expoxy for garage floors

Anyone every try this on their garage floors? I would like to try it, I know I am going to rent one of those cement floor grinders that use the rocks to grind the top coat of the cement away to get rid of the oil and other marks.

I would also like to go up at least a foot or two up the wall and leave a round smooth edge to make my garage floor a lot more water tight esp. in the winter when my wife comes home and pulls right in without getting all the snow off of her car.

Any thought/suggestions would be helpful...

Dan

Prep is he biggest thing, if it doesn't get a good hold, it will peel. I think if you put a piece of plastic down for 24 hours and see if you get any moisture under it, you may have to seal it first or something.

Go with a good product, the cheaper is not always better. There are many online retailers that sell a good epoxy based coating.

A little was discussed here.
Painting Concrete Floor

There is a good site about expoxy paint for floors on garagejournal.com i tried to copy and paste this on here put do not know how

Sometimes an alternate solution makes more sense. Read on... Have you ever seen those brown or black long runner rugs used in large business lobbies. Well in many cases they are rented. They are frequently used in the winter time as the first place people clean their feet when entering a lobby. The rental company changes them every night. They just take them away dirty and put a cleaned one in its place. After time the rug is just worn out. But the rubber like backing is still ok. These make excellent runners under a car. Put two down the full length of car. Easy to clean because you just drag it out and hose it down. It's a bit of a challenge finding such rental companies and making a deal but it's possible. OR, you can just but new runner rugs from the big box home improvement stores.

You can also get the vinyl floor squares, they are easy to put down, interlocking, and look great. You can alway remove and clean under, take them with you, etc...

Like this
http://www.racedeck.com/

We installed the plastic tile floor in our detached shop/garage after the idiot drywall crew did all the mudding and sanding without covering up the concrete and it looked like schit and wasn't going to come clean. Swisstrax is the company. They were very helpful and nice to deal with. They have solid as well as "mesh" tiles. Note that the solid tiles aren't sealed when locked together. Moisture can still get through the seams, but not in any great amount.

I will say that they are easy to install and very durable. I've found them very difficult to scratch or dent. The only thing they have no resistance for is heat, i.e. don't put them down in a weld/fab area. Weld spatter and/or hot metal parts from cutoff wheel use will quickly melt into the surface.... don't ask.....but at least if you wreck a tile (or several) they are easy to replace.

Cost-wise, I priced the plastic tiles against industrial-grade epoxy floor coating and it's about a wash. They are both expensive. However, in my experience, anything less than industrial grade epoxy coatings will not last. The DIY Rustoleum stuff is junk. Looks great for a year or two, then it all peels off. Industrial epoxy coating requires that the surface be ground down (Dan, I had no idea you could rent those machines!) and a thick primer/leveling coat and then a finish coat. The finish coat should have some sort of grit spread across it for slip resistance otherwise it will be spectacularly slippery when wet.

The only other downfall of having a nice looking floor is that it will show every speck of dirt, mud, and dust. I vacuum AND MOP the shop floor regularly.

Here is the floor shortly after completion:


Here is the same view but I've got a boiler parked there now:

europachris wrote:We installed the plastic tile floor in our detached shop/garage after the idiot drywall crew did all the mudding and sanding without covering up the concrete and it looked like schit and wasn't going to come clean. Swisstrax is the company. They were very helpful and nice to deal with. They have solid as well as "mesh" tiles. Note that the solid tiles aren't sealed when locked together. Moisture can still get through the seams, but not in any great amount.

I will say that they are easy to install and very durable. I've found them very difficult to scratch or dent. The only thing they have no resistance for is heat, i.e. don't put them down in a weld/fab area. Weld spatter and/or hot metal parts from cutoff wheel use will quickly melt into the surface.... don't ask.....but at least if you wreck a tile (or several) they are easy to replace.

Cost-wise, I priced the plastic tiles against industrial-grade epoxy floor coating and it's about a wash. They are both expensive. However, in my experience, anything less than industrial grade epoxy coatings will not last. The DIY Rustoleum stuff is junk. Looks great for a year or two, then it all peels off. Industrial epoxy coating requires that the surface be ground down (Dan, I had no idea you could rent those machines!) and a thick primer/leveling coat and then a finish coat. The finish coat should have some sort of grit spread across it for slip resistance otherwise it will be spectacularly slippery when wet.

The only other downfall of having a nice looking floor is that it will show every speck of dirt, mud, and dust. I vacuum AND MOP the shop floor regularly.

Here is the floor shortly after completion:


Here is the same view but I've got a boiler parked there now:

awesome install on the boiler look great


go to http://www.garagejournal.com if you want to read tons of info on floors coating , my 2 cents is that if its a working garage epoxy just does not cut it chips when you drop some thing on it and will peel no mater what you do,

here is a picture of my garage floor right after i coated it with beir solid color stain

Go to "The Forum " on garagejournal,,, they have a section just on floors

If the floor doesn't have a vapor barrier under it, do a test to see what kind of moisture is coming through it. If it passes a lot of water, there isn't much that will stay down.

A friend of mine just did is shop floor with the Behr kit you get at Home Depot? Lowes?

He has been in the shop for over 25 years and the accumulated grease and grime was a sight to see. We scraped and pressure washed and scrubbed the area he was painting and went through an extra gallon of cleaner besides what was in the kit. Then did the etch and finally epoxy.

There were still a few oily spots that we just couldn't get clean but a machine will be sitting on top so it will probably be ok. A day after applying, we ran a fork truck on it, dragged the forks and generally abused it. Besides some scratches where we dragged a 10,000 pound milling machine on it, it held up perfectly.

If you follow the directions, I see no reason why you can't get very good results with any of these kits.