Help please - Is my floor ready for polyaspartic coating?

[rachotv]

Hi,
I can use you guys' expert opinion please. I want to DIY coat (full flake) my garage floor with a Polyurea/polyaspartic coating. 2 Questions for you all:

1) I spent 4 days grinding my 1,200 sq ft stained concrete, and it has been tough because of low spots - leaving residual, partially grind stain in low spots that are hard to remove. Please see my photos below. Question = is this floor ready? or do I need to do more grinding? Any paint stripping or etching needed or be helpful?

2) I am checking out these good products and am torn among them - Norh-S, Garageflooringllc, Aspartic 85 by Exteriorcoatings.com, or PolyKoat GL 80 Slow. Any suggestion on which one should I go with? Itemized of what I need would be great and much appreciated!

Thanks.

 

[Ifly]

floor has to be perfect, its all in the prep work. I can't speak to the products but just did a floor and used a commercial grade product only a contractor can get, I would acid wash and then power wash. (after the grind) I would also test to make sure you are not getting moisture coming through concrete. You can test for this.
After power wash, wait 3 days for concrete to be 100 percent dry
Any water will kill the floor and you only get one shot at this or you will create a huge mess
Good Luck

 

[Shea]

It's hard to tell from pics, but the grinding looks good. Are the black spots old oil stains? If so, will they quickly absorb a teaspoon of water or does it take a while? If there are issues with the oil stains there are epoxy primers available that work on oil.

Contrary to the post above, a concrete surface should not be etched afterwards if the proper profile is achieved via grinding. The open pores from the grinding allows the acid to penetrate deeper, thus making it harder to neutralize. The acid can stay activated in the concrete and create long term damage, especially if it reaches rebar.

I do not recommend the Aspartic 85. It's a fast cure polyaspartic that would be a nightmare for a DIY application, particularly if your experience with applying a coating is limited. The slow cure PolyKoat gives you a bit more time to apply it, but there is very limited information in their technical data sheets that actually tells you how the product performs. They don't even list the dry film thickness at the recommended coverage rates.

The single-part polyurea coatings by Garage Flooring LLC and Legacy Industrial are far easier to apply and achieve good concrete penetration. In addition, you will find great abrasion and chemical resistance ratings when checking the data sheets. The problem with the faster curing products above is that concrete prep is paramount due to the quicker curing. A CSP 3profile is preferred. Otherwise, the coating does not have enough time to penetrate far enough to get the best mechanical adhesion.

You can read more about how to compare coatings and use data sheets in this article: https://allgaragefloors.com/how-to-review-tds-for-floor-coatings/

 

[wags999]

Great link Shea, thank you

 

[rachotv]

Thanks Shea and Ifly!!
Will keep you all posted.

 

[Miss the Pontiacs]

My concrete floor was down for at least 2 years. Guy came and took a moisture reading. It was over 5 and should have been 4.1 or something like that. Ground it down and still took a lengthy period of time to get it dry enough. Had electric heat and a 2 commercial dehumidifiers working steady.

 

[Armorpoxy]

From what we see the floor looks good. As long as it's well scratched up for adhesion and any sealer or resistant coating has been removed you should be good to go.

We offer our SPGX Polyurea in full broadcast kits. Please let us know if you would like more info.

https://armorpoxy.com/products/spgx-polyurea-full-broadcast-kit/