Opinions Requested

[iusamson]

I'm currently raising the ceiling in my everyday roughly 24 x 22 (Including 4' gas curb) garage and i'm looking for advice on what other folks think would work well for me for garage coating / flooring

The current condition of the concrete is likely below average. It's seen ~40 years of Chicago winters and it shows - lots of spalling and small cracks.

I'm raising the roof so i can get a four post lift + tool boxes and work bench in to play with my car projects (67 camaro, 67 mustang, 65 corvette) - i just had twin daughters, and find that I needed to move my projects closer to home so I can spend nap times in the garage, rather than sacrificing my time with them when they are awake.

With this being our everyday garage, i'm looking for something that's easy to keep clean with a broom, and is somewhat resistant to the few chemicals I use.

The quotes in my area for re-coating are a bit extreme for my budget ($3-$4k) and I'm not sure I want to devote significant time (see twins above) to filling/smoothing/whatever the imperfections in my floor. Looking for something easy and DIY that fills my needs:

Coatings: it sounds like there are a few out there with varying levels of good and bad. My question is - am I wasting my time trying to epoxy / polyurea / whatever my floors if i'm unwilling to do the filling of cracks/spalling? I think i'm fine if the coating doesn't look perfect (maybe some heavy flake to distract) - i'm just looking to understand if the coating(s) will perform and last the same.

Floortiles/mats/VCT: This seems like the no-brainer as no floor prep is needed, but i have concerns about my wife pulling in with the minivan, cranking the wheels when she's stopped (highly likely to happen) and ripping up the tiles in the garage. Also i'm curious about how easy they sweep and handle the four post lifts. I was thinking of doing the gas curb (it's 4' in some areas) in a mat as one of the more significant cracks are on this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

 

[onsail]

look at Racedeck flooring. Hard to beat the durability, flexibility and ease of install. Im on my 2nd garage with it. I just cut around where my 2 post lift sits, everything else is ontop of it.

 

[RLIZRD]

look at Racedeck flooring. Hard to beat the durability, flexibility and ease of install. Im on my 2nd garage with it. I just cut around where my 2 post lift sits, everything else is ontop of it.

I get that Racedeck looks great and is easy to install, but if you're using your garage to work on vehicles, how do you clean the floors once motor oil or other fluids seep through the Racedeck to the concrete below?

 

[BigGarage]

I'm currently raising the ceiling in my everyday roughly 24 x 22 (Including 4' gas curb) garage and i'm looking for advice on what other folks think would work well for me for garage coating / flooring

The current condition of the concrete is likely below average. It's seen ~40 years of Chicago winters and it shows - lots of spalling and small cracks.

With this being our everyday garage, i'm looking for something that's easy to keep clean with a broom, and is somewhat resistant to the few chemicals I use.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

I'm just outside Detroit and the Winters sure don't do concrete any favors as you point out. Probably about 40 years ago my Uncle had the floor repoured over the original floor and it was showing it's wear & tear in about 2012.

I have the home now and decided to paint the floor. It's sloped towards the center and towards the doors so washing it with a hose and sweeping it out was the 1st step.

Then I had to use a degreaser to clean all the grease & oils on the floor from years of abuse.

After that I used an acid etching liquid (sulfuric acid I think) on the floor and then washed it all out while sweeping it well with a broom. If you do this make certain you have the doors open as I dumped a bunch of the acid on a wet floor and a big cloud of unbreathable gas rose up and choked me.

I had to wait 24 hours to then apply a primer coat. It's very important to clean & wash the acid out very well so the primer and paint work.

After priming some of the squares I had to wait 24 hours to paint them. After painting I waited a couple of days to move things to the painted areas so I could prime the other areas. After a day or two I painted and then the entire floor was complete.

My interior bays where the cars park and where the workbench is is 27 1/2 feet wide and 20 1/4 feet front to rear.

This floor has held up very well to the abuse I've dealt it. Oil, antifreeze, gas, trans fluid, brake fluid and other things clean up nicely from it. I've done nothing but sweep it out every now & then even though I could wash it if I wanted. It's getting crowded out there now so washing is out.

The biggest benefit besides it looks nice and cleans up well it that it prevents moisture from seeping up through the floor in the Summer and even on humid days you can tell the difference.

If you don't mind doing some washing & sweeping and then priming & painting then I'd recommend this method.

I forgot to mention that I did patch up a couple of small sections of the floor (less than 5" x 5") and it came out well. I didn't worry about any cracks though.

I am going to post a couple of pics from when I first painted it and then a couple from a few minutes ago. You can see in the last two pics that I painted the walls also.

 

[Cairo94507]

Porcelain tile. Do it once and be done with it. I park our 2 performance tire equipped cars in the garage and those tires get hot when driving. The porcelain is bullet proof and I have had no issues at all. I followed Dakota00's thread on his porcelain tile and it convinced me to go that direct5ion. I could not be happier- well, if it was a 4 car garage instead of a 3 car, I would be happier.

 

[Armorpoxy]

Hi
Any coating you use will 'telegraph' through the surface texture and irregularities so unless you do a lot of prep work (not easy and expensive to do right) the floor will look like an old, painted floor.

Use of the solid www.supratile.com could go over this easily and we suggest the use of the adhesive we carry to lock it down. We park 80,000 lb fire apparatus on these floors and they turn their wheels all the time without damaging the tiles. Hollow/waffle type tiles are not able to be easily glued down.

You could complete this in a single day, and comes with lifetime warranty.

We have a special website just for our Fire Division www.armor-tuff.com.

 

[BigGarage]

Porcelain tile. Do it once and be done with it. I park our 2 performance tire equipped cars in the garage and those tires get hot when driving. The porcelain is bullet proof and I have had no issues at all. I followed Dakota00's thread on his porcelain tile and it convinced me to go that direct5ion. I could not be happier- well, if it was a 4 car garage instead of a 3 car, I would be happier.

Would you recommend this method to a person in Chicago where the OP is? Freezing, melting snow & ice, salt dripping can all do a lot of damage to a garage floor.

 

[Armorpoxy]

The Supratiles are literally impervious so salts and chemicals. We do recommend using our adhesive at least on the first few rows to 'lock' the floor down and prevent shifting or buckling if the sun comes around and they get very warm and expand.

We sell these tiles in Alaska and down into the Caribbean with no issues in any geographic areas.

 

[ddawg16]

I don't think we should give any more advice to the OP until he posts pics of said vehicles.

 

[astroracer]

What "work" are you going to be doing on the cars? Any welding? Painting? The last thing I need to worry about in my shop is messing up a nice floor... So my floor isn't nice... It gets weld and grinding slag, paint, oil and grease and heavy stuff dropped on it all the time. It's a shop floor not a rec room...
If the floor is serviceable just sweep it out when the need arises, that's all you need to do... Put the money into the Camaro...
If your "stuff" is cool enough, no one will be looking at the floor anyway...

No one has walked into my shop and said "My, what a nasty floor you have..."

Mark

 

[rsanter]

Grind the floor to a flat even surface and polish the floor.
Use a densifier and you can apply a coat of wax once a year.
This is what we did at work as our floor was in poor shape.
The grinding exposed the agrigate which I think looks cool.
Densifier kind of seals up the pores for the most part.
You may want to add a clear coat because of the salt in winter.

We have lots of foot traffic, fork lifts, carts and such on the floor and it is super easy to keep up and keep clean.
We clean and was once a year


Other option would be clean the floor, likly shot blast.
Then skim coat to level with an epoxy and grind smooth for epoxy paint.

For my garage the floor was very stained but otherwise in good shape.
I water blasted several times and acid etched several times.
Rolled on an epoxy coat myself.
Has been easy to keep clean, sweeps and washes off easy.
The down side is doing a paint repair would mean recoating an entire section and odds are won’t look like it matches.

In my last garage I did the very basic and cheap garage floor paint.
Looked good, swept and moped easy and washed or blew off easy.

The downside is that I was prone to scratching when I dragged something over it and I had issues with got tire pickup.
The upside was it was cheap and easy and when I did damage the floor it was easy to clean and touch up that area and it didn’t show that it was touched up

Bob