Epoxy Garage flooring

[Mead]

Ladies and Gents-

I'm looking to floor my workshop with epoxy coating because it should be easy to clean, and I will be doing a lot of automotive work in there. Has anyone had any experience with the stuff? Seems like every brand makes the "best" epoxy coating. I was looking at armorclad but I'm a bit hesitant to buy the almost $500 dollar kit when there seem to be other, cheaper alternatives out there. Also, I'm only covering about 170 sqft so a lot of the kits out there are going to give me way too much. Ideas? Suggestions? Should I be looking at something else?

 

[BOLTRIPPER]

Re: Epoxy Garage flooring

lots of folks do the concrete stain thing, looks cool too

 

[Morgan711]

Re: Epoxy Garage flooring

You probably already have , but..
call around some of the Industrial Coatings dealers or Refinery/Oilfield Suppliers..Wilson,National Oilwell,Red-Man just a few ....plus some PipeLine coatings are Epoxy resin based ,might look into these as well
Alamo Iron Works, Grainger ,Fastenall , also carry these coatings in smaller quantity
at my last job we bought the epoxy straight from Jones-Blair Coatings out of Houston

 

[Guest]

Re: Epoxy Garage flooring

Had a good epoxy on mine in Fla.
Don't recall the brand but it was $900.00 to do a 24x24 in 1986.
It was gray w/black chips approx 1/4" thick and tougher than the 4500psi concrete floor. Very easy to clean, never chipped or burnt. I did engines in there every weekend, the biggest was a 16V149TIB Detroit with Gear box for Ocean going. Lots of Gen-sets to 2MW as well. The day I sold the place you would have been hard pressed to tell it from new.

 

[REELDOC]

Re: Epoxy Garage flooring

Get the self leveling kind, do not get a troweled finish kind. I'll try to find the brand we used on the operating room floors and corridors at work.

 

[35WLN]

Re: Epoxy Garage flooring

I did the Home Depot special for about $100 for my garage. It is not a bad product but is not as good as the higher dollar stuff. If it is just for a garage go for the cheaper stuff, but for more industrial spend the money on the best.

 

[fpdsniper]

Re: Epoxy Garage flooring

My buddy just did his garage himself. Grey with Blue flakes. Looks great!


Donnie

 

[ArcticLight]

Re: Epoxy Garage flooring

I put latex on m ine, it needs another coat but it lasted a couple of years.


Take note on the Epoxy though - it WILL sweat if you run a heater in there in the winter, you'll have small puddles of water.

 

[TF160 Guy]

Re: Epoxy Garage flooring

I went the cheaper route a few years ago and found out the hard way why the good stuff costs more.
What I bought looked fine when first put down. After just a few weeks it began to come off when I parked a hot tire on it. More expensive products overcome this problem.. The better ones will say they can handle a hot tire.

Prepping the floor with an acid wash is essential to having a clean rough surface for the paint to adhere to.

Good luck

 

[Blueclawz]

Re: Epoxy Garage flooring

There are limited options that will hold up WELL and make it worth the expense.
MuscleGloss is a good product...
UCoatIt is another option....

I just got turned on to the Rustoleum kits..(I know they are cheap and its basically concrete paint)however, I added letting it dry and coming back with 5 coats of poly on top...The poly is available in gallons sitting right next to the rustoleum kits at Lowes and HD. The finished product has turned out nearly as tough as the $3500 UCoatit job I had done 5yrs ago...

So...3 Rustoleum Kits @ $60ea + 5gal of Poly @$30 each..put me into a rock solid floor coating for under $500 which looks as good as my full epoxy job and I can recoat each year for less than the epoxy cost over 5years.

My garage houses ATV's, Compact Tractors, antique bulldozer and Jeeps. It is highly abused and would be the ideal testing ground for floor coatings..Some places for ideas on coatings would be Garagejournal.com, Rennspeed, and 6speedlonline.com....lots of ideas and real world feedback...

 

[brian64x]

Re: Epoxy Garage flooring

Do a little reading here:
http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=20

I used the epoxy coat system on my 1080ft floor and it looks great. Cost about $1 per sq ft if you put it on 20mil thick as I did. Also has a 20 year warranty if I remember correctly. As with most things, preparation is the key, if your floor already has a sealer on it you must use a diamond grinder to remove it before you install the coating.