epoxy floor "lift"
- Thread starter sting ya
- Start date
Edger
Well-known member
If your prep is good it will last forever and never lift, hot tires do not have enough stick to pull up properly adhered epoxy. It only ever pulls up if it is going to at all soon after coating and that can be for two reasons.
1. Poor preparation does not allow the epoxy to key into the slab.
2. Insufficient curing time.
Epoxies do vary a lot with their curing temperature range and you have to ask a lot of questions from suppliers to find out, but commonly the times are given as so many hours at a certain temperature. Slabs are on the ground so the air temperature is much higher than the slab temperature (unless it is in the sun), but epoxies usually take 72 hrs in a warm temperature and some of that time on a slab will be in the night and early morning when the air temp is very low, so naturally it will take a lot longer than 72hrs unless the epoxy is formulated to cure in 72 hrs over a range of cool and warm temperatures (unlikely).
So you might have to wait 7 days for full cure. I think a good test is to take a sharp screwdriver to a small inconspicuous edge and test it for scratching every day. At first it will be soft, then medium soft, then medium hard, then hard, then very hard. When it is very hard you will have no problem.
How to tell what is at fault with peeling epoxy
If a good part of the concrete is stuck to the underside of the coating then the concrete is at fault not the adhesion, if the coating comes away clean from the concrete then the preparation is at fault, if the coating is soft and flexible, the coating is at fault (or more likely the curing temperature was too low or the A & B mixed incorrectly). It is very unlikely that a two part epoxy will be at fault.
How to tell if a coating is adhered properly
This is destructive so you have to do it in an area you can cover over or an area where it does not matter. Get a sharp screwdriver or something equivalent and drag it across the coating trying to cut down into the concrete. If it scratches with a clean, deep scratch it is adhered well, if it splinters the coating on each side of the scratch then the preparation is poor and the adhesion is non existent.
Ferrino
Well-known member
I was wondering the same - I put down an EpoxyCoat floor about 3 weeks ago and am now starting to move cars back in. It looks to have cured really well, but I wonder if a car can be parked in the garage immediately after driving or if "lifting" can be avoided by letting the car sit outside for a bit before bringing it in? The epoxy preparation and application was a lot of effort and so I don't want to undo it all 