Transition Between Epoxy and Driveway

We get a lot of folks, (two on here int he last week), concerned about the space under the garage door and creating a transition between the garage and the driveway.

I was talking to one of our customers this morning and had one of those DUH moments

In a lot of cases, just using a simple garage door threshold will solve the issue at hand -- and add protection from water getting under the door as well as insects and rodents.

While I understand how putting a threshold down will provide a crisp transition between the floor coating and the apron/driveway, but wouldn't installing a threshold prevent water(and snow/slush in northern climates) from being squeegeed out, or sand/grit/debris from being swept out? As far as insects, isn't the compression seal on the bottom of the garage door suppose make a tight seal to the floor?

Mr. Breeze:
You are correct. It will impede draining as you suggest.

The correct way to transition from the inside to the outside, in lieu of a natural joint to end on, is to cut a shallow "key" across the floor, under the door. This is a cut using a circular saw with a diamond blade. It allows the epoxy or Nohr-S to end at the cut vs. ending in space which is never a good idea.

The cut does not have to be deep, only a 1/16" of an inch will do. Transitions from garage floor to apron vary around the country, In Florida the apron enters the garage and therefore we roll the coatings over the edge stopping short of the apron.

MrBreeze said:

While I understand how putting a threshold down will provide a crisp transition between the floor coating and the apron/driveway, but wouldn't installing a threshold prevent water(and snow/slush in northern climates) from being squeegeed out, or sand/grit/debris from being swept out? As far as insects, isn't the compression seal on the bottom of the garage door suppose make a tight seal to the floor?

Click to expand...

Its not perfect in every situation, but it works incredibly well in a lot of them. The purpose of it, is to keep moisture, dirt, debris, etc out. So you are correct. If you have no floor drain and you get a lot of moisture into your garage that you squeegee out, it will not make that easy.

In many cases, for our customers keeping what is outside the garage out is more important than keeping what is in the garage in - or letting it out. It becomes a lessor of two evils.

If your comfortable with the method Scotty describes above, that is a great way to go. You would need to talk to Scotty but I am guessing he would be much more comfortable with his polyurea than his epoxy in an exterior application.

I stay away from epoxy outside. If your going to do it, the method described by Scotty would work very well. This was meant for those looking for a simple transition.

I had this issue and never really came up with a good idea to tackle it. I don't like the weather barrier idea as it does trap water and I didn't feel like gluing it down to the concrete.

The best idea, if you can do it properly is that little cut but I figured I'd somehow screw that up also.

Our apron sits about an inch below the garage floor and starts inside the garage. I didn't want an exposed at the apron/floor juncture so just went out a couple of inches from that. Lines were not crisp so I'm not overly happy about that.

I was actually thinking of just putting some industrial tape down over that area to cover it up but haven't gotten around to do it just yet. I think most people just stop at the edge of the floor/apron transition and it looks better than covering any of the apron at all.

Workhurts you can go back and grind that portion back to where the lip is. Have done that before and it looks better than a jagged line as you describe. Just grind lightly so you don't gouge up the floor.


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