Epoxied basement floor, now want clear coat..

[thenikeman]

Hi, I am in the process of converting our 2 car garage into livable space, thus there will not be any cars driving on it. The floor was cleaned, etched, and cleaned again before applying the epoxy.

On Wednesday the 24th, I applied Rustoleum's Basement Epoxy:
http://www.rustoleum.com/CBGProduct.asp?pid=15

As stated in the instructions, I just applied one coat with colored flakes and figured that would be ample for it being just a rec room. I checked back the next day and a lot of the flakes are poking up through the coating and it's been slow to dry and tacky feeling in one corner..but I think I am attributing that to cooler temps (applied at around 55-60, but has been at 70 degrees the last 2 days). I have also been running a fan in there to help the curing process.

I am wondering if it's a good idea to apply a clear coat now, to try and cover up some of the flakes that are sticking up? Is there any problem using a different brand of clear coat? I only have Quikrete's 2 part premium clear coat epoxy available at my local hardware store (http://www.quikretecoatings.com/epoxyPremiumClear.jsp), but it seems to be nearly identical to Rustoleum's clear 2 part epoxy. And do I need to do any surface prep before adding the clear? There has been no traffic on it, so it's not contaminated, but didn't know if there was a need to sand it any, etc since it has been 3 days now.

I appreciate any and all help I can get, as I am hoping to work on it some more this evening or tomorrow.

Thanks!

 

[gabeancounter]

Never seen your post. Sorry nobody helped out. I assume you have made a decision by now? I would lightly sand the floor to smooth out the chips and apply a clear. Rusto is a little thin so you may need a couple coats. Good luck

 

[pima67]

I used Quikcrete 2 part epoxy as the first coat with chips applied. After the 1st coat dried (about 24 hrs) I used a wide (12") drywall mud knife to scrape the flakes that protruded from the epoxy and vacuumed them up before applying the Quikcrete Clear epoxy coating. I added the anti-skid "sand" to the top coat so I can't really tell if scraping the flakes would produce a very smooth finish. I asked Quikcrete tech support if the base coat needed sanding before applying the clear coat sand they replied in the negative.