Wantsalotta
Member
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2017
- Messages
- 10
Hi guys, long time lurker, new member. I have enjoyed learning from other people's trials and tribulations here, and thought I'd share my own struggles, and hopefully someday, triumphs.
My journey starts last September, when my wife found a parcel of land adjacent to our subdivision, that was something we could afford. I am an avid sportsman, and spend many days in a tree chasing whitetail with archery gear every year. I had always wanted to live on acreage, with no houses around. She has always wanted to be in a subdivision with neighbors to socialize with and kids for our two young boys to play with. When we found this land (45 acres) and a buildable lot overlooking it, in the neighborhood, it was a no brainier to sell our existing home and build new. We chose a modest ranch with exposed basement. I am a mechanic by trade (Master VW tech, have worked on VW for 15 years) so my old 2 car 21*21 garage was never sufficient for my wants. We built as large a garage as the wedge shaped lot would allow us to, while still maintining appropriate grade in the neighborhood grading plan, and have a full exposure basement. The garage ended up being 34 feet wide, and 35 feet deep, with 18 foot section only being 30 feet deep, where the garage is connected to the house. I opted to add a floor drain, rough plumbing for a future sink, dedicated 100 amp electrical service. I went with 13' 2x6 walls, to allow a full lift to be installed. The floor is 8" concrete slab, with rebar on chairs, and fiber mesh, just because we could.
I did Rust-Oleum floor epoxy on my last garage floor, we lived in the house 7 years, and the floor did not hold up. There was no hot tire pickup, or delamination of any sort, it simply wore away in the high traffic areas. I was not happy with that. Somewhere in my search for a more resilient floor, I came across Metallicfx from Sika. I was in love. I do custom fishing rods, and do some wild paint jobs on them, in custom dyed two part epoxies, so I knew I could make a floor look good. An exhaustive search and multiple phone calls, and I found no where that I could buy Sika products direct, they only sell to businesses. More searching of Metallic floors led me to finding Someone. Specifically thier hp250 epoxy, with metallic color packs. Again, abrasion test specs looked good, as well as chemical resistance. The finish product has the ability to look amazing, according to what I found on the internet. I was able to find an online distributor of the product, and proceeded to order a 3 gallon kit, and a sample of all the available colors. We did some color testing, and settled on midnight blue, royal blue, and pearl white, to all be marbled together. The specified primer for this system is Surfkoat 1040 what water based 40 percent solids epoxy. I chose to tint this black, as a solid dark color always works better when I am painting rods. I also decided to paint the curb around my garage floor black with this material.
We had everything planned and prepared, the day we closed on the house, we were ready to go on the garage floor, with 10 days time allotted between closing, and the moving in party. The day before we closed, the floor was diamond ground, and a simple moisture test was performed, with no moisture on the floor, or the plasti, after 24 hours. Plan was 3 days for 3 coats...primer, metallic body, and clear coat. We put the primer down, and everything went great. 16 hours later, we we're in the recoat window time frame, and went ahead and marbled the floor. My help and I hung around for 2 hours having a few cold one's and appreciating our beautiful work. I came back 5 hours after the marbled colors were put down, to remove the masking from under all 3 garage doors. To my horror, there were some bubbles forming. Lots of bubbles. The material was already tacky, almost not tacky any longer. It was too late to try and walk on the floor in spikes and pop the bubbles. My only choice was to wait it out and see what comes of the finished product. Next day, after work, we find a beautiful blue floor, with great gloss, covered in bubbles that ranged from the size of peas, to silver dollars. Back and forth with the distributor, and manufacturer, and the determination by them was that the concrete was off gassing, that thier water based epoxy should have been put down in more coats to fully seal the concrete. Thier directions specify 1 coat. The manufacturer refused to take any responsibility, the distributor however, agreed to sell me some additional product at a discount. The directions from the distributor, in order to obtain the functionality I wanted (smooth, easy to clean floor) were to sand the entire floor, and fill each individual bubble with a small amount of epoxy, monitor for bubbling, sand and refill any bubbles that reformed, and repeat until the concrete was fully sealed, then clear coat the entire floor. We sanded the floor to 50 grit, and spent hours meticulously filling each bubble hole with a syringe. When all bubble holes were finally done off gassing, the floor was finally ready for a clear coat. (3 weeks have elpased at this point, we are moved into the house, all garage tools and toys are in a rented storage unit). Yesterday we clear coated the entire floor a final time. I woke up this morning to inspect the floor, and found bubbles randomly dispersed throughout the floor. There are bubbles formed now, where there were no bubbles in the previous coats, which tells me the material itself is creating the games and capturing them. I am facing a cold front sweeping through our area tomorrow, the weather is no longer going to be warm enough to work with 2 part epoxy, so the floor will have to be good enough for now. I'll add pictures as soon as I learn how to.
My journey starts last September, when my wife found a parcel of land adjacent to our subdivision, that was something we could afford. I am an avid sportsman, and spend many days in a tree chasing whitetail with archery gear every year. I had always wanted to live on acreage, with no houses around. She has always wanted to be in a subdivision with neighbors to socialize with and kids for our two young boys to play with. When we found this land (45 acres) and a buildable lot overlooking it, in the neighborhood, it was a no brainier to sell our existing home and build new. We chose a modest ranch with exposed basement. I am a mechanic by trade (Master VW tech, have worked on VW for 15 years) so my old 2 car 21*21 garage was never sufficient for my wants. We built as large a garage as the wedge shaped lot would allow us to, while still maintining appropriate grade in the neighborhood grading plan, and have a full exposure basement. The garage ended up being 34 feet wide, and 35 feet deep, with 18 foot section only being 30 feet deep, where the garage is connected to the house. I opted to add a floor drain, rough plumbing for a future sink, dedicated 100 amp electrical service. I went with 13' 2x6 walls, to allow a full lift to be installed. The floor is 8" concrete slab, with rebar on chairs, and fiber mesh, just because we could.
I did Rust-Oleum floor epoxy on my last garage floor, we lived in the house 7 years, and the floor did not hold up. There was no hot tire pickup, or delamination of any sort, it simply wore away in the high traffic areas. I was not happy with that. Somewhere in my search for a more resilient floor, I came across Metallicfx from Sika. I was in love. I do custom fishing rods, and do some wild paint jobs on them, in custom dyed two part epoxies, so I knew I could make a floor look good. An exhaustive search and multiple phone calls, and I found no where that I could buy Sika products direct, they only sell to businesses. More searching of Metallic floors led me to finding Someone. Specifically thier hp250 epoxy, with metallic color packs. Again, abrasion test specs looked good, as well as chemical resistance. The finish product has the ability to look amazing, according to what I found on the internet. I was able to find an online distributor of the product, and proceeded to order a 3 gallon kit, and a sample of all the available colors. We did some color testing, and settled on midnight blue, royal blue, and pearl white, to all be marbled together. The specified primer for this system is Surfkoat 1040 what water based 40 percent solids epoxy. I chose to tint this black, as a solid dark color always works better when I am painting rods. I also decided to paint the curb around my garage floor black with this material.
We had everything planned and prepared, the day we closed on the house, we were ready to go on the garage floor, with 10 days time allotted between closing, and the moving in party. The day before we closed, the floor was diamond ground, and a simple moisture test was performed, with no moisture on the floor, or the plasti, after 24 hours. Plan was 3 days for 3 coats...primer, metallic body, and clear coat. We put the primer down, and everything went great. 16 hours later, we we're in the recoat window time frame, and went ahead and marbled the floor. My help and I hung around for 2 hours having a few cold one's and appreciating our beautiful work. I came back 5 hours after the marbled colors were put down, to remove the masking from under all 3 garage doors. To my horror, there were some bubbles forming. Lots of bubbles. The material was already tacky, almost not tacky any longer. It was too late to try and walk on the floor in spikes and pop the bubbles. My only choice was to wait it out and see what comes of the finished product. Next day, after work, we find a beautiful blue floor, with great gloss, covered in bubbles that ranged from the size of peas, to silver dollars. Back and forth with the distributor, and manufacturer, and the determination by them was that the concrete was off gassing, that thier water based epoxy should have been put down in more coats to fully seal the concrete. Thier directions specify 1 coat. The manufacturer refused to take any responsibility, the distributor however, agreed to sell me some additional product at a discount. The directions from the distributor, in order to obtain the functionality I wanted (smooth, easy to clean floor) were to sand the entire floor, and fill each individual bubble with a small amount of epoxy, monitor for bubbling, sand and refill any bubbles that reformed, and repeat until the concrete was fully sealed, then clear coat the entire floor. We sanded the floor to 50 grit, and spent hours meticulously filling each bubble hole with a syringe. When all bubble holes were finally done off gassing, the floor was finally ready for a clear coat. (3 weeks have elpased at this point, we are moved into the house, all garage tools and toys are in a rented storage unit). Yesterday we clear coated the entire floor a final time. I woke up this morning to inspect the floor, and found bubbles randomly dispersed throughout the floor. There are bubbles formed now, where there were no bubbles in the previous coats, which tells me the material itself is creating the games and capturing them. I am facing a cold front sweeping through our area tomorrow, the weather is no longer going to be warm enough to work with 2 part epoxy, so the floor will have to be good enough for now. I'll add pictures as soon as I learn how to.
