Alright fellas, I have read thread after thread about floor coatings for garages, shops, plane hangers and museums. I decided that I was going to do a demo on my garage floor for everyone who is interested in learing how to properly coat concrete. I have attached 6 pre pics of my garage, the contractor is about to start the grinding of the floor and we will then do a 2 coat system with flake in the middle. This floor is roughly 43 years old, there is no telling how much brake fluid, oil, paint, grease, deer and hog blood has been spilled on this floor. If you have question please let me know and I will answer them to the best of my knowledge. I am over the South Texas Division for a Coatings Company here in Houston,Tx and I also do all of the coatings inspections for South Texas. I hope this helps someone out. Cheers, Sam Navarro 832-618-0447
When you come up with a coating that will stand up to welding sparks, or heavy loads from steel wheels, let us know. Otherwise my concrete will remain virgin.
I did a floor at a GE plant where they roll 20 ton turbines in and out 7 days a week for complete overhauls is welding, cutting torches, plasma torches, and every solvent known to man. Technology these days with coatings can stand up to everything. I am in no way shape or form saying to take a torch and burn your floor but we can definatley make tough coatings. Sam
With that in mind, how would you coat (and what would you coat it with) a floor to be able to have welding sparks and other hot metal fall on it and not leave any burn marks or tracks from the sparks ? No coating I know of can take that.
Here are some more pics of the floor. In all coatings surface prep is the key, we degrease the floor and the hit it with a diamond grinder. after the grinder has made light work of the concrete we achieved a good surface profile.
We then began applying E-10 HS Epoxy and we Broadcast vinyl flakes (Black,White and Gray) for a decorative finish. We applied the Epoxy at a spread of 6-8mils WFT.
The steel wheels do not concern me at all, coatings that are applied in welding shops or fab shops we typically use Epoxy Novalacs or Urethane Modified Mortars. Again, any coating that is made with plastics/polymers is in danger of melting but I have not had one fail to date. Anyone can make a coating fail if they try hard enough, if applied and selected correctly, coatings are a great way to protect concrete.
That would be true. The most durable and nicest concrete finish I have seen to date is applied when the concrete is poured. It can be mixed into the mix or applied as a surface coat when the finishing is done and power floated. I have seen both methods. Bags of colored hardener are applied and the color is in the floor with no coating needed. My dad had the color mixed into his concrete when we poured the floor in his 32x48 shop. The floor turned out a really nice brick red color and is hard and smooth, and as I said no coating needed. In my opinion this is better than any coating will ever be.
Out of curiosity, when they mix the color into the concrete how resistant to staining is it? I'm not familiar with this process at all. Sam
We have been really surprised by the resistance of the surface to stains. My dad has a leaky old harley and the oil just wipes up without really leaving much of a stain. So far any stains at all have been easily lifted with a little floor dry crunched down to powder with your foot and left sitting for a couple hours. Way better than unhardened , uncolored concrete. The other bonus is surface hardness, you can drop something hard and heavy and it won't break the surface out in a chunk like regular concrete.
we had that done at work, staining is good (except rust) but it chips fairly easy and you can't weld on it. it's good for a parking only garage but not a work shop.
Lots of information here if you are interested. http://www.concretenetwork.com/concrete-color/ If you are talking about colored concrete, that is not true at all. Besides my dads shop (actually what led us to do it in the first place) is the fact that the power generating station I worked at for 9 years had the whole main floor of the boiler house and the turbine hall done with colored and hardened concrete. M***ive thick for heavy duty in the big coal fired station (Sheerness ,Hanna Alberta) and you could not hurt it with anything heavy or by welding or practically anything else for that matter. It also was the nice brick red color.
I kinda like the oil, paint overspray, stained look. It makes me think I've accomplished something. My concrete floor was poured too wet, or dry. It is very powdery when swept or mistreated. I put a very expensive epoxy type coating on it years ago, but it just flaked off when the surface of the concrete gave way. The oil and fluid stains help keep the dust down. Any answers for this problem?
no the shop had a 2 part epoxy type (he said it was better then epoxy), hasn't really handled so far.
And here I always thought 50 years of oil, paint, grease, coolant and everything else was the best coating? Doc.
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