Epoxy Flooring
Refurbishing Your Home with Epoxy Flooring
Epoxy flooring can be installed over any interior or exterior concrete substrate – patio, walkway, driveway, bathroom, kitchen… or even a retail or commercial space. But when you resurface your ugly (and dirty) concrete flooring in your garage or basement, you’ll create some usable square footage in your home (and increase your home’s market value!). Did you know that much of the dust and dirt in your garage comes from the concrete itself? Over time, concrete deteriorates into a fine dust and it gets tracked through your clean home.
Start with the Flooring
If you’ve resolved to improve any space in your home – say, the basement or garage (or any other space with a concrete substrate) – start with the flooring. Although solid color epoxy flooring is still in demand, it’s the partial and full-flake coating systems that are the most popular. These systems are gaining popularity with sophisticated homeowners, restaurateurs, and business owners with a flair for design. And these days, you’re spoiled for choice.
Concrete Coating Product Types
Epoxies are not the only coating products in use these days. There are three basic categories of concrete coating products. Epoxies (including standard 100%-solids, water-borne, and moisture-mitigating epoxies), polyurethanes, and polyurea-polyaspartics. Although some contractors try to tell you that one product is better than the other, the fact is, each coating type has a unique set of advantages…and disadvantages.
For example, epoxies deeply penetrate concrete and can be applied thickly, so they are excellent for use as primer (direct-to-concrete) coats. You just can’t beat them for that purpose. However, epoxies aren’t suitable top coats if exposed to UV light because they tend to amber and chalk.
Polyurea-polyaspartics are also excellent products! They are quick-curing top coats that provide extreme UV and stain resistance (things an epoxy can’t provide). However, they don’t penetrate concrete well, can only be applied thinly, and cure so quickly that they aren’t suitable for use as primer coats (…especially when exposed to medium to high moisture content in the concrete).
What’s a Concrete Coating System?
A typical concrete coating “system” consists of multiple layers of coating products. Coating systems typically include: (a) a first “primer coat” layer (a direct-to-concrete coating), (b) in some cases, a second “color coat” or “sandwich coat” layer (with metallic systems, this may be a metallic colour coat), (c) in flaked systems, a layer of flakes, broadcast in either a partial flake or full flake spread, and (d) one or more clear coats to complete the coating system.
Your unique space to be coated will determine which products are to be used for each layer. An exterior patio, interior basement, or garage floor have differing needs and will thus require a different set of coating products. A garage floor, for example, needs a top coat that will protect your flooring from UV light, hot-tire staining, and automotive fluids…so a polyaspartic topcoat would be the logical choice. For a basement, using a polyaspartic as the topcoat is generally not necessary.
Types of Coating Systems
There are several categories of “coating systems”:
- Solid color
- Partial and full flake
- Metallic
- Clear sealing & staining.
Although solid-color floor coverings are still in demand, these days, epoxy flooring with ‘flakes’ seem to be the most popular. In these ‘partial-flake’ or ‘full-flake’ systems, thermoplastic polyvinyl acetate (PVA) flake blends, or our proprietary PVA and mica stone blends, are broadcast into the uncured epoxy primer coat.
Our Ultra, Earth Effects, Bagari SE and Vintage Mica series are all full-flake coating systems. The difference? Our Ultra coating systems incorporate thermoplastic flakes only in this series 12 available blend options, while the three other full-flake systems incorporate mica stone in their blends for added reflectivity and beauty. All our full flake systems, once installed, exceed 35 mils in thickness (1 ‘mil’ is one one-thousandth of an inch), providing unmatched strength…and our warranty reflects this!
Evaluating & Preparing the Concrete for Epoxy Flooring
Once you choose a specific coating system and color, we’ll accurately measure your space to be coated, assess the concrete moisture (with a moisture meter), and we’ll evaluate the condition of your concrete (cracks, pits, stains). After the evaluation is complete, we’ll schedule the installation.
On the scheduled date, our team will use high-end propane diamond grinders, hand grinders and HEPA-filtered vacuums to grind the concrete (creating the perfect ‘profile’ to enable the full penetration of our epoxy primer coat). The grinders are connected to HEPA-filtered vacuums to mitigate dust. Creating the perfect concrete profile and using a moisture-mitigating epoxy primer (never polyurea) as the base coat, ensures your flooring won’t delaminate in the future.
Epoxy Flooring Coating Process
After concrete preparation, we start the coating process using our 100%-solids, moisture-mitigating epoxy primer (unlike “1-day” coating companies, we’ll never apply a polyurea or polyaspartic direct-to-concrete). In our full-flake systems, the primer coat is followed with a broadcast of your selected PVA or PVA-mica mineral flake blend. This completes Day 1 of the installation.
We’ll return on Day 2, reclaim any unadhered flakes, buff/sand the flaked horizontals and verticals, and carefully vacuum the space. We’d then top it all off with two separate clear coats (not 1 like the “1-day” guys). For garages, the clear coats would be our 100%-solids polyaspartic to protect your flooring from UV light, and staining from automotive fluids and hot-tire transfer.
Your Dreams Come True
Thinking of turning your ugly gray garage or basement into a man-cave, she-shed, gym, gaming room, home office…or just giving it a facelift? Expand your living space with our epoxy flooring!
At Garage Floor Coatings of Maryland, we only install industrial-grade concrete floor coating systems Call us today for a free estimate: (443) 243-2172. Or, contact us by clicking here. Your dreams can come true.