Anyone use Coval coating on their concrete floor?

[Hank11]

I’d like a light color finish on my new concrete shop floor. Coval looks like a good choice for me using a tinted prime coat and topping that off with their top coat. Has anyone here used this product? Your experience with install and use is what I would like to hear. Thanks in advance.

edit: This is for a wood and metal machine shop. No cars or tractors.

 

[AdamMopar]

I am planning on it this spring. Getting ready to place an order for things shortly. Haven't seen much so far from others.

Thank you.

 

[Matty J]

Yes, ive used it a bunch and have been trained through coval. It can be a finnicky product. What would you like to know?

 

[Hank11]

Yes, ive used it a bunch and have been trained through coval. It can be a finnicky product. What would you like to know?

Finicky I can probably live with. Your help will be much appreciated.

How does the tinted primer go down? Is it just spray it on and let it cure? I don't need it to look like a perfect paint job - just a lighter tone as if I had pigmented the concrete (which I should have done). If my floor looks whitewashed and mottled with a cleanable durable surface on top I'm good with it.

Could you go through the steps to make a complete application?

 

[Matty J]

So step one 1 prep work. Ive got a full set up of walk behind floor grinders, big *** vacuums, buffers, etc...but this really depends on the condition of your existing concrete. The nice thing about coval is you really dont need to grind a profile in the concrete, it just really needs to be thoroughly cleaned, vacuumed, etc. And since you are going to be tinting the primer, I would probably mask off the walls and any surfaces you dont want the product to get on.

I would highly recommend you buy (2) Dewalt 2-gallon pump sprayers. Ive found that these are some of the best "disposable" sprayers that are easily accessible. 1 sprayer will be for the Coval Primer. The other sprayer will be for the Coval Concrete. You are going to throw these sprayers away after you are done....wouldnt even waste your time trying to salvage them.

You will also want to look through the Coval TDS (Tech Data Sheets) and use the nozzles that they recommend for both the Coval Primer and the Coval Concrete. Make sure you buy Coval Concrete, and not Coval UTC (Ultimate Top Coat). UTC is more designed for being a top coat for epoxy coated type floors. Im pretty sure they like a conical type tip for the Coval primer, and a fan type tip for the Coval Concrete

Next step is using coval primer. Coval Primer is cheap (compared to Coval Concrete), so I would buy a gallon or two more of the primer than you need. I dont think you can really "over prime" anything. To get a feel for the primer, I would probably spray an un-tinted coat of the primer. This way you will know what to expect on your tinted coats. For tinting the Coval Primer, I use SurfKoat Acetone Dye. Usually the acetone dye comes in 16oz or 32oz cans, which are meant for 1 gallon or 5 gallons of acetone. However, the dye will act SUPER concentrated in the Coval Primer, so you may only need somewhere between 1-4oz of dye for your primer. And this is where buying the extra primer comes in. I would start out with like 1 oz of dye per gallon of Primer. You can always make the color of the floor darker, but you can never make it lighter. So I would start out with a tiny concentration of dye in the primer, and adjusted accordingly on your next coat of primer. A coat of primer will dry super fast (on a warm day) so you can usually spray a coat of primer, and it is ready to walk on for the next coat in like 20-30 minutes or less.

The floor should look consistently sealed when you are done with the primer. It shouldnt look "blotchy". If it does, you probably need another coat of primer.

Once done with the primer, you will use the 2nd sprayer with the Coval Concrete. The Coval Concrete is supposed to be a 1 even coat application. You can apply a second coat if necessary, just follow the directions in the TDS. Applying the Coval Concrete is where I have had the product be finnicky. If the concrete is very porous (soft concrete) or the surface is very hot, it can bubble up on you. If you do experience bubbling with the Coval Concrete, there are two things I have found that help mitigate that. The first thing to try would be to spray a little more coval on the bubbles. Not like a full spray during your application, but like a very fine mist of a spray. The other thing that has helped is using an electric leaf blower and lightly blowing at the bubbles. I have the mack daddy EGO blower, but its very powerful so you wouldnt want to go full blast. Just a nice wind....not full force.

That about sums it up. Let me know if you have any other questions.

 

[Hank11]

Excellent information!

Are there dyes that can make the finished job lighter?

 

[Matty J]

Excellent information!

Are there dyes that can make the finished job lighter?

Surfkoat has tons of different colors available. Pick the one you want, but just work your way into the color starting with a very low dose of the dye

 

[AdamMopar]

Surfkoat has tons of different colors available. Pick the one you want, but just work your way into the color starting with a very low dose of the dye

Any recommendations for what sheen to go with for the topcoat? I am assuming gloss will be more prone to showing scuffs and scratches.

 

[ryanmworkman]

Any recommendations for what sheen to go with for the topcoat? I am assuming gloss will be more prone to showing scuffs and scratches.

I've put down a lot of Coval, gloss will definitely be more prone to showing scratches than the satin or matte finishes. With gloss, you can use a fan tip sprayer and basically spray in straight lines, but with satin and matte, you'll want to use a cone tip.

The bleach and deck HDX sprayers are sufficient for Coval. I haven't had any worse luck out of those than I have out of the Dewalt sprayers, but they run about $12 cheaper.

Keep a bucket of acetone or something nearby because the material starts to tack up really quick and it can start to clog the sprayer if you pause spraying for even a minute or two to pump. A quick dip in acetone will clean it off and get you on your way again without messing up the spray pattern.

Wear a respirator. Coval is gnarly smelling stuff and since you are aerosolizing it, it can quickly send you into a coughing fit.

If you don't want a solid color looking floor, I recommend diluting your dye/stain down more than expected. It's very easy to overspray until you get the hang of it and end up with a damn near solid color looking floor. You can always add another coat if it isn't opaque enough for you, but you can't make it lighter once you have gone too dark.

Personally, I don't really love Coval. It is very expensive relative to traditional coatings and I don't find the performance to be much better with regards to scratch resistance despite their pitch. It's not bad, I just don't think the value is there. The real value for a do it yourselfer though is that you can get away with only cleaning the surface rather than having to grind it.

Their polished concrete guard product is exceptional though, I will give them that.

 

[AdamMopar]

Thank you!

 

[Armorpoxy]

We carry Coval, it works great and is relatively easy to apply, it just sprays on with an acetone-rated garden sprayer. In hundreds of applications, no issues have come to light.

 

[Hank11]

Once its cured is it easily damaged by acetone or other chemicals?

 

[Armorpoxy]

No, it’s more resistant to chemicals than urethanes or polyaspartic.

 

[brokencamel]

Hope you all don't mind me reviving this post for my first post here.

I'm planning a new build and have been thinking about what to do for the floor and recently came across Coval, which appears to be a newer product.

One of the posters above mentioned it being expensive, but from what I was searching it seams way cheaper than going with an epoxy or polyaspartic floor.

I'm not concerned about having the fancy flakes. I just want my floor protected from spills and stains and a gloss look or color tint is a bonus.

Is there any reason to avoid Coval or is there something better that is same or cheaper price?

 

[ryanmworkman]

Hope you all don't mind me reviving this post for my first post here.

I'm planning a new build and have been thinking about what to do for the floor and recently came across Coval, which appears to be a newer product.

One of the posters above mentioned it being expensive, but from what I was searching it seams way cheaper than going with an epoxy or polyaspartic floor.

I'm not concerned about having the fancy flakes. I just want my floor protected from spills and stains and a gloss look or color tint is a bonus.

Is there any reason to avoid Coval or is there something better that is same or cheaper price?

It isn’t really anymore expensive as a DIYer vs epoxy or poly because even us installers don’t get price breaks on coval. The price is set by coval and distributors have to sell it for msrp which is $160/gallon last I purchased. Whereas I can get polyaspartic, epoxy, urethane, etc for considerably less than the average consumer on pallet orders.

If you want to save some money, prime your floor with water based acrylic. Make sure you clean the floor well before you do though. Then spray the coval on the top. You can also use the coval primer, the acrylic sealer is just cheaper.

I have it down in my office because I wanted to test its durability. I’m sad to report though that it has been disappointing. We primed with water based acrylic and sprayed two coats of coval and 6 months of an office chair sitting on it caused it to wear through to the floor. It didn’t really last any longer than a couple coats of acrylic sealer. Scratches way easier than they hype as well.

PB Blaster and wd-40 stained it pretty quickly.

That said, it does look good. It’ll give you a better looking floor than just doing an acrylic sealer. If you just want an easy to clean floor it’ll get the job done.

Make sure you wear a respirator when you spray it. It smells horrible and the aerosolized droplets will have you coughing horrible without a respirator. Wear goggles too. Use a red or brown fan tip.

It will eat the seals up in pump sprayers pretty quickly because of the solvent. An HDX deck and stain sprayer will hold up for 15-20 minutes which should be plenty unless you have a huge shop. If it’s not, get 2. Don’t go buy a $200 solvent sprayer. If you need a second, have it ready to go so there is no delay between starting and stopping. Keep the tip of the one not in use in a bucket of acetone.

Keep a bucket of acetone with you while spraying because it’ll want to start drying on the tip after a few minutes and it’ll mess up your spray pattern.

It’s an okay product overall, but I hate installing it enough to never use it again.

 

[Armorpoxy]

Hi we carry acetone rated disposable sprayers that will last the life of the job and can be cleaned with running some acetone through them and re used for any project. They run about $100 and we highly recommend over cheap HD sprayers to get a nice even spray and avoid the seal failure issue.

Lab scratch testing on Coval is far superior to acrylics which we also carry. We find that the Coval sprays and lays out thicker than acrylics so the finish looks much better in our opinion.

As for chairs, the wheels always get little **** in them over time and get embedded and they become like sandpaper so we always recommend using chair pads since epoxies urethanes and polyaspartics all scratch similarly under rolling chairs we find. We have seen granite floors get destroyed from rolling chairs!

Feel free to shoot us any questions or concerns.

 

[brokencamel]

Is there anything else you would recommend that is durable, easy to apply and repair with little prep work needed on a brand new floor?
Dont need color necessarily. I like the gloss look.

 

[Armorpoxy]

Coval would be at the lower price end with no prep, just clean the floor and spray on the primer, then the Coval. The next step down would be our ARM8400x acrylic sealer.