The house we're trying to buy (a Short Sale) has a plain, gray, concrete floor. My plan is to first pressure wash it, then go over it with dilute Muratic acid, followed by a gentle flushing to remove the drywall dust, drywall mud and other gunk deposited by subcontractors. Then, I want to coat it with a dark brown epoxy with vinyl flakes in it.
I know that the dark brown color will make the garage darker than it presently is, but in NV, auto tires pick up carbon from the effect of UV on asphalt and leave tracks almost immediately. The dark brown color disguises the tracks.
I checked at HD and Lowe's for a dark brown epoxy garage floor coating with no success. They offer a very limited range of colors. Where would you all recommend finding good 2-part epoxy garage floor coating with the vinyl flakes?
Rustoleum EpoxyShield comes in a tintable base, so you can tint it whatever color you want. Home Depot sells the standard colors and will special order the tintable base for you.
If you ask questions at Home Depot you'll get one of three categories of answer: ill-informed, wrong and absurd.
If you have questions, go to the pro desk and ask them to check the manufacturer's product line for you. Better yet, do the homework yourself and bring the information to the pro desk and have them order it. If they carry a particular manufacturer's product, I am almost certain that they will be able to special order pretty much any other product from that manufacturer.
I've had epoxy garage floors since 1974. Some commercial, others home based. Sears, Glidden, other two part systems are good. What I found was that adding sand, sprinkles or other cosmetics shortened the life of traffic areas dramatically. The nice smooth un-gooped epoxy paint will last for years and look good, besides being far easier to keep clean. Cosmetics, or practicality, you make the call.
HC oil concrete stain from Sherwin Williams will might outlast paint and it doesnt peel. I did mine in 86. It will wear away but be easier to recoat since it doesnt have the gloss you need to sand off paint to recoat.
otherwise every X years you must recoat with whatever the latest greatest last forever coating is which will cost a fortune, and sooner or later fail...
the most practical solution is forget about it or get that garage floor sheet material installed, it just lays there.
vehicle tires get very hot after a long drive, over time the heat damages whatever coating you use
At the very least it should be sealed, otherwise it's a bitch to keep clean.
Garages are no longer strictly utilitarian. People are dressing them up. I don't have a problem with that, if that's what they want to do.
That won't be cheaper than an epoxy paint job.
What's very hot? Not more than, what, 120 F? It's not like the guy's pulling into the pits at Talladega. He's pulling into his garage, and it's probably a safe bet that his driveway doesn't open onto an interstate highway. It's a non-issue for epoxy paint. Latex may be another story, but I'd tend to think that the paint company tweaks paint for its intended environment.
The home is in Las Vegas, where air temperatures alone can be 115f or more. Asphalt streets can be as hot as 150f or 160f. The ultraviolet light and heat degrades asphaltic materials, including roofing, leaving a layer of carbon on the surface in as short a period of time as weeks. What happens is that any traffic, including foot traffic, across or along a street picks up this carbon dust and transports it to concrete or other surfaces. I can pressure wash my concrete driveway and within a few days can track the passage of every tire that rolls across it.
As a footnote, in Las Vegas and similar communities, it is considered good manners to remove your shoes before entering a house. It's like Japanese culture, but from a bit more practical level. The dust also gets onto shoe soles and any traffic into a house, even from a garage, leaves the same blackish tracks. Here, we clean our carpets 3-4 times a year and even ceramic or Travertine flooring needs a similar cleaning to prevent the black traffic paths from becoming permenent.
My concern with any flooring other than epoxy, such as lay-in tile, is that our two garages are at right angles to one another and it's necessary to turn the front wheels to back out of either. The squirming of a tire on anything really creates wear and tear quickly. My neighbor has a black rug that was given him by his wife. It's a garage carpet that is intended to go under a Corvette, including the logo. It's fine as long as he keeps his hands off the steering wheel when the front tires are on it, but it already has bunches and a tear where he learned this.
We presently have a Rustoleum coating on our garage here, but I was hoping for brand names or other helpful suggestions about coatings that might give me a better experience in the next house we're considering to purchase. My present epoxy floor is holding up well, except where it it slightly exposed outside the garage doors. There, even the vinyl chips are already fading after 4 years of sun exposure and I'm seeing a milky sheen, similar to oxidation on the clear coat. The coating is a light tan and despite frequent scrubbings, there are now permanent tracks where the car pulls in and oval area where the tires rest.
I agree. I always get two part epoxy for garage floors at a real paint store - and that doesn't mean the strip mall Sherwin Williams. Benjamin Moore has an Industrial Coating line that is excellent and can be tinted to any desired color.
I agree. The only tradeoff is safety. If you live in an area that sees snow, slush or even a lot of rain, the glossy epoxy and be very slippery. It cleans and wears nice, but you may want to throw a carpet runner down for walking.
Years. A good two part epoxy (not floor paint, not basement paint, not concrete stain, not big box store garage floor goop) will last over 10 years with no recoating, but it's essential that it be applied properly. For most garages, that means 80% of the effort occurs before you start spreading the epoxy.
And that's personal experience from multiple garages.
The commercial garage floor I epoxied in 1974 is still in use, the high traffic areas have been recoated a couple of times, and believe me, whenever one of the techs pulled a Porsche into the lift area after a test drive the tires were one helluva lot hotter than the ones on your Yugo. And no damage. Ever.
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