Garage floors....

[goodtimes]

OK, here is the deal. I have a 40' x 20' cement slab that I want to coat with something. The goal is to have a good looking finish that is easy to clean and keep oil from soaking into the concrete (resale value).

The floor will have to stand up to a fair amount of abuse, including very high localized heat (cutting and welding), needs to be fairly easy to patch (when I drop things on it), must completely seal the concrete, and must be able to be "installed" by me (no professional flooring systems--I can't afford them).

I am leaning towards a 2 part epoxy paint that I have used for machinery in the past (but never on a floor). It is very hard, and isn't too expensive (~$120 for a gallon of paint and a gallon of catalyst). Has anyone used this type of paint on a floor? Use anything else for a similar application that did (or didn't) work?

I need something soon too. Both the truck and jeep are leaking oil. I wan't to get the slab done before it gets too soaked with oil...

[Guest]

You could always dig the garage floor out, and then have it re-poured with color dyed concrete. You would need to order the concrete with the correct add-mix to resist grease and oil (fly ash is good for that; it gives a super smooth finish to the slab, as well. If you used 4000 pound mix with fiber-mesh, it would withstand hundreds of years of abuse). You would never have to worry about the durability of the finish, and it would never chip or fade...

[king4wd]

Lowes and Home Depot both carry heavy duty garage floor paint for just what you're looking to do. It may be polyurethane based, but I'm not sure. Good luck. The special concrete will work even better, but that's a bit more expensive than a few coats of paint.

[goodtimes]

Home depot--

2-part epoxy, $54 to cover 250 sq/ft, takes 7 days to cure. Moisture vapor test is underway. If the test is good, the first 1/2 will be coated tomorrow morning. Pics and results will follow in a few weeks!

[Sully]

MotorMat is cool stuff.



http://www.motormat.com/

[goodtimes]

Mats work well, UNTIL you put some heat on them (think cutting torch, weld splatter, etc). That is why I ruled out using a mat early on.

Anyway, I finished the second half of the floor yesterday. My initial impressions are mixed.

The floor looks good, but I am not sure about the long term durability of it when I start beating it up. Only time will tell. Hopefully I won't end up having a contractor come in and sandblast the stuff off, then putting down a different coating.

The epoxy went down well, and was easy to work with, but it would have been better with 2 people. After every 5 x 5' section, I had to stop and spread the paint chips out. This made it pretty much impossible to keep a wet edge to start with, so there are going to be some faint lines where the sheen is different. If I had a second person, I could have kept rolling the paint on while the other person spread the chips.

Also, I would not recommend doing the garage in parts. I did 1/2 of mine, then when it cured, I did the other 1/2 (because I didn't have any place to put my tools while it was curing if I did it all at one shot). What happened is that I was a little more generous with the paint chips on the second half than I was on the first. Also, don't do it late in the afternoon, unless you have lots of lighting in your garage. I ended up with a small spot with a very thin coating on it (bare concrete shows through), because I finished up after sunset last night, and couldn't see it.

No pics yet. I am waiting on the last 1/2 to cure (takes 7 days to fully cure) so I can organize my junk, then I will add pics. I will say this though. It looks alot better than it did before, and the oil isn't going to soak into the concrete, plus it cleans up very easy compared to bare concrete.

[kizer]

The trick is to make sure your floor is clean, clean, clean. You have to have a clean surface for the material to adhere properly.

[goodtimes]

Well, I finally got to use my garage (lots of catch up work on the heep). While it is way too early to say anything about the durability of the epoxy, I can say that it cleans up very easily compared to bare concrete. Even sweeping out the dirt is almost effortless.



--any of you guru's know how to make the ":" and "8" in that to not come up as a ??? :confused:

[NAILER341]

lol! that is funny. i was wondering what the problem was with your pictures.

[NAILER341]

floors look great though. keep us posted on how they last
garege floor pic link

[sarah]

it's not a glitch. you just click DISABLE SMILIES IN THIS POST.

[goodtimes]

Originally posted by sarah
it's not a glitch. you just click DISABLE SMILIES IN THIS POST.

Right on! I knew there had to be a easy way. You rock Sarah!

[mikeythefireman]

I can't see the pics, but I think the stuff is similar to what we use for decks in the Navy. It's obvious when you've got people putting in down if they cared about the job they were doing. Some guys the paint chips are spread out evenly and look good, other guys it'll be sporadic and clumpy. We paint/apply it 3-4" up the bulkhead (wall) and it's really hard to be consistent there. First time I did, it took me a while to get down a system that worked. My boss made me chip off all the ugly stuff and redo it.

[goodtimes]

Originally posted by mikeythefireman
I can't see the pics, but I think the stuff is similar to what we use for decks in the Navy.

It isn't like the stuff I used when I was in. We didn't use epoxy on the LCAC's, and we certainly didn't use any paint chips to make it look nice.

This stuff is a pretty standard epoxy paint (~75% base color with ~25% catalyst), with a bag of chips to sprinkle over it for some contrast. Is that what the navy is using now? It is much better paint than what we used to use.

[mikeythefireman]

Ummm....don't tell anyone, but I'm on the USNS Mercy. It's barely a Navy ship. That's what we use. Keep it quiet.