Easy Garage Floor Coatings
If you’ve had it with ugly stains on your concrete garage floor, or if you’re just plain tired of looking at boring grey concrete, maybe it’s time to think about using garage floor coatings.
You’ll need surface coverings that should be installed by a professional, but you’ll pour an epoxy floor coating over it. You’ll need to carefully prepare the concrete surface and make the epoxy carefully, or it may not stick. (But even with the best preparations, sometimes epoxy just won’t stick.)
When epoxy fails to stick to concrete floors, water and humidity are the biggest culprits. Concrete has a way of retaining water for a long time compared to other surfaces, so you need to wait long enough for the concrete to dry after you clean it.
Humidity has the same problemmany products have guidelines as to what the humidity level in the air should be when applying them.
There’s more than just water and humidity to consider: You want the concrete floors to be as clean as possible. Dirt, oil, grime, and dust can all prevent your epoxy garage floor coatings from sticking.
Fresh concrete releases salts and other minerals as it cures, and this rises to the surface. The surface needs to be scrubbed clean of all of these and allowed to dry very thoroughly before application.
Having a professional add an epoxy floor coating means a multi-day process involving several steps. Day one is devoted to scrubbing and cleaning the existing floor. This helps get rid of all the grease, dust, and oil covering your concrete floor.
He may use special chemicals and/or pressure washing to achieve this. The floor will have to dry for quite some time.
Priming the floor with a specific floor primer is the next step. After it dries out in a day or so, the installer pours the epoxy finish over it.
It will be in one or two coats, with thickness varying based on the product. Lastly comes the sealer.
Epoxy is not the easiest or cheapest solution when it comes to garage floor coatings, but once the hassle is over with, you’ll love the clean, slick surface.
