My VCT/Epoxy Install from a Disaster (lots of pics)...$1 sq/ft

Ok, so I had a previous thread here ->

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38511

Which, you can read if you like. In summary, here is what I was working with before....which had a garage office, with carpet and some extra walls ->







So, for my new floor, I have decided to go the VCT and epoxy finish route, similar to what gb70 did here ->

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showpost.php?p=64534&postcount=11

So, my first step was to remove the carpet adhesive residue. The developer had already sanded down most of the residue, but not on the sides, and they missed a few rough spots as well.

Here are the tools I used ->



Basically, carpet adhesive remover, which you water down and then apply with the squigee (s.p.). You let it sit for a while, and then you take a 4 inch floor scraper (basically just a big razor blade) and go to town on it. The biggest thing that I learned is that the glue still needs to be moist from the adhesive remover, or it doesn't work as well.

Then, I applied patch work, using a recommended product called "feather finish", which is basically just sandable concrete. It should be ok in my case since my concrete is about 9 years old now and shouldn't move too much, so the expansion joints should be ok with the feather finish.

The stuff is really great though. You just mix water with it, and then stuff it down into the cracks using the plumbers knife or whatever and then scrape it off for a nice flat finish. Then, 30 minutes later, take a sander with 50-80 grit sandpaper and sand it down to a very smooth finish. The big divet in the above picture was the hardest, and it turned out like this ->



It doesn't look like it, but its nice and smooth, and its still drying here so there are some dark spots.

You can also use it on wood which is what I did for the wood step....I sanded the wood down, and then applied feather finish which on the plywood just filled the lower spots... ->



Again, after sanding, it was nice and smooth.

After the carpet adhesive removal, and the feather finish for the joints and divots (and any small scratch or hole in the concrete), the floor basically looked like this ->



In the above pic, the tile finally came in and I was just prearranging it a bit to verify my measurements and to help me decide how to best tackle putting the tile down.

Just so you know, the tile was originally .68 a sq/ft, but then I had a 10% lowes coupon that Home depot price matched to, and then it was supposed to come in 7-10 business days later, but since it was a day late, I got another 10% off. So, like .55 sq/ft.

Anyway, I also special ordered s-515 vct tile adhesive from Armstrong, again, for reasons stated in my previous forum topic. In a nutshell, its much cheaper than s-750 and has a high tolerance to moisture (though I did do a moisture test and there was none, and Boise is basically desert anyway, but it doesn't hurt).

So, buying a $3 trowel (which, I had to buy it at lowes since home depot didn't have the right size), I put down the glue (fairly easy), waited about 2 hours, and then put the VCT right on top. Again, fairly easy. Here is a pic using the "step" method ->



Doing my 3 car garage actually only took 1 work day to put the tile down. I actually spent 2-3 times longer on doing the prep work (and it was harder). I only had to do tile cutting along the west wall, and even tile cutting is super easy. I just borrowed gb70's vct tile cutter (normally $50 to buy)....way easy to cut. I didn't even heat them up or anything before hand. Just measure and cut.

Here was the tile at the end of the night ->




A day later, I rented a 100 lb roller, which only cost $5. I learned that you never want to rent tools from Home Depot...HD wanted to charge me $25 for 4 hours.....a local place wanted $5. Go figure.

Anyway, a 100 lb roller is kind of interesting. In Armstrong's instructions and brochures, it recommends it, but I talked with the tech people on the phone and they said it wasn't necessary. Contradicting. Anyway, I did it anyway and I'm glad I did. It help many tiles that were slightly sticking up get put down. It also seemed to help get out any air that was under the tiles. But, who knows....not sure if its truly necessary or not but it was only $5....might as well do it.

Now, (after the epoxy is done), I'm going to put a metal border on the front part of the garage separating the concrete from the vct, and I'm going to put a rubber stair border on the step (similar to what you see in office buildings), that will cover the exposed remaining wood and give some slip resistance.

So, I laid the tile on wednesday. On monday (about 5 days later....wanted to let the VCT glue cure), I'm going to rent for $30 (including sandpaper) a vibration sander and sand the VCT. I'll then apply a clear coat epoxy in lieu of doing a wax (which can be time consuming and not much cheaper than a cheap epoxy after you buy a mop, mop bucket, polish, etc...not to mention you have to do it every couple months, plus the epoxy should help protect the vct much better).

Currently I plan on using Lowe's QuickCrete 2part Clear Epoxy....probably not the best stuff, but I wanted to keep everything at about $1 sq/ft...so, that will be two kits at $70 dollars each.

I'll post more pics when I get to that tomorrow!

Having used both products, I would really consider the Wolverine BondTite 1101 if I were you. It won't cost you that much more and it is 100% solids at $75 per gallon, so you get more product for the money. I think the Quikrete is about 40% solids and cost about $60/gal. So in a gallon, you get about 60% more product volume for only about 15% more cost with the Wolverine. And the Wolverine is a better product. I have used their BondTite on sanded VCT and it self-levels really, really well and is tough as nails. And, btw, from experimenting, I found that for good adhesion, the minimum sanding grit should be 80.

Yeah, I was thinking of bondtite, but now I am leaving on Wednesday so I have to put the epoxy on either today or tomorrow. Plus, I couldn't get any shipping prices on 2 gallons of bondtite, so I'm not sure how much that would cost....

Looks real good
Is there any concern about the "hot tire" pull up? I am thinking of doing the VCT, but was gonna wax so there are not hot tire issues.

Good Work

Ed

Today I finished putting down the epoxy....looking good! I'll take pictures and post them soon.

Anyway, no, I'm not really concerned about the hot tire pickup.....just as much as anybody else with epoxy i guess. I mean, with the subfloor there is no moisture to worry about, no grease or oil to worry about, and I'm not going to be driving on it for about 2 weeks after I put it down today (going out of town), so I'm not worried about it.

Really nice looking pattern, thanks for posting about your project.

Epoxy over VCT...I've never seen that done before...Is this actually done on a routine basis in commercial or industrial applications? Does it really hold up well over the long term?

I would have to think that the long term problems with epoxy (regardless of how good the epoxy may be) laid over VCT would be best avoided by just leaving the VCT alone...What is that floor going to look like if you ever need to repair a gouged tile?

@rwhite692

I don't really know about how much epoxy is used in commercial places...most commercial places just keep paying to have it rewaxed once a week. Though, I do know that epoxy does get used in commercial places...I see it in airports a lot (boise and sacramento airports for example), to make "rivers" and stuff in the concrete and other designs.

But....like I said before, I was able to see gb07's garage who did the same thing, and he did it like 3 years ago and its held up great....I saw no damage to the tiles or epoxy, and he does car work, with a car lift, etc...

And, you can't just leave the vct alone...you have to put something on it....either wax or epoxy....lots of people do wax, but you aren't saving that much by doing it, and you are adding 5-10x more maintenance work....which I am not willing to do.

As for "repairs"....the repair schedule would be just like a normal epoxy garage.....people with epoxy get big scratches, gouges, etc in their epoxy, but they just leave it alone until they want to redo their entire garage...this would be the same thing.


Anyway, for more updates on the install ->

I took a few hours to sand the floor using a floor sander...only cost $35 or so including the paper ->



and then blew out the garage, vacuumed it, and damp mopped it ->



It was rather easy....when you are sanding, just will make the VCT all white/scratched looking.....kind of hard to explain, but you are not damaging it....as soon as water or paint gets on it, the white goes away....you'll see.

Anyway, the next day I put down the epoxy. It was actually quite a bit easier than I thought it was going to be.....I just bought a $6 long handle for a roller, and got to work. I put it down in 2x6' sections...which was super easy b/c the VCT makes measuring super easy...you have the tiles do all the measuring for you. It also made it easy to partition out the garage to know how much I needed to be using per gallon....etc. For my 580 ft garage, I almost completely used 2 gallons of the quickcrete clear 2part epoxy.

It goes down white ->



And then, turns clear when it dries! ->




I really like how it turned out. The antislip grit that came with the quickcrete actually really makes a difference...the floor kind of feels like sandpaper now. When I saw the small package of grit, I didn't think it was going to do anything b/c there was so little, but it is actually fairly thick distribution. Maybe b/c I used the lower end of the recommended coverage (the package said 250-500 sq/ft...I did 290 sq/ft a gallon).

By the way, with the quickcrete, it said to "manually" stir the paint, but I thought that was retarded....there wouldn't be any way to get part b uniformly mixed with part A using a wood stirrer...so I bought a $3 metal paint stirrer and used my drill.

Putting down the epoxy for my 3 car garage (since it was only one coat), only took about 2.5 hours.

Now, I just have to put on a rubber no slip step border on the step, and a 2 inch or so metal barrier thing in the front, and I'm done!

Beautiful job! Congrats.

What grit sandpaper did you use?

Let us know how it holds up down the road.

With your recommendation, I used 80.

Awesome ! Do keep us informed ! Waiting to see some pics with your floor after you've moved back in. Nice colors and pattern.

Nice looking floor! Hope it holds up well for you

Have you taken into consideration the freeze/thaw cycles and the expansion joints? Without expansion joints on the concrete slab, the concrete would crack. If you sealed up the joints and have a continuous covering of VCT and clear, I would expect cracks to occur in the epoxy near those expansion joints.

Yeah, I did think about it.....but I just took the advice of some other people who recommended the filling of it with feather finish....its an older slab (9 years), and there really isn't freeze/thaw cycles as its a fully insulated garage (it used to be an office for the subdivision developer) and has central heat/air.

I just finished laying VCT in my garage and while the epoxy option is tempting I think the potential problems would not be worth risking it. What if a tile lifted, cracked or shifted and needed to be repaired or replaced? That is the beauty of VCT is I could have a tile out and a new one down in a matter of minutes. If it was sealed in with epoxy I don't know what I would do.

My garage will never see any real work done in it, but I still like to take precautions.

Thanks for the reply. Actually, I'm not worried about that at all.....neither are most epoxy owners...I mean, I talked about it before but an epoxy owner, once something got jacked, would wait till the whole garage needed to be redone and then redo the epoxy.

But, lets say that a tile did get jacked....well, I'm not sure what you are worried about...you can still take it off....the epoxy isn't like steel....its like paint. Just take a razor blade around the tile to "cut" any epoxy, and then replace the tile. You can then just polish it using your method, or not do anything at all....just wait till more tiles are jacked before redoing the whole garage.

I mean, the wax/polish method is just way too time consuming b/c you have to do it so often (every few months to keep it nice)...and in the long run, wax/polish will be more expensive than an epoxy.

By the way...I do think that your garage looks great! I do like that pattern.

The floor turned out great! Please do post back periodically about how it is holding up.

Your floor looks really classy!!!! Just as note to anyone who sands VCT. Make sure that you protect yourself from the dust. VCT is the new name for VAT which is Vinyl Asbestos Tile. From what I have read, The Asbestos has been significantly reduced and the name changed to VCT (Vinyl Composition Tile) But it is supposedly still an asbestos containing product. If anyone has other info on this I would appreciate it.

From what I've read, there is no asbestos in the VCT....its not just a "name change"....they had to completely remake the product in the 80s when asbestos was learned to be hazardous.

Wow look nice I am intrested in what your long term use results will be.

mackgriggs said:

From what I've read, there is no asbestos in the VCT....its not just a "name change"....they had to completely remake the product in the 80s when asbestos was learned to be hazardous.

Click to expand...

Probably more accurate to say finally admitted.

mackgriggs

It's been almost a year since the epoxy went down on your VCT. How is the clear coat holding up? Any cracking, peeling or yellowing?

I used the QuikCrete clear coat and it "yellowed" where ever it was exposed to light...windows and doors. Some areas worse than others but yellowing is taking place everywhere. It took about a year for mine to yellow out.

How about yours?

The clear BondTite 1101 epoxy I used on my workbenches is yellowing where sunlight through the windows hits it. I wished now I had used the EnduraShield 2254. It's a urethane and won't yellow. I used the EnduraShield 2254 as a topcoat on my floor and it is great stuff. I put the BondTite on my workbench because I had some left over from the floor job (BondTite 1101 is also a primer and is what I used as the first coat on my floor before the color coat).

I am pretty much sure that any clear epoxy will yellow in the sun and you have to go to a clear urethane to insure that you won't get yellowing.

Nice Job. I hope to someday put clear epoxy on my VCT floor too. For now, I get to enjoy mopping on the sealer 2x per year. It is still better than bare concrete though.

roger55 said:

The clear BondTite 1101 epoxy I used on my workbenches is yellowing where sunlight through the windows hits it. I wished now I had used the EnduraShield 2254. It's a urethane and won't yellow. I used the EnduraShield 2254 as a topcoat on my floor and it is great stuff. I put the BondTite on my workbench because I had some left over from the floor job (BondTite 1101 is also a primer and is what I used as the first coat on my floor before the color coat).

I am pretty much sure that any clear epoxy will yellow in the sun and you have to go to a clear urethane to insure that you won't get yellowing.

Click to expand...

I was thinking of putting down the bondtite 1101 over vct ,as it sounds like great stuff from the posts I've read here. This is the first time I've heard of it yellowing. Has anyone else had this problem ?

foss said:

I was thinking of putting down the bondtite 1101 over vct ,as it sounds like great stuff from the posts I've read here. This is the first time I've heard of it yellowing. Has anyone else had this problem ?

Click to expand...

If you read the info on the AlphaGarage site, it states that BondTite 1101 is no different than other clear epoxies and will yellow from sunlight. I have low-E windows in my workshop and where my workbenches got sun, they still have yellowed.

If you are concerned about it at all, I would say use the EnduraShield 2254 instead.
The other thing I like about the EnduraShield over BondTite for a final topcoat is that it is rolled on out of a pan instead of poured, squeegeed, then rolled. That makes it real easy to get an even coat.

I would suggest talking to Fred at AlphaGarage about the adhesion of EnduraShield on VCT. That is something I haven't done. I've only used BondTite on VCT. I did an adhesion test and found that sanding the VCT with 80 grit worked well. I tried some finer grits and the adhesion was not as good.

Pretty much all epoxy yellows, some more than others.

BondTite 1101 has worked extremely well for us as a primer for concrete, stainless steel, etc., but the back story is that the BT1101 as a top coat for VCT surprised us a bit, because BT1101 wasn't designed for that application at all, and it was never marketed for that use. However when more and more VCT jobs started coming in from our contractors Wolverine Coatings, followed by enthusiastic end user field reports, WCC took notice. As a result they went ahead and tweaked the formula which resulted in an entirely new coating just for VCT applications, BondTite 1107.

The advances are:

• BT1107 adheres even better to VCT
• BT1107 has improved UV resistance
• BT1107 increased abrasion resistance

And at proper thickness BondTite 1107 also offers impact and shock mitigation to cut down on nicks and gouges.

Up to now we haven’t mentioned 1107 much in DIY channels because since it was being used mostly in larger super markets and such it was only available in 15 gallon kits. However, we talked about that the other day and decided to start offering it in a 3 gallon kits. At 5 mils thick (minimum recommended) that's good to coat 850 ft2, or 425 with two coats at 10 mils net.

If you want to increase UV resistance, as well as durability, yoiu can always apply a clear coat of EnduraShield 2254

Fred,

A couple of questions:

Would putting EnduraShield 2254 as a topcoat over BondTite 1101 or 1107 pretty much eliminate yellowing? Seems like the UV could go through to the base and cause it to yellow. On the other hand, car wax is clear and protects color coats. Also, sunscreen is clear and it protects your skin. I guess I don't understand how it all works.

Have you guys done any adhesion tests with EnduraShield 2254 directly on sanded VCT? I'm guessing that maybe it needs a chemical bond which is why you recommend the BondTite 1107 first.

Roger

EnduraShield 2254 itself is UV stable, it's often used in outdoor situations and by itself it will not yellow. And it does filter out a significant portion of UV light that passes through it, but not 100% of it. So used as a clear coat over an epoxy it can greatly reduce the color shifting, but by itself can not fully eliminate it.

As far as EnduraShield 2254 coated directly onto VCT – probably not an ideal match, although EnduraShield 2254 is a really great clear coat – durable, crystal clear, UV resistant, it will dissolve most VCT tile glues around the seams.

As far as car wax and sunscreen go the problem is that those materials need to be reapplied over and over again. In general, they become 'spent'. The EnduraShield 2254 will filter light and help the delay of yellowing. However, just like low e glass it won't filter 100% of light. The BondTite 1107 is significantly better than BondTite 1101 in terms of resistance to yellowing.

*** Other notes: In general, clear waterbased epoxies have a higher tendency to yellow than 100% solids epoxies. This is compounded when a waterbased epoxy is applied too thick for the water to escape during the curing process. Excess water in the cured film promotes yellowing.

*** We have a formulation called BondTite 1003 that is the best in class for epoxy yellowing. It is made with an upgraded (Hydrogenated) epoxy resin and a special Advanced Cycloaliphatic Hardener. We hardly ever sell it. It is too difficult for a homeowner to use. At some point in the next year we may need to try to make an easier to use version.

AlphaGarage, looked at your site and could not find the 1107 product as a item for sale, any word on if you plan on offering this anytime soon and if the cost will be the same as the 1101?
All you guys how have done this two questions. First, you can obviously walk on the tiles ones they are set down to move on to the next row, how worried do you have to be of the previous row shifting from your weight? Second, what do you do with all of your stuff when you do the epoxy coat? I noticed some did all but a section for the tile and then moved that stuff to the finish part but this is probably not practical for the epoxy right?