Adventures in Racedeck Installation

[zeeway]

After many versions, I decided on this design. The challenge was counting the tiles, and coming out to the correct number. After about ten tries, I thought I had it close enough. So it was time to order.



Four days after ordering my Racedeck from Shauna, our sneaky UPS man left 12 boxes on our front porch without ringing the bell. Guess he was afraid he would have to haul it around to the garage. But I was happy it had arrived so quickly, so here was the first step, loading it up for the move to the garage.



We have a three car garage, but one of the three was a later addition, and is separated by a brick wall. I did that garage in tile a couple of years ago, and it serves as my wood workshop. But the two- car part (basically 29ft by 20ft) was the object of this exercise. As you can see the sixteen-year-old floor still bore the marks of many car projects…especially the one to convert a 300zx from an automatic to a manual transmission.





I decided to use underlayment based on the advice of Racedeck, so I trekked off to Lowes and bought two rolls of synthetic landscaping fabric in 6 foot by 50 foot rolls.
This shows the first strip of landscaping fabric and first two rows down:



The first day I worked by myself for five hours in 95 plus degrees and made it this far.




More on next post...

 

[zeeway]

Adventures in Racedeck Installation (Continued)

Some of the tiles needed convincing with a rubber mallet to snap together. But once snapped, the joint is very tight. All in all I am very impressed by the quality and consistency.

The second day, my wife joined me and we spent another five hours finishing the tiles, and then trimming the edge tiles. I have a table saw and a band saw, so cutting the tiles was not a problem; however, keeping my head straight regarding the orientation of the trimmed tiles was a challenge. I think I had to junk three tiles (out of about 580 total), because I cut them in the wrong orientation. And I did leave a half inch plus border, even though with our hot days, I do not think the floor will thermally expand beyond where it is now.
Here are finished pix.






My wife even vacuumed the floor in my garage…that’s a first. I suggested she would have to dust off her car tires before parking her car…that did not go over too well. But she really likes the floor, and so do I. It looks great.
Thank you, Racedeck.

 

[Shea]

Great job! RaceDeck makes an awesome product.

 

[RaceDeck1]

Your Garage Looks Great! Thanks for sharing and choosing RaceDeck

 

[grandall4]

What is the thought behind the landscape fabric under the floor?

 

[James-W]

What is the thought behind the landscape fabric under the floor?

The fabric supposedly stops the “clicking” sound that some people object to. Personally, I have not found the slight "clicking" sound to be objectionable, but I can see where it could be annoying for some folks.

To the opening poster, I did the same thing you did, I put a black row of tiles right by the overhead door. That wasn’t the smartest thing I ever did. On a hot day, when the overhead door is open and the sun is shining on the black tiles, they tend to “buckle” just a little because being black they tend to expand a bit more than the red tiles adjoining them. It’s really not a big deal, I just close the overhead door and turn on the air-conditioning. I am just saying if I were to do it over again I wouldn’t use black tiles right by the overhead door. Other than that minor thing, I love the Racedeck tiles. I should have gotten them years ago.

 

[zeeway]

The landscape fabric adds about 10 cents a square foot, and it does make the floor quieter. Not a big deal either way, but I opted for quieter.

That is interesting about the black tiles expanding more and causing buckling, but I have not experienced that, so far. My garage doors face east and there are some tall trees on that side, so not much direct sunlight comes in that way. On my second installation day, I started fairly early, and it was very hot, but did not have any issues with the black tiles.

 

[dubber]

Looks great, nice job.

 

[James-W]

The landscape fabric adds about 10 cents a square foot, and it does make the floor quieter. Not a big deal either way, but I opted for quieter.

That is interesting about the black tiles expanding more and causing buckling, but I have not experienced that, so far. My garage doors face east and there are some tall trees on that side, so not much direct sunlight comes in that way. On my second installation day, I started fairly early, and it was very hot, but did not have any issues with the black tiles.

I may have given the wrong impression of the buckling. This is NOT a big issue. It only does this on really hot days when the overhead door is open and the sun is beating down on the tiles right by the door. Even then, it's not like a HUGE buckling, the black tiles are only SLIGHTLY buckled. But to be fair, it is noticeable. The rest of the floor is perfectly fine, no issues at all, the whole floor expands and contracts just fine and stays perfectly flat.

Like I mentioned before, on really hot and humid days I just shut the overhead door and turn on the air-conditioning and all is well. I prefer that anyway, it makes working in the garage a lot more enjoyable. When you are trying to work on something and the sweat is running down your face, that isn't very enjoyable.

My wife is up in northern Wisconsin at a Girl Scout leader camp. She took our digital camera with her and won't be back until late in the day this coming Sunday. When she gets back, and if I remember, the first really hot day we get I will open the overhead door and wait awhile and then take a picture of the tiles so you can see what I mean.