Need Feedback on a Polyaspartic Garage Flooring Job

[mortyrick]

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Looking for opinions from folks who have had a polyaspartic/epoxy floor put in or who install these for a living. Is this is as bad as I think it is?

Details:

Live in a midwestern city. Paid a local company to put in a polyaspartic epoxy flake flooring into my garage. Paid about $2500 for a 3-car garage. They did the job on Saturday. I didn't get a chance to get a good look at it until Monday, since they finished late Saturday and said to stay off it for 24 hours. So far I am not impressed.

Issues that I see:

1. Very rough surface. There are lots of loose chips and chips standing on edge. If I run my hand over it, I catch lots of sharp edges. It actually crunches when I walk on it in some places.
2. Clumps of flakes in spots. Some are loose and some will definitely need to be scraped off.
3. Large bubbles in several places that looked like trapped gas or liquid.

I did reach out to the contractor and they said all that was normal because they broadcast to rejection to offer extra protection. They said the loose chips and rough edges would wear down over time.

After pushing back they said they'd send someone out to touch things up but I'm pretty annoyed as I don't consider the garage usable until the issues are fixed, and to me it looks like it needs more than a "touching up." Did I just have unrealistic expectations or is this a poor installation?

 

[Llws_2004]

I have installed many epoxy and poly aspartic flake floors. First of all, $2500 is extremely cheap for a 3 car garage, so I wouldn't expect a very well done job to begin with. That is a very poor install. Don't let them fool you. A good install should never have loose chips, sharp edges or bubbles. In my opinion that floor needs to be grinded and redone. It sounds like it was a one day install too? 1 day installs from my experience are garbage. It's always rushed and never turns out good. If it was me I'd make them either refund you or redo it properly.

 

[mortyrick]

It sounds like it was a one day install too? 1 day installs from my experience are garbage. It's always rushed and never turns out good. If it was me I'd make them either refund you or redo it properly.

It was a one day install Lesson learned about going with the cheapest quote!

 

[mortyrick]

Update:
They came out yesterday and scraped the bubbles and loose chips down and reapplied the top coat in some places. Honestly it looks better than it did before but still pretty much trash overall. It looks like they still managed to completely miss the top coat in some areas and there are now scrape marks in a few spots.

At this point I'm done with the contractor as I have no faith they'd be able to fix it if I made them come back out a 3rd time.

Seems like my options are 1) live with it or 2) try to fix it myself. Can I apply another layer of topcoat myself or is it too late?

 

[BadDogPSD]

Sounds like they didn't properly scrape the chip before installing the topcoat. You should be able to lightly sand what they put down and add another coat on top, but it would be best if you did the entire floor vs. trying to just fix the bad areas. You'll end up with a more consistent appearance.

 

[Imatk]

I think you'd have to find out what kind of material they used if you're going to do it yourself. Otherwise you might have a bad reaction.

If it was me I'd have them come out as many times as necessary to get it done to your satisfaction.

A few questions though, did they quote for a two-coat clear?

With one coat, your floor will probably be a bit "rougher" than with 2. I'm guessing one coat.

Did they grind the floor or just acid etch?

If they didn't grind you're probably going to have adhesion problems at least where you park your cars (hot tire pickup)

I paid nearly that much in material when I did it myself, depending on the sq. ft. of your garage I would say around 5k would probably be more "normal" a quote.

 

[mortyrick]

I think you'd have to find out what kind of material they used if you're going to do it yourself. Otherwise you might have a bad reaction.

I was planning to use ArmorPoxy's SPGX as another topcoat. Should I be concerned about any bad interactions? I'm pretty sure the existing topcoat is polyaspartic.

They did grind the floor, thankfully, so I'm not too worried about the underlying epoxy layer coming up. They put down 1 coat, but then came out and aggressively scraped the floor when I complained, so now it's pretty thin in most spots because the top coat came off with the flakes in a lot of spots.

It's the lack of a top coat that's bothering me. This contractor clearly has no clue what they're doing so at this point I'm not inclined to have them out for a 3rd time.

 

[RangerSVT]

I agree with Imatk. I would not involve myself with trying to repair the surface left by a contractor. Have them come back and give it their best shot again. If that fails, then ask for a full refund (I'm going to assume you've already paid in full) and start over.

 

[Imatk]

Agreed, I'd have them come back out and put another coat on there.

 

[Armorpoxy]

Most likely they rushed this job as for a full broadcast it's mandatory to scrape or sand the applied flecks since the fall in unevenly and do stick up and have lots of sharp edges so the surface needs to be 'knocked down' by some means and vacuumed well, and then topcoated. Normally two coats of topcoat are best since the first coat gets sucked into the millions of gaps created by the overlapping.

Usually a sanding and reapply of the topcoat can correct this.