My newish-to-me house has a Florida room with a cement floor. It's painted and can be a bit slick, especially for my dogs with fuzzy feet. The patio is the same level with the cement outside of the expanse of sliding patio doors (maybe even the same, just with the track across it). During hard rains, I get small puddles just inside of the tracks, which is the subject of another question sometime. The problem, though, is that I really don't want to put down decent carpeting for traction until that's resolved. I haven't slipped, but I am a bit concerned that it could be slick if wet and I have guests.
Any suggestions on how to treat the floor? Deck paint? That speckled stuff I've seen for garages?
For the short term, I'd get one of those mats like they use in lobbies with terrazzo floors during crappy weather, and lay it right inside the the sliding door. If it gets to smelling funny, you can just pressure-wash it at the coin-op car wash. If the concrete is the same level on both sides of door, they screwed up- probably dropped the sunroom on an existing patio. A bead of caulk on the outside of the track will help, but make sure not to block the weep holes on the outside of the track. Is water coming under the track, or is the track overflowing and spilling into the room? If the latter, the weep holes may be blocked. Have you checked the patio for level? If it slopes toward the slider, there is no painless cure. An overhang or awning helps.
When you decide to repaint, epoxy like for a garage is best, but the prep work on old concrete, especially painted concrete, is a bitch. I'd go with non-glued indoor-outdoor carpet, or porch paint with the nonskid granules mixed into it.
I'd repaint with non-skid paint. They have smallish but uniformly sized particles in the paint so that you get miniscule bumps when the paint dries. The particles can be any of many different things...sand, ground rubber, ground walnut shells, etc. It can sometimes be hard to keep the paint stirred well so that particle suspension is uniform.
The few times I've wanted a non-skid surface I rolled on a coat of paint (usually polyurethane) and while still tacky broadcast fine sand over it. When dry, I swept up all the sand that was loose and rolled on another coat of paint.
Following up. Yes, I think they did take an existing cement patio and build the florida room on top of it. The patio in turn abuts a paved area at the same height. There used to be a pool in the yard, and apparently the original owner was quite the party person (there is a "Tiki" bar with fake bamboo at one end of the room!), so I suspect he really didn't care about water coming in because with the pool it probably got got wet a lot anyhow. I can't tell how the water gets in; I never see it as it happens - just come home to find small puddles. And it doesn't happen all the time. I do get some puddling on the outside cement so I wonder it there is occasionally a "high tide" the comes over the tracks. It's gotten better since I attached some of those extension tubes to the downspout that was also draining onto the cement.
I think the next step will be unglued indoor/outdoor carpet, which will have to suffice for a while.
So how do you tell where the patio stops and the paved area starts? :^)
If this proves to be an ongoing problem, I'd look seriously at removing some of the paved area, or at least cutting a slot and adding a sloped-bottom slit drain leading to a drywell, parallel to the wall with the slider in it. If the concrete was not in the way, how would the drainage be in your yard? Clay and mud, or sand as deep as anyone has ever dug?
Indoor/outdoor carpet would be my only choice...it is available in decent colors, easy to maintain and not expensive. I'd be sure to caulk wall all around the exterior of the room.
I/o carpet can get real mildewy if it gets wet and stays wet ... also easy to haul outside, hose off and leave in the sun to dry. I would tack it down just a little at doorways so it can't curl and cause someone to trip.
You can't put concrete stain on a concrete floor that already has paint on it, unless you want to remove the paint first.
Why not address the leak issue first, then put down carpeting or other flooring of your choice? If you figure out why water is getting in, the fix could be as simple as a tube of caulk.
Same here. My sunroom needed something on the cement slab. It had minor cracks and some minor seepage (darkened stains in spots in heavy rain, no actual puddles) so we used a bit of acrylic goop on the cracks then a water sealant 'paint' and put 'outdoor' carpet down. It looks like a very nice berber carpet but is designed to tolerate a bit of damp or even a full wetting down (provided it can dry out later). Oddly, it was cheaper than 'indoor carpet' of the same look.
The only downfall is it's a bit scratchy if you sit on the floor (which we do there all the time). Since the water has not seeped up at all after treating the slab (could have done internal carpet it turns out), we overlayed a cheapish but nice looking oriental rug piece that is soft to sit on.
Curling depends on type. The sunroom is a portion of a large extended 'enclosed porch'. All same slab. 11x13ft is the sunroom. The rest is still a fully screened porch of 36x13ft with a small extra section that makes it 44ft (laundry room is an 8x5ft cutout of the porch). In the screened section, the rain blows in naturally and the landscaping also causes water flow to the center of the slab up to 1/4 inch. The outdoor carpet type there is the 'fake grass' sort which can tolerate that condition. No need to pull it up and stick it in the sun. That type wont curl either while the 'berber-look' one on the sunroom floor, would in those conditions.
BTW, to avoid any accidental confusion, the original 'enclosed porch' was
55.5ft The missing 6 inches are the ones for the non-structural separator wall between the enclosed and screened area. An interesting tidbit is the code and zoning of my area made your taxes go up if your porch was 60ft or more 'long' or more than 13ft 'deep'. Hence, 55.5x13 is not uncommon here.
If the Florida room is in Florida, and the carpet is damp for a while, it can grow thick coats of mildew. Our neighbors' patios have that problem. As for curling, I've had plastic grass and low-loop pile and both did not remain totally flat. Carpet at doorways can get a lot of traffic and might tend to curl more - better to stick it down before someone trips.
They actually look different. The "floor" / patio material has a smooth surface and is painted a brown. The paved area is normal "sidewalk" color and texture. (see photobucket links below) If I had to guess, the brown part was there first. Then someone put an inground pool in the yard and added the concrete part. And placed the Florida room on top of the patio. The pool has been removed, but the concrete has a round contour where the pool would have been. I guess my problem is that I want to think of it as an actual room, whereas it's more of a patio with some glass walls sitting on top of it.
I don't know what the drainage would be like in that area. I just moved in a year ago, and the pool had come and gone by then. The Florida room runs across the whole back of the house, but the additional cement walkway part only exists on the side where the pool was. On the other side of the room, where there is just grass, I've never seen any water. I didn't get a picture of that, but the dirt is maybe an inch or so lower than the concrete floor.
I hope these wrap ok: View from inside looking out; you can see extension of colored cement.You can see where some water dried on the floor.
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View along the back of the room.
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Where the pool would have been
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Is having the cement removed a huge expensive job? The occasional puddles are annoying, but not enough to justify a huge bill at this point in my life and economy. I wonder if it'd be possible to remove maybe a 1-2 foot strip of cement right beside the pink part, and put in a garden or something to match the other side.
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