HELLFIRE polyurea coating review: prep, use, & results!

[frijolee]

Wanted to chime in with a post regarding my experience with Legacy Industrial’s “Hellfire” polyurea floor coating.

I got turned onto the product after finding the review section over at “All Garage Floors.” The editors over there are pretty specific that the newish single-part polyurea coatings (which hit the market around 2015) are their favorite coatings for DIY folks.
https://allgaragefloors.com/polyurea-best-garage-floor-coating-kits/

Hellfire is a newer product, but I liked what I was reading especially in terms of heat resistance (no hot tire pickup ever, probably handles grinding and weld slag better)
https://allgaragefloors.com/hellfire-floor-coating-review/

This is my second garage coating effort having done an acid stain floor back in Southern California that turned out really well:

If you’re curious there’s a similarly detailed write up on that process here: https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=285957 the acid stain bits starts in post 10.

These days I’d probably be looking at straight stain rather than acid stain, however my new place needs something intended for abuse and Hellfire looked to meet that need.



Bottom line up front: Legacy Industrial is a great establishment--my very positive experience with the first floor was part of why I went back to them--customer service is on point, and thus far I like Hellfire as a floor coating product a great deal. It’s goes on easy, it’s damn tough, and far more forgiving than a “fancy floor” so I find I don’t have to think about it.

The space: ~2100 square feet of garage, workshop, and concrete-floored garden room on 3 acres of the Big Island, Hawaii. Eventually I plan to try out Hellfire as metal coating substrate as well since I have some left.

Starting points…

Garage (640 sq ft):

Workshop (1350 sq ft):

Garden room (maybe 100 sq ft behind the garage).

This is country living so the floor is gonna get used hard.

--Chemicals: I have three project cars: a widebody v8 powered rx7, a long arm Jeep XJ, and a Toyota FJ40 rock crawler on 41s that I’m building up slowly. There are definitely some oil leaks that this floor needs to handle. I’ll try to keep brake fluid off it (because I’m not an idiot who needs to push my luck, regardless of the claims)

--UV. The Big Island contains the southern most tip of the USA. The air is perfect (I work on big telescopes as my day job) so the tropical sun is going to give this a workout with some exposed thresholds peaking out under roll up doors at both ends.

--Abrasion: Portions of the driveway were once gravel, now pretty much dirt. So I’ll be tracking in mud and rocks with some degree of regularity. I also do machine work so this floor is going to get covered in metal shavings and the like.

--Weld slag. The FJ40 is still getting welded on plenty so we’ll see how this stands up to some heat.


By the way, my wife and I are new owners of this home, so this all needed to go down in the midst of moving week since I was in the process of surrendering a rental home. The clock’s ticking and I need this floor dry enough to move some heavy equipment across it in very short order.

There’s also some serious prep work to do… The shop once had paint booth in the corner and it’s got old nasty paint flaking up damn near 1/8” thick in places. It’s filthy dirty from being used as a wood shop and also covered in skid steer tracks from heavy equipment rolling in and out.

Let’s do this thing!
-Joel Payne

PS: the project’s all done but I’ll be documenting the prep, use, and results over the next week or so…

 

[Jeepnmon]

Looking forward to reading about this project! Currently evaluating different solutions for my garage floor.

 

[ConCretin]

Sounds great. Looking forward to it.

 

[frijolee]

The plan:

1) Plastic bag concrete test for wetness (during escrow)
2) Get stuff ordered in time for the slow boat to Hawaii to get it here on time
3) Close escrow and be sanding/cleaning floors the same day Tuesday, Oct 15
4) 3 coats applied, all on Oct 16
5) Drying time Oct 17 & 18
6) Big moving party with a gang of friends recruited Oct 19
7) Move in the heavy equipment Oct 22
8) Surrender keys to rental Oct 23

It worked out but some margin is recommended vs. the above. My plan was aggressive!

Moisture test first… Duct tape down some clear plastic for 24 hours and check for condensation forming under the bag. If it’s dry you’re good. If you have a damp spot you need to order a test kit. More info here: https://allgaragefloors.com/concrete-moisture-test/

During the escrow “inspection period” I checked 4 spots focusing on areas near doors to be sure I had coverage. Some of the slabs were clearly poured at different times I wanted to compare those too.

Good news, concrete looks dry so I’m off to the races…

Time to order stufff!

Sourced from Legacy:

--18 gallons of Hellfire (7+6+5 gallons for 3 coats using the conservative coverage numbers and rounding up): https://www.legacyindustrial.net/products/hellfire-coating/hellfire-concrete-coating.html)

--2x 8 ounce bottles of pigment (to be mixed 3.3 ounces per gallon on the last 5 gallons so somewhat darker than “citadel” which would be 2 ounces per gal.)
https://www.legacyindustrial.net/products/hellfire-coating/hellfire-concrete-coating-pigment.html

--12x 18" rollers 3/8 nap (assumed to be 2x people rolling, 3x coats, fresh rollers midway per coat on the net 2000 sqft)
https://www.legacyindustrial.net/products/tools-accessories/roller-sleeves.html

-2x 18” roller frames “basic duty”
https://www.legacyindustrial.net/products/tools-accessories/roller-frame.html

-mixing wand
https://www.legacyindustrial.net/products/tools-accessories/mixing-wand.html


I picked up paint trays, gloves, and respirators local. I had handles for the frames already. I thought I had anti-skid leftover from the prior floor but ended up not finding it (and not really needed it, but that would depend on your floor prep).

Shipping to Hawaii is never easy but everything arrived whole well strapped down to a pallet and well packed within each box as well.

I know I’m a nerdy engineer but I still liked the detail on the boxes where each flap extends down between adjacent cans to protect them from one another. Nice little details there…

Plan’s in place. All materials here. Now I was just waiting for escrow to close.

 

[frijolee]

I should also mention up front that I had two key helpers in that my folks just happened to be visiting from California. They booked the trip months prior and it just worked out that they landed the day before escrow closed. I honestly felt a little guilty about how hard we worked on their “vacation” since they’re in their 70s. Anyways, they love me.

We asked about the ability to gain access to the home before closure but that was a no (for liability reasons). Instead I was at Home Depot in Hilo by 7:30 am on Oct 15 to rent a floor machine.

There are basically two versions of rental floor machine available, floor maintainer and floor grinder
https://www.homedepot.com/tool-truck-rental/Floor-Maintainer/01278A/
https://www.homedepot.com/tool-truck-rental/Concrete-Grinder-10/50200-HD/index.html

If you go for the the 17" spinning "floor maintainer" you can either can put sanding pads on (think scotch brite for floors, my approach last time), or you can rent a dimabrush which is a step heavier and uses diamond impregnated paddles as an abrasive media.
https://www.homedepot.com/tool-truck-rental/Coating-Removal-Disc-7/12569/index.html

With some 2,000 square feet of floor to do I was planning on the dimabrush approach until I discovered my Home Depot's rental floor maintainers didn't include a vaccum hookup. (Note, this isn’t true for all, I did the floor maintainer approach w/ shop vac hookup last time. Check your local rental supply.)

Lack of a vacuum hookup was a deal breaker for me so I jumped up a step gnarlier and instead rented the 10" floor grinder. It weighs something like 160 lbs so plan on a friend to help load and unload. The business end is not screwing around.

At the end of the day I was glad I went big since my floor was pretty gross in a bunch of places. Here’s the old paint booth leftover I mentioned that’s flaking off about 1/8" thick.

Pro tip number 1. The technique for the floor grinder is to swing it back and forth, not march in straight lines (a mowing the lawn approach leaves more grooves).

Pro tip number 2. Your shop vac is gonna take a bearing. Plan on two filters so you can knock the dust out every 5 minutes or so. The filter will clog with the finest dust ever. It's fluffy, but heavy if that makes any sense at all. Best guess I took 150-200 lbs out of my floor. It sounds like a lot but it was maybe 4-5 trash bags partly filled (but heavy enough to be in danger if breaking).

The other cool thing about the grinder is that it really highlights areas that aren't quite as flat in the floor. You can visually see where you've been and it's kind satisfying to shave on the seam just a bit more and know that the floor is now flatter than it was.

Here’s the texture it leaves:

By the way, while I was grinding my father was filling a mess of small holes and some hairline cracks.

There may be better products available but Home Depot had a Quickcrete product available that we took a chance on and it seemed fine. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Quikrete-1-Qt-Concrete-Crack-Sealant-864000/100318507

Got a little nervous when it started raining outside. Even with a shop vac attached the grinding process puts out enough dust you’ll want some airflow. Didn’t get things TOOO wet, so we’ll just have to risk it picking up some moisture prior to paint.

When you're done grinding (which by the way takes about an hour per 200 sqft in my experience) everything is covered in fine white dust.

Go after it with your shop vac and a floor attachment and suddenly you can really see what’s going on. After a decent vac'ing I become painfully aware of the low spots you missed.

Oh and regardless of technique, you're still gonna leave swirl looking grooves as you change direction with the machine. Generally barely deep enough to catch a fingernail on but you can see them.

If you care, you might need to figure out a multistage grinding process. There is a process to dial in flatness of the grinding head—which I did… you basically set the grinder down, grind briefly and be sure you carve an even circle--but adjustments only goes so far when the machine gets moving with momentum.

After vacuuming and see what was up, I wasn’t stoked on having “missed spots” and since my floor was so filthy I wanted to give the Hellfire every chance I could of sticking. Soooo... Took a second pass with the grinder. All in I worked a 19 hour day, a solid 14 of which was on the grinder.

Oh yeah, don’t forget the gloves, then don’t forget the bandaids when you get blisters anyways. Better yet don’t try to do 2,000 square feet in a day. That said, the rental grinder runs ~$200 a day so if you gotta hustle, you gotta hustle, just be ready for it.

That's how I ended day 1 (Tuesday Oct 15) with Saturday being the move day.

 

[bigjon]

I'm enjoying this. Can't wait for the application story with pics.

 

[homelessdespot]

For vacuuming anything like that, might want to consider a DIY dust collector cyclone like the woodworking guys use. Also add a filter bag for the shop vac filter. Home depot sells a cyclone bucket lid that turns a bucket into a dust collector:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Dustopp...ia-with-2-5-in-Hose-36-in-Long-HD12/302643445

 

[bullnerd]

I'm enjoying this. Can't wait for the application story with pics.

Here too. Already have the Hellfire sitting in my shop.

 

[iowa4x4dieselman]

Awesome documentation so far!

Following this, as I plan to do this in my new house really soon!

 

[nc.detail]

Fantastic write-up! Thank you for sharing

 

[Black300zx]

Good to hear that you went with the conservative coverage numbers and then rounded up! I used the same grinder on my floor, and the first coat really sucked up the hellfire and left me about a quart short on the third coat.

You made out a lot better than I did in terms of grinding performance. It took me about half a day to do 400sqft! As an FYI, I think you'll be happy with the traction despite the lack of additive. The Hellfire is thin enough that the grinding texture carries through to the final finish and gives some grip. Wet floors are no problem as long as I have decent shoes on.

 

[frijolee]

For vacuuming anything like that, might want to consider a DIY dust collector cyclone like the woodworking guys use. Also add a filter bag for the shop vac filter. Home depot sells a cyclone bucket lid that turns a bucket into a dust collector:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Dustopp...ia-with-2-5-in-Hose-36-in-Long-HD12/302643445

Good thought. I'd forgotten about those. You'd need to rig up a means for it to travel along with your shop vac as you drag it all over the place but with a bigger job I tend to think that would still be time well spent. This dust is super fine but dense enough that I have to imagine a cyclone would help.

 

[frijolee]

Wed Oct 16…

Since the next step before paint was a lot more vacuuming I ended up going in to the office for work the next day while my folks promised to return the grinder within the 24 hour window at Home Depot's store opening and then clean the shop/garage. Hilo is about an hour's drive away so a HD run isn't trivial where I live on the Big Island.

Turns out I have a gracious boss and he knew I was ******* it this week, so I bailed out of office at about 2 pm. I’d heard the cleaning was still going and I was getting a bit nervous about being able to get 3 coats down.

I arrived back home to find that yes, deep cleaning takes time, even when it’s only vacuum and a leaf blower. Which brings me to another important tip. Per Scotty from Legacy: Don’t prep with water! There’s a video floating around of a Hellfire install where the dude uses a floor maintainer wet and then mops everything as one of the prep stages.

Excess water is bad. Moisture in the air is what makes single stage polyurea kick! I just did a test to be sure the concrete was dry enough, so of course I don’t want to add more moisture. If you must, per Scotty denatured alcohol is the hot ticket to clean things the grinder/floor maintainer can’t reach (edged of poles, corners, etc).

A couple last minute audibles that I found helped:

Angle grinder and wire wheel to clean up the edge metal along the walls (and junk wedged under the edge).

Shop vac with the angle tip to ram down in the all the floor seams. It was impressive how much **** I pulled out of the concrete cut lines.

Pardon the lousy focus, I was hustling and this was the only picture snagged at this stage, but I think you get the idea of angle of attack…

The more it does a number on your vacuum tip the better the remaining edge digs down in the seams to loosen dirt and ****.

After… It looks wet but it’s really still just age vs the freshly ground whiteness close by.

5 pm Oct 16 and we’re finally ready to paint. You’ll want to read all the spec sheets and stuff on Legacy’s page. They’re linked at the bottom.

https://www.legacyindustrial.net/products/hellfire-coating/hellfire-concrete-coating.html

Key Stuff:
275-300 sq ft per gal coat 1
325-350 sq ft per gal coat 2
375-400 sq ft per gal coat 3

(I bought enough for the low end of coverage, I would have been fine at the high end)

Given the recoat window is 2-3 hours we were going to have to hustle to get three coats down…

Game time…

 

[bullnerd]

Great info.

What about the people that do an acid etch? Is the water a problem?

 

[frijolee]

Great info.
What about the people that do an acid etch? Is the water a problem?

Not 100% sure but I would assume you need to allocate several days for the floor to get properly dry. I'd ping Scotty over at Legacy if you want details of going that way. My floor was too nasty to try.

 

[Black300zx]

Great info.

What about the people that do an acid etch? Is the water a problem?

I ground my floor, shop vac'd it, wet mopped it several times and let it dry for a few days before laying down the hellfire. I did the dropcloth test and everything looked dry as a bone. 3 months later it's holding up great.

It probably comes down to how much time you have to let it dry, but I'll second the above recommendation to contact Scott

 

[bullnerd]

Sounds good. Thanks.

 

[LegacyIndustrial]

Sounds good. Thanks.

Has to be good and dry. Moisture could cause bubbles to occur during install.


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[frijolee]

First things first, this stuff smells every bit as strongly as you’ve heard (assuming this isn’t your first stop researching floor coatings).

Find proper respirators.

Pro-tip: I don’t recommend the style with the sealed face shield, mine fogged up to the point that I painted without here and there (bad form I know, but I was outta time and at least I paid attention and never got a headache or symptoms of bad stuff).

Dad and I cut in the edges and seams first (including metal bit around the edge for simplicity) while Mom went straight to proper rolling.

You could mask edges if you like but I just got extra careful after the one edge blem above… I was able to mostly blot away with blem with a paper towel…

One tip I discovered for myself: don’t use a red solo cup for cutting in edges. You have about a 5 minute window before Hellfire melts the cup and bottom falls out. Ask me how I know.

Having a staging area close by is a good call…

Picked up some big bucket style paint trays from a local hardware store (HPM). First time using this style but these worked GREAT.

Hellfire tries to separate a bit (assume it’s the aluminum falling out of suspension) so you definitely need to mix thoroughly. It behaves a bit like mixing hammered finish paint, if you’ve ever played with that stuff. Kinda forgot about the mixing wand until later but we still got it done.

 

[WAKman]

Cool project, and very timely for me, as I'll be doing the same in my garage build soon. I have had two garages with the epoxy kit from Home Depot, and, while they were OK for my home garage, I want something more durable.

Mine will have a virgin slab--hopefully minimizing the prep work required.

 

[frijolee]

Tips on application (part Legacy’s recommendations, part my findings)

1) Cut the seams and edges first, this worked really well.
2) Don’t pour it on the floor. You need to use a tray and roll it out or it absorbs in too quickly and can be hard to handle.
3) Thin coats.
4) Back roll after application. I found I’d do maybe an area 3 ft x 10 ft (per brush dipping) but it helps to eliminate brush marks if you give the entire section a second rolling over before you move on.

5) Don’t push down too hard. It’s tempting since you’re trying to drive paint into cracks and such but at least with the “basic frame” it can spread the frame and suddenly the roller springs free. It helps to be sure the frames are adjusted snug and some of the roller caps are different thicknesses (assume it what comes with frames vs. what comes with rollers)

6) Wear rubber gloves (I don’t think it matters if you prefer latex or nitrile.)
Disclaimer… I almost never wear gloves. My hands sweat and feel gross in short order and this is obviously an extended process... However when the roller pops free and you’re in a hurry you might just think “screw it” and grab the roller bare handed to re-install. Yeah… so I think you can see where this is headed. I didn’t wear gloves. I did grab the roller. I was wearing Hellfire for far longer than I thought was possible. (More on this later).

7) Finally, get clever on your way in and out. I painted half of my threshold into from garage into workshop so this would be well into the 2-3 hour recoat time (honestly it seemed pretty dry) by the time the time you paint your way out the other side of the threshold.

8) Consider bugs. I live in the country and it was dead dark at this point so I had to have both roll up doors down to keep the moths out (I have manual roll up doors so I dialed them down to maybe a 1/4" gap). Still that was easier than picking them out as I went along. Case in point, I picked out the piece of grit at bottom right in this shot.

And here we go with the first coat done. Obviously still very thin and still learning how to minimize brush marks. The back rolling thing really helps.

Second coat going down. Paint is going notably further this round so we’re still painting thin but not being as careful about SUPER thin.

I’m wrapping up the second coat trying to do the same strategy of painting my way in and out of the small doorway when I screw things up. I step a bit too far to the side and leave a big ol’ footprint in paint that wasn’t quite dry.

That sucked… so I immediately paint over it to hide my error… and in doing so, promptly paint myself out of the doorway with no dry way left in to the workshop...

OH MAN, I didn’t think that through did I? It’s 11:00 pm and now have at least 2.5 hours to dry instead of a half hour or hour I would have needed. My folks are already taking a nap on the one patch of carpet in our empty house. Am I doing the last coat myself at 2 am? STUPID move... Agghh.

Well, there’s nothing to be done but wait. I set an alarm on my phone and try to nap myself. Sleep is not happening but a rest ain’t gonna hurt me.

I get up around a half past midnight go mix paint in prep for the third and final coat. Note, round 3 is where--given the benefit of hindsight--I might have done things differently.

-Joel

 

[bullnerd]

Im still not sure what "back roll" means?

Go back over the last spot you rolled?

Your folks are troopers!

 

[frijolee]

Im still not sure what "back roll" means?

Go back over the last spot you rolled?

Your folks are troopers!

My understanding is that the term comes from airless paint sprayers. You apply the paint, then go back over it with a roller just to even things out.

In this case, I was rolling in a typical zig zag down a section like normal (3' strokes for 10' or so), then I go back and re-roll that same section--but now with a mostly dry roller. Very light pressure and working in straight lines only (no more zig zag) instead lifting at the end of each stroke. Makes for a more even application and less brush marks.

Regarding the folks... indeed they are!

 

[bullnerd]

Ok, cool, that's what I was thinking.

 

[Honolulu]

Studying this very closely since I also live in Hawaii (Oahu) though I grew up in Hilo. The boss at HPM is a high school classmate; I also do business with the big box stores (Home Despot and Lowe's) here in Honolulu.

Looking ahead to paint my broom finish, 40-year old 2-car concrete garage floor, but I'm troubled with nasty dark oil stains from my wife's diesel. We'll have to see how much cleaning and grinding is required to produce a surface that will offer adequate grip. Mechanical adhesion depends on a rough surface; penetration adhesion will depend on product "soaking into" the surface and is negatively affected by presence of oil

Coverage governs how much product to buy: 18 gallons per 2190 sf (see post #1) = .013" thick. That thickness would pretty much smooth out the grinding marks, although post #11 suggests they will show through.

 

[frijolee]

So now it’s after midnight and it’s pretty much shear stubbornness keeping me going. I like the basic Hellfire silver color quite a bit but I still think toning it down isn’t a bad call so I’m adding the black pigment to for the top coat. Per directions I’m intermixing my gallons, and planning on tinting a full 5 gallons even though it’s becoming clear I won’t need that much for the top coat.

I figured out that I can paint the garage proper on the next day (Oct 17) since it doesn’t have the same requirements for loading in heavy stuff on the 19th. I can just leave cars in the driveway without too much difficulty.

So it turns out, you can actually fit a full 5 gallons in my big *** bucket style paint trays. That’s cool. The tint goes in black as sin (sorry, seemed fitting with the Hellfire motif). But then you mix for a good while and the black just goes away. 2 ounces per gallon is supposed to the “Citadel” color, but it just seems like a really subtle change so I add all 16 ounces (3.3 ounces per gallon) which to be honest STILL doesn’t seem that dramatic a shift, but either way, it’s gonna be fine.

Fully mixed.

Bless their hearts, my folks actually get back up to help me do round 3. They’re still 3 hours jet lagged so my awesome parentals effectively pull an all nighter to do this with me. ********… I’m kinda in awe to be honest.

So back to the actual result.

As a comparison of colors, I submit a portion of seams I cut in for round 3. “Citadel”--or in my case Citadel Plus--is really just a change in shade… If you like more of grey than a silver I wouldn’t hesitate to crank this to the full 4 ounces of tint per gallon allowed.

We wrap it up around 2 am and I am BEAT.

I’m already taking the 17th off work, so by comparison doing the 640 sq ft garage the next day is a cakewalk. Note, one bay in the 3 car garage is low by about an inch. Apparently once upon a time this was a two car garage and the 3rd bay was added at the same time as the workshop. However the slab between the two areas was always slightly low.

I debated seriously ignoring it, but it’s the kind of thing that’ll bug me someday, so I’m going to figure out how to level this with a concrete pour on top to raise it an inch. If anyone has thoughts or tips, regarding pouring a slab over slab, please let me know.

Here’s the hiccup/hindsight bit though. We’d poured all the extra tinted paint back into their cans. Honestly, I got right around 500 sq ft per gallon coverage out of the last stage so I have something like 2.6 gallons tinted.

When I go to pour the tinted paint ~16 hours after mixing it, it comes out CLUMPY. This stuff is half kicked off… What’s going on? Polyurea kicks with moisture so I’m suddenly questioning whether the pigment could be water based… I don’t know but I’m suddenly pretty concerned about my ability to finish.

I didn’t take a picture of the process but I ended up using a paint strainer to get the big clumps out and the rest rolls out just fine. Wheew…

I chatted with Scotty at Legacy about this after the fact and he tells me the pigment is NOT water based but it’s more likely that my heavy mixing drew enough air in (reference pic above showing all the little bubble when fully mixed) and that cause the polyurea to start kicking.

We’ll see what happens when I reopen the last two tinted gallons to do my 3rd garage bay in a month or two. I very well may open the cans to find solid bricks. I don’t know. I’ll report back when the time comes because I’m not re-opening them just to check!

So that gets me to my last pro tip: Do NOT intermix your gallons when tinting, UNLESS you’re 100% sure you’re going to use it all. The tint is subtle enough that I don’t think you’d ever notice the difference if you choose to measure carefully per gallon rather than doing the intermixing gallons thing.

Actually, if I’d had more time or margin, I probably would have done a 4th coat everywhere and just used it up.

 

[LegacyIndustrial]

At its core...Hellfire is a Moisture Cured Urethane. Let’s call HF part A and Moisture is part B. Once the HF comes in contact with the moisture in the atmosphere and if the humidity is high then this happens even faster , it starts to catalyze. If you opened it and closed it fairly quick and there was not much air in the can then you probably would be OK but if the material was in the bucket and it was exposed to the moisture in your (guessing)very humid Hawaiii air , then bingo.


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[Honolulu]

Here in humid Hawaii (how's that for alliteration) we see curing started when you open and then reseal a can of POR15, another moisture cured urethane product. Similarly hard to remove from skin, that one! Other manufacturers also supply coatings with this base chemistry although I suspect many of them may be the same in bulk, just relabeled for retail sale.

As for a thin slab to level your last area, epoxy binding compound brushed on, wait till tacky, then I'd try to use a fiber additive in the concrete, rather than just a thin coat which could crack more. I think you would get better shrinkage crack control (that's part of what fibers were initially introduced to do) but the thinking among the structural engineers I deal with is changing. Best consult a concrete supplier for their opinion. Don't know/you haven't said what part of the Big Island you're living in, but I get the feeling you'll be mixing your own concrete. Another back-breaker for your visiting relatives. They'll love you for the experience!

 

[ScaldedDog]

At its core...Hellfire is a Moisture Cured Urethane. Let’s call HF part A and Moisture is part B. Once the HF comes in contact with the moisture in the atmosphere and if the humidity is high then this happens even faster , it starts to catalyze. If you opened it and closed it fairly quick and there was not much air in the can then you probably would be OK but if the material was in the bucket and it was exposed to the moisture in your (guessing)very humid Hawaiii air , then bingo.


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Slightly off topic, but will HF work well when applied in relatively dry air at 6300ft?

Mark

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

 

[ConCretin]

Thanks for posting this. It was a very informative and entertaining read. I'm planning on using HellFire in my shop and will be referring to your thread again for tips.

I'll weigh in on your potential overlay of your existing floor. There are two basic approaches; bonded or un-bonded. A bonded overlay is probably the best approach for a thin overlay such as yours.

The downside of an un-bonded overlay is potential cracks from shrinkage or cracks in the base slab telegraphing through with thermal movement. Unless the base slab has uniform control joints that can be mirrored in the overlay, there is really no way to control this cracking. Some random cracks are probably unavoidable but they are primarily and aesthetic issue.

You can bond the overlay chemically or mechanically. A chemical bonding agents will require a clean, sound substrate. I'd suggest spraying on a coat of Sika Armitec 110. It's a cementitious product with a good working time. Mechanical attachment might include fastening down a layer of wire mesh or pattern of small dowels, TapCon screws, etc.

Use a 3/8 aggregate mix to ensure good consolidation and cure the slab well to keep it from curling and trying to lift.

Good luck and let is know how you like the HellFire.

 

[frijolee]

Thanks for the tips on concrete overlay! That's going to be really helpful. Please keep them coming.

Chemical bonding seams like a no brainer. I'm all about belt and suspenders (aka redundancy) to be sure this lasts a long time, so I'm interested in mechanical bonding as well. I was thinking of carving up the underlying surface in a criss-cross pattern using an angle grinder with a diamond tile wheel, but I can drill holes with a masonry bit for dowels as well. I have some spare/thin rebar lying around I could make dowels from.

The area in question is 10x19', there are no control joints at present. It's about 1" thick so that works out to 2/3rds a yard. That's almost a mix it in a wheelbarrow kinda size given the 2 hour drive to get rental equipment. I can try a local rental house but their selection is quite limited.

 

[frijolee]

What happened to the garden room? To be honest, in the 19 hour session with the grinder--back on Day 1--I completely forgot to grind the back room. It was a case of out of sight out of mind.

However, not all was lost since I’d actually bought a backup grinder option. For something like $120 I picked up a 7” diamond cup for my big grinder, with a universal vacuum attachment.

Note the cone is off my shop vac and didn’t quite fit, hence painter’s tape to the rescue.

In trying to figure out what the heck I bought for y’all to reference my grinding wheel looks a lot like the Rigid (https://www.homedepot.com/p/RIDGID-7-in-24-Segment-Turbo-Cup-Grinding-Wheel-HD-TAW7024P1/202884372)

…but I swear it was only like $50 so it might have been a generic.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/EDiamon...-Segments-5-8-in-11-Arbor-SWS0724A5/303128883

It actually was whatever HD had hanging on the wall in the rental department. Honestly, I’m not convinced there’s much difference and for something I intended to use only sporadically, I went cheap.

The shroud was this guy…
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Dustles...Shroud-Pro-for-Angle-Grinders-D1807/206024979

I see now that reviews are only decent, and I can say that it was a little bit of a pain to get installed but once on it worked well.

If you’re doing a small area, or even a two car garage, this might be a viable option. You’re working on your hands and knees but it does the same stuff as the big dog grinder I rented. You do need to be pretty careful to keep things flat as you go, but this actually worked better for getting into corners and the like.

I apparently failed to get a virgin picture of the garden room complete so here’s one from this morning (12/18). I’ve been tracking mud into this space for about 2 months now. As soon as it dries out all it takes is a simple sweep and it’s back to 95% perfect. If I mopped, it would probably get all the way there, but hey it’s a garden room.

This brings me to what I think will be my last pro-tip on install. Cutting edges with tape and the “dry brush technique.” I talked about this in my garage thread as well (ref https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showpost.php?p=5834980&postcount=161) but it probably bears repeating as it applied here as well.

When painting any taped edge--which all walls of my garden room were... The challenge is that the paint will try to wick and run under your tape. Painters tape is removable by design so the seal isn’t perfect. My preferred method is that when paint your first coat, you paint the NEAR the edge (really anywhere elsewhere), until your brush is nearly out of paint, THEN you paint the seam of base material/tape. This makes your first coat of paint THIN THIN THIN. It effectively gives the paint at the tape seam line itself it no appreciable volume to be able to wick under the edge, hence “dry brush”.

Case in point here’s the stripe I did in my former SoCal garage using the technique. On the garage wall, I did a “dry coat” and two heavier, working ended to end in continuous laps.

Pull the tape before the paint fully dries. Bingo, nice crisp lines.

I can confirm it works well with Hellfire too. If you were feeling fancy I think you could make a big texas star or other pattern using tinted/plain hellfire kinda like how hot rodders make ghost flames...

I still have some plain Hellfire left sealed so I might think about this... Legacy does have some tips on recoating dry hellfire in the data sheets I linked prior. It would probably fancy up the finished product a bit.

Curious--while I'm thinking about fancy finishes--has anyone ever done a two tone/classic stripe paint job on a workshop with exposed beams? I’m tempted but it looks like a lot of masking to get it right.

Glad y'all are enjoying this. I've learned a ton on the forums so it feels good to pay it forward.

-Joel

PS Next time… moving in and start of floor abuse.

 

[Honolulu]

Here's a tip for painting a clean line using tape - I used it to pinline surfboards, back in the day.

Lay the tape on a smooth surface if possible. Burnish it down (rub with thumb) so it sticks as well as possible. Smear a bit of some clear stuff over the edge to be painted to. In my day we smeared a thin coat of un-colored UV cure laminating resin, which set in a few minutes when exposed to sunlight. After the clear stuff sets, have at it with your color. Peel the tape as soon as your field work is done, to lessen the time available for the color to bleed under the tape.

Works a charm, improves with practice.

 

[frijolee]

Moving day arrived!

Technically moving day arrived more like 64 hours after the last coat than the recommended 72—but time was up and we were moving in.

We had a nice farewell sunset the evening before the mayhem at the rental. Note the narrow driveway to the backyard at right.

Gradals (AKA boom style fork truck) are big *** beasties. I pressure washed the rental’s driveway for a long time in the days following this effort.

The move it self was kinda organized chaos. We recruited widely and had 28 friends show up. Moving involved a total of 16 vehicles. Kinda neat to see how many relationships we were able to build in our first year on the island…

It was a bit surreal watching something this big cruising down that strip next to the house.

By the way, the covered carts contain ~4,000 and 7,000 lbs of metal tubing and sheetmetal respectively. I was part of a business that closed and ended up hauling home the motherload a few years back (yeah, it shipped to Hawaii with us). There are a some gnarly stories about the free stuff and move in my garage thread if folks are interested.

IE: Why do I have so much random project stuff?
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6498335#post6498335

The metal haul
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6545051#post6545051

Moving to Hawaii (AKA fun and adventures packing 52,000 lb containers)
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?p=8043559#post8043559


Anyways, here’s pic of the tube rack from better organized days…

On arrival. Hmm, this might be interesting.

The gradal is too big to get into the workshop so we end up booming stuff back to the back corner. Couple scratches when we tried to tetter totter while boomed out but honestly… it was steel casters with a 7k lb cart touching down at a distance… of course it’s gonna scratch. I was impressed it didn’t scratch through.

We switch over to the skid steer for positioning and smaller stuff. Air compressor loading in. The new driveway is all dirt once you get outboard of the adjacent slabs so we got things DIRTY!

Skid steers use tank drive with non-articulated wheels (hence the name) so yeah, it was a constant process of dragging tires with thousands of lbs per corner over the freshly coated surface. Floor got a workout indeed.

Interestingly. It’s almost like the floor gets burnished a bit by the tire marks. To be fair, these vehicles leave tracks all over the damn place just driving on concrete. I’ll play with what it takes to get skid steer marks off eventually (outside, a pressure washer does wonders, but I don’t want to introduce that much moisture into the inside of the workshop).

End of moving day 1. The good news! Nothing peeled, nothing smeared, couple scratches, buncha dirt and tire marks that no one but an idiot like me is likely to encounter.

Driving both a Gradal and Skid Steer is about as ******** a workout as I expect this will ever see. Damn, this stuff is tough!!

 

[bullnerd]

Congrats on the move-in!

Thanks for the update.

Please tell me thats a small block chevy for a coffee table! lol!

 

[frijolee]

Please tell me thats a small block chevy for a coffee table! lol!

Good eye... Gen 3 but yes. It's a 98 LS1 that windowed both sides of the block with an oil issue. I did kinda an exploded view with the internals flipped around so you can see the burnt up bearing journals on the crank.

 

[frijolee]

The next couple days all kinda run together so I’m not gonna worry about differentiating the timeline too much. We did manage to get out of the rental by Wednesday the Oct 23rd (escrow and this process having closed on Oct 15th).

Since we rented a box truck with a lift gate for the main move weekend we also managed to buy couches and more shop equipment (a used mill and lathe) on day 2 of the move. There was a well-deserved pause in Kona between craigslist stops. My wife killed it on the household goods front.

I owe my new next door neighbor many a frosty beverage as he hauls freight for a living and was instrumental in all this going down.

My long term Land Cruiser project got hauled up onto the same trailer.

Downside. The FJ40 doesn’t steer itself yet (much less drive) so Dad and I got to fight tires as we dragged it in. It was a party for sure.

But heck apparently where we live now gets some epic sunsets too. This is the road into my neighborhood.

And we did manage to take Mom and Dad on some proper sightseeing.

After they headed back to Cali, Alan and I did a bit more shuffling to move things around to more permanent locations inside the workshop.

So that’s getting mighty close to the end of this story. Two more posts I know of coming: thoughts on floor performance in the past 3 months (I really have been beating the **** out of this floor and it seems to shrug it all off). I also want to post some glamour shots of the final space, but right now it’s covered in wiring for lights and 220v power so that may need to wait for a bit.

Happy New Year and best regards to you all,

Joel

 

[bullnerd]

Good eye... Gen 3 but yes. It's a 98 LS1 that windowed both sides of the block with an oil issue. I did kinda an exploded view with the internals flipped around so you can see the burnt up bearing journals on the crank.

Very cool! I didn't want to say "LS", that's a trigger point for some on here! lol!

Congrats again!

 

[WAKman]

That table is as cool as it gets!

 

[frijolee]

So now I’m three months in: How’s it perform?

In a nutshell: “as advertised”

My Jeep peed oil on it (as expected). It cleans up super easy (as hoped).

Mud and dirt, it seems to shrug off. Once the dirt is dry, a push broom takes everything off. Super easy.

It has plenty of tooth when wet even without anti-skid, albeit that’s probably a function of my aggressive floor prep job. You can still slide in smooth soled shoes when wet (tried to get a pic of my skid mark), but the only shoes I’ve had this happen in have dead smooth rubber soles and I’ve also slid on a wet parking lot stripe (painted lane marker) while wearing them. The tooth is easily as good as the epoxy floor I did before with the anti-skid included.

I did throw down some cardboard for the oil drip but that managed to soak through and sit for a month anyways. I used a little soapy water this time and it still cleans up easy.

About the only downside I’ve found so far is that the part of Hellfire out in the weather (exposed threshold) has shifted shade. Note, it may be the pigment as the lighted area looks more like un-tinted Hellfire now. It doesn’t bug me but figured folks might want to know.

This was about 4 weeks in.

This is now.

I talked with Scotty at Legacy about this and apparently there are trade-offs between durability and UV protection in the chemistry. Personally, I’m glad to make that compromise. I'm happy to verify that version 2 of Hellfire is only a shift in shade, where-as version 1 shifted hue and took on a greenish look that apparently wasn’t very pleasant. If you prefer to be careful, you could probably treat your threshold with some UV protectant spray. I like this stuff:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AB16LH8/?tag=atomicindus08-20


But what do I really care about? I'm so impressed that Hellfire is this TOUGH. Dragging an aluminum wheeled mechanics jack around doesn’t seem to do much of anything and that’s a notable difference vs. my old epoxy/acid stain floor. On the other hand, the places I’ve scratched it, I’ve completely deserved it. I.E. yes, dragging a 1000 lb welding table across the floor is enough to give you a scratch.

I don’t really have any shots to show of the areas I’ve covered in metal grinding dust because there’s really no before or after to show. You just don’t see any change, it’s rad, so the zero hot tire pickup and temperature capacity claims check out as far as I can tell.



So there you have it. Hellfire… It goes on easy, it’s super tough, it looks good, but not so good that you won’t use your space. I love the fact that I almost don’t think about my floor now, it’s just a pleasant place to be. If you have a shop or use your garage as a work space, I strongly recommend you scope it out.

THAT SAID, if you want a showroom, this might not be the product for you. If I were looking for a museum-like display space, I would have polished the concrete and then done a two-tone stain effort with a high end clear. I looked at NOHR-S from Legacy for that purpose but, at the end of the day, pragmatism won out for me. As noted, this isn’t my first rodeo and I wanted to lean toward max function on this effort.

No regrets thus far, and it doesn’t hurt at all that it was pretty economical compared to some approaches I checked out.

If you do go with Legacy, please tell Scotty hello for me. I can’t overstate how helpful he is. As I noted in a former review, any vendor who tells me what I DON’T need to buy will instantly earn my trust.

I’ll probably chime in with some future experiences (IE the first time I drop molten weld slag on this, what I find when I finally open the tinted cans), but for now, my garage thread is probably be the best place to catch me.
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=285957

By the way, how tough is Hellfire?

One more example: Remember that thing I mentioned about not wearing gloves and assuming I’d get away with it? This is what my hands looked like 3 days (and a great deal of scrubbing with various chemicals) after the painting effort. The blister that’s starting to heal was from the long day pushing that floor grinder.

A full two weeks later (having pretty much been constantly picking at the stuff) and I was just rocking some pretty neato nail polish.

Whatever… I’m secure enough in my manhood to rock it like a rockstar. Once it was partly grown out (3.5 weeks in?), I finally took one of my wife’s emery boards and was able to shave off what was left. Good times, and good times in an awesome garage ahead.

Thanks to Garage Journal for all the feedback and reviews (I read plenty before deciding this route) and to Legacy Industrial for being a quality firm that shoots straight.

Good success on all your projects, this one was a big thumbs up from me.

-Joel Payne