished concrete, and nifty coatings are sold to home owners.

and that reason is?

Every pro shop I ever worked in had a coating on it. Some were beter than others, but all were beynd my means.

fatfinger55 wrote:

foxtrapper wrote: I'm an advocate of the bare polished concrete floor. There's a reason real shops are bare polished concrete, and nifty coatings are sold to home owners.

and that reason is?

Because they fail, and none of them work as well as polished concrete.

If those epoxy coatings and such worked, we'd have used them in the hangers and jet shops.

It depends on what you're doing with your garage.

I do a bunch of welding so I'd ruin a nice floor in a day. I also tend to drag heavy used cast iron parts across the floor on a regular basis.

I've been in plenty of industrial facilities with failed epoxy floors. They pay for the good stuff too.

Some of the big places haven't bothered with it. Heavily used concrete wears down to expose the aggregrate after years anyway.

A general auto or body shop, or garage I used to change the oil or do minor work? I'd love an epoxy floor.

Alternative? You might consider a composition tile, like at the grocery store.

...but a real grassroots garage floor has oil/fluid stains, chunks missing and burn marks.

-James

foxtrapper wrote: If those epoxy coatings and such worked, we'd have used them in the hangers and jet shops.

Get up to the Sikorsky facility in CT. It's all coated in troweled on epoxy. I can't speak for other facilities, but I helped put those floors in.

Jack

Biggest problem I've had with epoxy floors is when there is a poor vapor barrier in the concrete. Be 100% sure that you have a good in tact vapor barrier in the concrete before you install. I've had osmotic pressure, ruin a good epoxy floor, but lifting it off the concrete.

To be fair it was in a Chilled 55 degree room so the condensation was extreme but.... The lack of a vapor barrier, even though the building owners swore there was one, destroyed over $50k in floors.

The Hendrick Motorsports hangar outside of Concord NC has a white epoxy floor coating. You have to see it to believe it; it's pristine perfect white despite having two jets and 4 helicopters plus all the associated toolboxes etc. in there.

I bet Hendrick has everything in the shop on nylon wheels so nothing is ever dragged.

Some random comments:

+1 on garagejournal.com... although I'll bet you'll leave that forum more confused than ever...

Make absolutely sure the garage slab installer puts down a vapor barrier. Vapor through the concrete is the #1 reason epoxy fails.

Polished concrete looks like E36 M3. It is durable... and will keep dust down... but if you're looking to increase "brightness" in the garage and an easier time finding dropped bits, then you'll want epoxy.

In the pharma industry, I see a ton of different floor coatings. Epoxy is most common, but some non-GMP warehouses have polished floors. I got to see one warehouse space that had both. The area with the polished floor was noticably darker than the one with light gray epoxy.

Well done polished concrete is not cheap either.

Cost: you get what you pay for. Simple as that... and that is the problem with a lot of "grassroots" flooring ideas. You know the saying, "fast, durable, cheap - pick any two"? Well, industrial flooring is similar. Depending on the size of your garage, $2000 sounds cheap. IMHO, if you want a nice garage floor in new construction, then make it part of the contract and build it into the cost of the house and have the GC hire a contractor who knows where he's doing. Then the cost won't hurt as much.