1st job question

[jkdkaliman101]

First off, sorry if a forum search would have answered this. I missed it. I have a small exterior restoration company and do mostly decks, fences, exteriors etc but have been kicking around the idea of offering other services for some time now. Well I decided this year was the year I'd quit talking about it and DO IT!

Having no idea where or how to start I ended up taking a two day class with Elite Crete and although their products (at least from my untrained eye's perspective) appear to be quality I'm afraid the class left me with more questions than my distributor cares to answer in detail.

Fast fwd...... I'm bidding a deck the other day and a neighbor asks me about epoxy floors. AHA! My 1st bid. I'm about ready to bid it but decided to talk to someone (out of state) with epoxy garage experience that I met at a power washing convention a few years ago.

They basically have me worried sick and ready to run away from garage floor epoxy systems as fast as I can. I was essentially told that at least 50% of the floors I would do will fail due to hot tires eventually pulling up whatever top coat I go with.

My biggest fear before this conversation was hydrostatic pressure issues... now this!

I haven't bid the job yet. I'm desperate for experienced advice. My local distributor is a nice enough dude and I'm sure he knows his stuff but he isn't the best at explaining things. My pea brain can only absorb so much and the class was rapid fire information relating to a wide variety of concrete coatings, not just epoxy systems. There was no time for detailed "how to's" and "what if's"

So I hit Google and found this site. I'm in northern Illinois. I appreciate all replies, advice and answers I receive in this thread but is there anyone reading this that would or could graciously take a minute or two out of their day to converse via land line?

One thing I want to point out is that I don't want to be the handyman special, who gives a **** about quality, just show me the money type contractor. No, I want to hold up a standard of excellence and do this profession justice.

Anyway Thank you in advance to any, all and every reply, help or tip I receive.

For what it's worth, I started a similar thread on concrete locator.com under industrial coatings that show pictures of this particular floor. I only received one reply so far but my question regarding hot tires is a new issue/question.

 

[Garage Flooring]

First of all it is great that you are searching for answers and not just jumping in. Coating a garage floor is very different than coating a deck. That said the key to almost any coating project is preparation. That is something you should get paid for!

If you are going to be a professional epoxy installer, than install it like a professional. Use a good grinder, preferably a diamond grinder. Do a moisture test, prime, base coat and top coat.

I guess my concern is you doing all this for a customer is that you will be doing it for the first time in a situation where you are presumed to be the expert. I might suggest that you epoxy your garage floor first. This will help you understand the time and costs involved and avoid making 'why didn't I think of that' mistakes in your customers garage.

If you do not take the appropriate steps the floors will fail at a high rate. If you do everything you should, you will still have issues from time to time. Make sure you leave enough money in the job for a callback or two.

 

[kd3pc]

Prep is the key, and as a contractor, you will either have to be willing to walk away from a job that is doomed to be a failure for you OR price in the prep work so that the job will be a success.

The prep work is labor intensive, if it is done right. The prep work is absolutely the best thing you do, to get the great epoxy install that you and the homeowner want. That costs money and time. IF the homeowner is not willing to pay for correct prep, then you need to walk. Or you will be, as we say in NC, "trading dollars" which means break even or loosing $$$.

As Justin says, you might want to do your own floor or a family member's to learn. In the absence of that option, you may want to offer your services to a professional epoxy installer to see what is involved. Might be the best money you ever spend.

All the best in what ever you decide.

 

[LegacyIndustrial]

Through education, experience and attention to detail you can make a very profitable business that has little issues.

Keep asking questions and start small.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[930dreamer]

Welcome, I have a shop floor you can practice on. X2 on all the above.

 

[Nighttrain]

Great advise from the site pros. My work just had the hangar floor re-epoxied this last month. Being that I am soon to be deciding what route to go with my shop floor I watched this process closely. The professional crews came in. What a biggest waste of money on this floor that I have ever seen. These guys had no clue at all what they were doing. Just reading this forum and getting info from the above GJ pros I know 100% more than the guys that did our hangar floor. Read read and read more of these threads and do a couple floors at cost for some buddies.

 

[Shea]

When we started doing epoxy coated floors it was for home building contractors and the family construction business. Did we mess a few up in the beginning? Yes.... But the biggest errors were on the first couple of floors and boy did we learn quite a bit.

You did the right thing with taking a class, but you may want to write down all your questions and take another class or find a supplier that is willing to sit down with you and talk.

My recommendation for starting a new floor coating business today is exactly what was mentioned by kd3pc. Find friends and family members that are willing to front the material costs in order for you to get the experience. Do that or just offer to do it for free as part of your start up costs.

Another option is to find a reputable floor coating contractor that is not in your area (not your competition) and offer to work for free for a couple of jobs or even pay him to learn some of the trade.

Don't go cheap on materials or short on coats to save a customer a dollar. It will come back and bite you eventually. Good floor coating contractors stick to what they know will work. If the potential customer doesn't want to pay for the correct way of doing things, then let someone else inherit the headache that will eventually come of it.

Justin was right about the moisture test, primer, base coat and top coat. When you apply epoxy in this manner there will be very few issues and hot tire lift will not be one of them. Yes, you can encounter soft concrete, moisture issues, and a few other things, but once you learn how to identify them you will know whether to take the job or not.

Also, find a good supplier that will work with you and take the time to answer your questions and help with specific situations. Be open to using other suppliers for certain products or for back up in case of back order issues.

Start with just epoxy and polyurethane and become and expert before moving on to the other coating materials.

Just a few tips - good luck!

 

[my68spit]

what they said. I also have a garage that you can practice on if you have some extra product laying around that you want to try out. And I am closer that Texas!

Good Luck with whatever you decide to do.

 

[tncatadjuster]

Almost anyone can roll out epoxy. Preping it properly is where ALL the work is.
Making money at it is also hard at times. Some jobs eat up the profit to get it done properly, if you stand the test of time it will come back to you.

Glance at my website.

 

[jkdkaliman101]

Great replies! Thanks to everyone for taking the time to answer. When I got into deck restoration I made it a point to seek out the "top dogs" guys like Everett Abrams from deck restoration plus and Peter marentay formally of sunbrite supply. They were/are the gurus among "woodys" and as you can tell by my praise I am very gracious of their willingness to help out and tutor the "newbie".

Up until now I've been having a hard time getting folks to respond to my questions. You don't know how excited I was to log back in tonight and see 8 replied lol.

So again, thanks to all! You can bet I'll be perusing the pages of this Site and clicking on members links to home pages over the next several weeks. Already I've learned a little about glass transfer rates and polypropylene buckets that epoxies don't stick too. There's just so many little "tricks of the trade" and little details that you pros probably take for granted but are brand new to me.

Eager to learn!
Best regards,
-T

 

[kwfloors]

The only thing that I have seen through the years of doing floorcoverings in homes where epoxy was done in the garage, it doesn't last or look good in 3 to 5 years. I guess if your an epoxy installer it keeps getting you work. I got into doing polyphatic coatings that hold up to the chemicals they are putting on our roads now because its stronger and better than epoxy.

 

[Garage Flooring]

The only thing that I have seen through the years of doing floorcoverings in homes where epoxy was done in the garage, it doesn't last or look good in 3 to 5 years. I guess if your an epoxy installer it keeps getting you work. I got into doing polyphatic coatings that hold up to the chemicals they are putting on our roads now because its stronger and better than epoxy.

I understand your point, however, I think generalizations like that are detrimental to the industry as a whole. I have seen flooring of almost every type look great in 5 years and I have seen flooring of almost every type look like **** after 1. There are simply too many variables and almost every material has trade offs.

Even within the epoxy products there is such a huge range of products available.

My opinion when it comes to chemical resistance is simple. Determine what your floor is going to be exposed to and purchase a coating product with chemical resistance in line with the exposure you are facing -- I sell a different product to a brewery using extreme temperatures and sterilization chemicals then I would to an airplane mechanic and a completely different coating to someone working with animals. To simply state that a single product is better, stronger, and more chemical resistant may or may not be true, gut generally it is the type of chemical resistance that matters.

 

[Zeke]

I don't know diddly about garage floor coatings but I do know about the service business. Branching out from you core business can be a good thing or not so good thing. Do you carry liability ins? If you do (I hope you do), you may have to change your policy due to additional liabilities. How about your advertising? Will your target audience be the same or will you need to create separate ads for the new enterprise?

When expanding it's always a good idea to keep the new offerings in the same family. IOW, if I had a deck washing biz, I'd go into general pressure washing and then window cleaning. I'd be looking at commercial accounts as well as residential. That's the idea anyway.

 

[Garage Flooring]

I don't know diddly about garage floor coatings but I do know about the service business. Branching out from you core business can be a good thing or not so good thing. Do you carry liability ins? If you do (I hope you do), you may have to change your policy due to additional liabilities. How about your advertising? Will your target audience be the same or will you need to create separate ads for the new enterprise?

When expanding it's always a good idea to keep the new offerings in the same family. IOW, if I had a deck washing biz, I'd go into general pressure washing and then window cleaning. I'd be looking at commercial accounts as well as residential. That's the idea anyway.

That makes to much sense

 

[truckman5000]

Tell the guy that, it would be your first job. Explain that you went to the proper seminars to get training. Everyone starts somewhere.

 

[Stuey]

Tell the guy that, it would be your first job. Explain that you went to the proper seminars to get training. Everyone starts somewhere.

Yup.

Maybe give him a huge discount on time/labor as well. This way you get a hopefully less stressful practice run.

 

[tncatadjuster]

Yup.

Maybe give him a huge discount on time/labor as well. This way you get a hopefully less stressful practice run.

I would not give a discount, just to add insult to injury in case it goes south, have enough money in it to make a profit, that way everyone involved is happy to be there.

I'm always amazed at the "give a discount".

 

[floorcoatingsguru]

I'll be glad to help you. You can give me a call to discuss. Call my cell phone anytime. If I don't answer just leave a message and I will return your call.

Regards,

 

[SunsetsAndFriends]

One of the things that I really, really like about "Flooring" forum on TGJ is that the contributors, the posters, encourage the "do it right" mentality. In keeping with this high standard and strong work ethic, do right by your customer. Make the customer's satisfaction the priority. This starts with bidding the job high enough that you can afford to do a professional job. When a job is bid too low, the contractor invariably cuts corner after corner in the hopes of salvaging a higher profit. This causes the quality of the job to suffer and the satisfaction of the customer to plummet. When this happens, say goodbye to repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals.

I recently hired a concrete flatwork contractor to pour the concrete slab in my garage that is located under my house. I met him last summer when he poured the concrete for my neighbor, a driveway and garage floor. The finish work looked very good, so I asked him for a bid. Normally, I do this sort of work myself but did not have enough extra hands to safely do the pour. So I did all the major demolition prep work and had the concrete guy place the stone, tamp, and pour.

Well, the quality of the finish job was very poor, especially for a contractor hanging his shingle out and putting his name to it. It paled miserably compared to the job he did for my neighbor last summer. The prep was correct. And the method right on. The execution of the finish not so good. Trouble is that the finish is what everyone sees.

Well, I asked him to come back to look at it and discuss the issues with me that I'm seeing and possibly come up with a remedy. He never came back to look at the work. He flat out refused. He did not stand behind his work. And in an email he said that he wasn't going to waste any more of his time. Keep in mind that I was very reasonable and simply wanted the opportunity to compare my floor to my neighbors. And to figure out what might he might be able to do to improve the appearance of the floor, if anything.

The interesting thing is that I have four times more to pour yet. And my friend who is an operations manager for a company needs concrete poured at his house but he has not been able to pick any of the flatwork guys he hired in his job because the work has been generally poor. So after seeing my neighbor's concrete work, he decided he would hire the same guy I hired if my concrete looked good. And in advance my friend referred my concrete guy to three of his neighbors on his block who are all pouring concrete driveways this summer. And my friend looked at my floor and then promptly called his three neighbors.

From my job, this concrete contractor could have had four more jobs a half mile from my house plus the three jobs that I have left to do over the next year.

I suspect that a good floor coating professional could get a lot of repeat business where a customer said, "My garage looks amazing, now can you liven up my dingy basement?" Or calls from neighbors who never realized that old, dingy concrete garage floors could be brought back to life by a truly professional garage floor coating install.

If I were going into business, that would be my approach.

By the way, I called the only floor coating company in my area that is in the phone book after this situation occurred with my garage floor to find out the process they use and how much it would cost. They charge $7 a square foot just for the coating install. They're preparation and installation process takes four days. They claim to do it to the 9's. They must be getting it or they wouldn't still be in business. The point is that there is money to be made, so no need to do shoddy work.

 

[jkdkaliman101]

Thanks again everyone for all the great advice, tips and encouragement! Kelly, I'm adding your number to my contacts. It's great to have an experienced "go to guy" in a jam or just to pick your brain. The last couple of days I've been very busy. I'm looking forward to some me time so I can peruse this forum and others like it. I'm learning as much as I can but man nothing beats hands on!

Quick question. ... I've been reading up on soft concrete and matching diamonds to hardness but I'm wondering what is the softest a slab can be on the mohs scale and still be safe for epoxy adhesion?

 

[floorcoatingsguru]

Call me anytime. As for your question, the concrete substrate should have a compressive
strength of at least 3,500 psi (24 MPa) and at least 215 psi (1.5 MPa) in tension strength at the time of application.

Hope this helps.