haugy
Well-known member
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Bear with me, this will be a long, detailed, and picture filled post.
Let me start off with a few things. This is a detailed post of what I encountered, and how I felt about it. These are my opinions.
I've been around machines and shops all my life, built 3 hot rods, 2 rockcrawlers and worked in a steel mill for 10 years. So I'm pretty good at handling myself around tasks and equipment. I'm also good at following directions.
Well let me tell you the project, a 30x40 pole barn that will be finished inside when I'm done. This is to be more of a showroom than fab shop. I've got places I can do steel work with. I wanted to do the epoxy first. Since it was an open metal shed it made it easy for prep work and washing it out. It's fresh virgin concrete that has never had anything on it. 2.5 months old, and freshly ground with an edco walk-behind dual head grinder. Then rinsed repeatedly before drying for 2 weeks before application.
I ordered a kit from Fred at AlphaGarage. I read the instructions over and over and over. I got measuring buckets galore and all the proper equipment. I didn't shortcut any item. If it called for a flux-capacitor I would have gotten one.
I began by mixing the Bondtite and putting it down in the morning. Definitely a mistake there since it outgassed and bubbled up. Now that was 100% my fault. I knew it was a possibility, I thought I had waited long enough, and I didn't. So a quick hit with a sanding pad, and it was all smooth again.
Here you see the outgassing
After sanding and wiping with denatured alchohol to get it clean I was ready for LiquaTile.
We mixed it up, and then applied it, again going smooth so far. We put down flakes, and went to bed.
Now. Looks good doesn't it? That's what I thought. I was so happy it was turning out well.
Here's where we derail the Happy Train. I walked all over the floor making sure it had time to cure. It had been 23 hours since we had laid it down. And it was solid, EVERYWHERE. I walked all over the floor, and even swept up loose flakes, and then used a leaf blower to clean it out again. So I was all over this floor for about 2 hours.
Now comes the EnduraSheild. Which I believe to be the bain of my existence now. On top of later issues, it doesn't level out. I have brush strokes all over my floor from this ****. I cross rolled it, with Nap free rollers, and even tried to lay it thicker to see if it would level out, nope. Other than that, as you can see in the pictures above, everything looks fantastic. I put down the Endurashield, and then go to bed.
When I woke up the next morning to go see my new pride and joy, I was met with a terrible greeting.
The floor had turned from smooth gloss and beauty to absolute disaster. It was bubbling up everywhere. Big long bubbles. Crinkles in the expoxy, just disaster.
Now as you can imagine I was horrified.
So I immediately contact Fred. I couldn't call him. I had an office number which he could not be reached on, and the only other choice I had was to send him an email and wait.
I get a phone call from him and we go over what's happened. In short, no one knew. Fred didn't know, I had no clue in the world. Fred wanted to talk to his experienced installers to see if they had any insight. In short, he called me back to tell me no one else has had any failures, I must have mixed it wrong.
I explained I had followed his directions to the letter. The problem I had was that the floor was perfect before the endurashield went down.
So what's the next step you ask? I get to pay for more LiquaTile and Endurashield to fix the problem. YAAAAY. While according to Fred he cut me a deal on the cost of it, adding another $300 on top of the $2000 I already spent was like turning the knife in the wound.
So I order more product. Now comes the hell. I have to scrape off every inch of bad epoxy, and sand it to prep it for the repair. After measuring out the damage it came to just over 300 sq/ft of ruined epoxy. 25% of my floor had failed in random places all over.
Again, if I had screwed up the instructions, why didn't the rest fail?
So I scrape, and scrape, and scrape, and sand, and sand, and sand. After 2 months of this hell, burned up my best sander, and frustration like you can't imagine. I get the floor prepped for repair.
As you can see, it's a disaster. I have a buddy who owns a concrete grinding business and for a couple of beers he would strip this **** off my floor in a couple of hours. Which was fine with me. If it failed again, it was gone.
So after wiping the floor with MEK for hours, and cleaning everything up, it's time to begin.
Once again, the LiquaTile goes down fine. We wait 24 hours, and it's as solid as a rock as before. Now comes the endurashield.
This time I decided to only coat the places that would be in the sunlight, and also as an experiment. I wanted to see what would happen to the treated vs untreated during pour.
So I put it down, and again it goes down like ****. It doesn't level out, again.
And looks like ****, again.
So after all this hell, here is the result. The damage marks are clear as day.
The Endurashield is failing AGAIN!!! It's peeling right up and making a mess.
And here is the Final done picture. While it looks good from a distance. That is 1200 sq/ft, and there is a lot of damage in there. And it would figure that the damage is right where I'll be parking my custom hot rods.
I know I'm probably burning this bridge with Fred at AlphaGarage. I'm fine with that. The support was on his terms only. We did exchange about 30 emails and a few phone calls, but I won't be endorsing Wolverine's products or AlphaGarage. I have an attached garage that I'll be redoing to get it nice for the wife this Spring. I guarantee you I won't be going with Woverine. I'll be going with another company.
All in all I ended up spending $3180 for this floor (Epoxy, Supplies, etc). And I hate it. I'm not impressed, it looks terrible, and I'll just have to live with it. And to add insult to injury, my friend walked in yesterday to see it. He didn't know about the problems, and immediately started pointing out the problem spots asking what happened. Thanks Wolverine.
Bear with me, this will be a long, detailed, and picture filled post.
Let me start off with a few things. This is a detailed post of what I encountered, and how I felt about it. These are my opinions.
I've been around machines and shops all my life, built 3 hot rods, 2 rockcrawlers and worked in a steel mill for 10 years. So I'm pretty good at handling myself around tasks and equipment. I'm also good at following directions.
Well let me tell you the project, a 30x40 pole barn that will be finished inside when I'm done. This is to be more of a showroom than fab shop. I've got places I can do steel work with. I wanted to do the epoxy first. Since it was an open metal shed it made it easy for prep work and washing it out. It's fresh virgin concrete that has never had anything on it. 2.5 months old, and freshly ground with an edco walk-behind dual head grinder. Then rinsed repeatedly before drying for 2 weeks before application.
I ordered a kit from Fred at AlphaGarage. I read the instructions over and over and over. I got measuring buckets galore and all the proper equipment. I didn't shortcut any item. If it called for a flux-capacitor I would have gotten one.
I began by mixing the Bondtite and putting it down in the morning. Definitely a mistake there since it outgassed and bubbled up. Now that was 100% my fault. I knew it was a possibility, I thought I had waited long enough, and I didn't. So a quick hit with a sanding pad, and it was all smooth again.
Here you see the outgassing
After sanding and wiping with denatured alchohol to get it clean I was ready for LiquaTile.
We mixed it up, and then applied it, again going smooth so far. We put down flakes, and went to bed.
Now. Looks good doesn't it? That's what I thought. I was so happy it was turning out well.
Here's where we derail the Happy Train. I walked all over the floor making sure it had time to cure. It had been 23 hours since we had laid it down. And it was solid, EVERYWHERE. I walked all over the floor, and even swept up loose flakes, and then used a leaf blower to clean it out again. So I was all over this floor for about 2 hours.
Now comes the EnduraSheild. Which I believe to be the bain of my existence now. On top of later issues, it doesn't level out. I have brush strokes all over my floor from this ****. I cross rolled it, with Nap free rollers, and even tried to lay it thicker to see if it would level out, nope. Other than that, as you can see in the pictures above, everything looks fantastic. I put down the Endurashield, and then go to bed.
When I woke up the next morning to go see my new pride and joy, I was met with a terrible greeting.
The floor had turned from smooth gloss and beauty to absolute disaster. It was bubbling up everywhere. Big long bubbles. Crinkles in the expoxy, just disaster.
Now as you can imagine I was horrified.
So I immediately contact Fred. I couldn't call him. I had an office number which he could not be reached on, and the only other choice I had was to send him an email and wait.
I get a phone call from him and we go over what's happened. In short, no one knew. Fred didn't know, I had no clue in the world. Fred wanted to talk to his experienced installers to see if they had any insight. In short, he called me back to tell me no one else has had any failures, I must have mixed it wrong.
I explained I had followed his directions to the letter. The problem I had was that the floor was perfect before the endurashield went down.
So what's the next step you ask? I get to pay for more LiquaTile and Endurashield to fix the problem. YAAAAY. While according to Fred he cut me a deal on the cost of it, adding another $300 on top of the $2000 I already spent was like turning the knife in the wound.
So I order more product. Now comes the hell. I have to scrape off every inch of bad epoxy, and sand it to prep it for the repair. After measuring out the damage it came to just over 300 sq/ft of ruined epoxy. 25% of my floor had failed in random places all over.
Again, if I had screwed up the instructions, why didn't the rest fail?
So I scrape, and scrape, and scrape, and sand, and sand, and sand. After 2 months of this hell, burned up my best sander, and frustration like you can't imagine. I get the floor prepped for repair.
As you can see, it's a disaster. I have a buddy who owns a concrete grinding business and for a couple of beers he would strip this **** off my floor in a couple of hours. Which was fine with me. If it failed again, it was gone.
So after wiping the floor with MEK for hours, and cleaning everything up, it's time to begin.
Once again, the LiquaTile goes down fine. We wait 24 hours, and it's as solid as a rock as before. Now comes the endurashield.
This time I decided to only coat the places that would be in the sunlight, and also as an experiment. I wanted to see what would happen to the treated vs untreated during pour.
So I put it down, and again it goes down like ****. It doesn't level out, again.
And looks like ****, again.
So after all this hell, here is the result. The damage marks are clear as day.
The Endurashield is failing AGAIN!!! It's peeling right up and making a mess.
And here is the Final done picture. While it looks good from a distance. That is 1200 sq/ft, and there is a lot of damage in there. And it would figure that the damage is right where I'll be parking my custom hot rods.
I know I'm probably burning this bridge with Fred at AlphaGarage. I'm fine with that. The support was on his terms only. We did exchange about 30 emails and a few phone calls, but I won't be endorsing Wolverine's products or AlphaGarage. I have an attached garage that I'll be redoing to get it nice for the wife this Spring. I guarantee you I won't be going with Woverine. I'll be going with another company.
All in all I ended up spending $3180 for this floor (Epoxy, Supplies, etc). And I hate it. I'm not impressed, it looks terrible, and I'll just have to live with it. And to add insult to injury, my friend walked in yesterday to see it. He didn't know about the problems, and immediately started pointing out the problem spots asking what happened. Thanks Wolverine.
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