A few newbee questions

[UnionWelder]

Hello I was directed here from my fellow members over at shop floor talk. This is a great site. I have been reading for a while and have a few questions.

The house I bought is old built in 1970 cement is in good shape for its age few stains mostly clean few cracks which i was gonna fill with hydrolic cement. total sq feet is only 300.

I have no way of knowing what vapor protection the slab has if any so how would I test to see if I will have a moisture problem? From what I have read knowing if you have moisture or not is the most important thing when selecting a product to use..

 

[AlphaGarage]

This is what we recommend in our epoxy coating instruction manual:

"Moisture in the Concrete-
To see if this condition affects your floor apply a 2 foot by 2 foot sheet of plastic (such as heavy-duty polyethylene) to areas of the garage floor. Tape down all the edges with duct tape and leave it alone for 24 hours. If water droplets appear on the inside of the plastic, or if concrete appears wet (darker in color), moisture is trapped in the concrete floor. If the concrete fails moisture test, please contact us regarding further options before coating. "

 

[UnionWelder]

Thanks Alpa I know you deal with wolverine products They are on my list but I will do the test first.

 

[UnionWelder]

i moved a few trashbags that were on the floor for a week or so and the test piece has no water. The cement is the same color as the rest of the garage so i would say there is no water problems.

 

[UnionWelder]

I have looked thur these threads for days now and everytime I find a good product the next thread says it *****. as of now Im thinking about the sw armorseal 1000hs I havent heard alot of bad things about it and it seems to be what im looking for. I did read that using the armorseal 33 primer has caused problems with people in the past so im gonna go with 2 coats of the 1000hs. Unless someone has other sugestions?

 

[nissan_crawler]

Prep, prep, prep, prep, did I mention prep?

I'll lay money that the discrepancies you noted are due to prep. The Lowes Rustoleum is so talked down upon here, and it has been on my floor for 5 years of welding/plasma cutting/grinding/torching/vehicles parked/jacks drug, steel dropped, and it's still fine. The ONLY two spots that are missing epoxy are from where my rear tires spin sometimes when the front tires catch the 1" high lip into the garage. considering that's usually in winter, when there's sand on the floor to, that's no surprise.

My garage floor was 55 years old, covered with literally an inch of dirt and oil. I spent 13 hours pressure washing, 6 gallons of purple power, 2 boxes of tri-sodium phosphate, and muriatic acid. Nothing has peeled up in 5 years.

 

[menz300]

I agree that every product you see here looks good then next post says junk. I also agree on the prep prep prep as it is like anything else the work involved in getting a project ready takes longer than the project. I did a small acid stain job a couple weeks ago about 400 sq. ft. I spent 5 hours in prepping the floor and that actual time to spray first coat 20 minutes. It is no different than epoxies. I looked at the SW product as well and then found a thread on here a guy had Benjamin Moore down for 10 years. Ended up going with them as they can get product very quick for me and owner of the store lives in same town I do so like doing business with friends. Just one more option to add to your dilemma.lol....