GARAGE FLOOR COATINGS, WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
It looks really cool and it seems like it would be easy to clean. Are there many color options? Can I do it myself? How long does it last? What do I need to know about Resinous Concrete Coatings?
Resinous garage floor coatings and driveway coatings are very popular now and come in many colors. Having a top quality coating professionally installed is nice but it can be really expensive! Why would you pay that kind of money for something so simple? Painters, handymen and homeowners are installing them all over town… What could go wrong? Let’s take a look….
There are four parts to a resinous floor coating:
Crack repair product:
Most floors have small crack that need to be repaired prior to coating. A mixture of silica sand and crack repair material are worked into the void once the crack is opened up with a specialty grinder. With chips applied at 100% coverage you can get away without repairing small cracks but they may still be visible at certain angles in the right lighting.
Color coat(s):
The color that goes down on the floor first. It needs to be applied quickly so chips will stick to it if you are using a 3 coat method.
Chips:
Chips are cast into the still wet 1st or 2nd color coat. They can be applied sporadically (feeding the chickens) or with 100% coverage so the only bits of color coat you see are what soak around the edges of the chips. Feeding the chickens takes practice for the perfectionist eye.
Top coat(s):
Clear Product such as epoxy, Polyaspartic or Poly 90. The poly top coats are UV stable and several times harder than epoxy. It’s all about application. Garage floor coatings work well for one person to put it down with a squeegee while others back roll with a paint roller.
Usually there are some essential factors when putting in resinous chip coatings. The quantity of solids with your product or service, the Extremely Violet security, Suitable Crack repair service, the quantity of merchandise occurring the floor and Prep. The main of all may be the prep.
Prep:
with regards to the merchandise you happen to be putting down, you will find 3 recognized ways of prep. Grinding, shot blasting or even a deep acid etch. The finished product is barely nearly as good since the prep. A rough profile is necessary from wall to wall. Any places that are not properly profiled or remaining soiled will ultimately Enable free.
Most do it yourself kits with the massive box shop would require one particular color coat to generally be promptly used, a quick smattering of chips and 1 coat of apparent epoxy that can flip amber in coloration with time. If prepped properly it could possibly hold up for quite a while but there isn’t a great deal of fabric to put on.
Crack maintenance can usually situations be the dangle up with the Do-it-yourself style. It requires observe and a few specialty instruments like a grinder/vac to receive it right.
A substantial solids product Like Graniflex addresses wholly in one coat and will never shrink while drying. Regardless that you'll be able to deal with in a single coat an expert installer will generally slender out the initial coat and send out it deep into your click here pores of the floor for the last word adhesion. The chips might be Forged into the slower drying second shade coat with a hundred% chip protection. Once the chips are effectively scraped and prepped two UV steady Poly top rated coats are used.
Whether or not using it on by yourself or using the services of the massive guns a minimum of now you've got an concept of what to expect. If you need to do go the cheap route just be organized…. It will cost much more to remove a failed coating before you decide to have it professionally completed the next time. Thank you for taking the time.
Jon Molden
Blood Sweat & concrete website Tears Concrete