Pre-Epoxy Moisture Concerns

[cosmic_kitchen]

Hey everyone, first post here but I’ve been reading through several threads in preparation to do an epoxy floor in my ~ 500sq ft attached garage. The house was built in 1988 and I’m located in Raleigh, NC.

I ran the plastic square moisture test prior to ordering my product. All 5 squares were completely dry after 48 hours and with excitement I went ahead and ordered my supplies from ArmorPoxy.

Delays in shipping, weather, and life pushed this project off and now I’ve decided to wait until it warms up a bit in spring/early summer.

My concern is that last week we had a pretty gnarly rainstorm and I went out to the garage for something and noticed visible moisture on my recently ground pad. Talking about the patches closer to the camera in the photo. Disregard the obvious water by the garage door that got opened for a second during the downpour.

I’m a little concerned now that my initial plastic square tests may not have told the whole story and worried the product I have on hand now might not perform well if I have significant moisture coming through the floor during heavy rains.

Any thoughts or advice on this? I was thinking about getting a few calcium chloride tests and running one after a dry week and running one during a wet week to see something quantifiable.

I purchased and planned for one coat of ArmorPoxy II primer (ARM144X), one coat of ArmorUltra 100% solids (ARM707X), full flake, and two coats of the ArmorUltra polyaspartic topcoat (ARM321X).

Should I scrap the primer for a vapor barrier rated primer or will the floor perform if I apply and allow to fully cure during a dry period and it only encounters intermittent excess moisture?

Thanks for any input.

 

[FJ4FUN]

Calcium Chloride test plan...

 

[Shea]

Hey everyone, first post here but I’ve been reading through several threads in preparation to do an epoxy floor in my ~ 500sq ft attached garage. The house was built in 1988 and I’m located in Raleigh, NC.

I ran the plastic square moisture test prior to ordering my product. All 5 squares were completely dry after 48 hours and with excitement I went ahead and ordered my supplies from ArmorPoxy.

Delays in shipping, weather, and life pushed this project off and now I’ve decided to wait until it warms up a bit in spring/early summer.

My concern is that last week we had a pretty gnarly rainstorm and I went out to the garage for something and noticed visible moisture on my recently ground pad. Talking about the patches closer to the camera in the photo. Disregard the obvious water by the garage door that got opened for a second during the downpour.

I’m a little concerned now that my initial plastic square tests may not have told the whole story and worried the product I have on hand now might not perform well if I have significant moisture coming through the floor during heavy rains.

Any thoughts or advice on this? I was thinking about getting a few calcium chloride tests and running one after a dry week and running one during a wet week to see something quantifiable.

I purchased and planned for one coat of ArmorPoxy II primer (ARM144X), one coat of ArmorUltra 100% solids (ARM707X), full flake, and two coats of the ArmorUltra polyaspartic topcoat (ARM321X).

Should I scrap the primer for a vapor barrier rated primer or will the floor perform if I apply and allow to fully cure during a dry period and it only encounters intermittent excess moisture?

Thanks for any input.

Did you have moisture under the cardboard box and plastic pail? If you have a problem with moisture from below the slab, the concrete would be wet under such objects. It's the same principle as the plastic sheet test. If not, it may be concrete sweating (condensation) that you are experiencing (not a problem). The article below explains the differences.

Why your Garage Floor Sweats and How to Stop it | All Garage Floors

Discover the best methods to stop your garage floor from getting damp when it rains. Learn why concrete sweats and how to prevent it.

allgaragefloors.com

 

[cosmic_kitchen]

Did you have moisture under the cardboard box and plastic pail? If you have a problem with moisture from below the slab, the concrete would be wet under such objects. It's the same principle as the plastic sheet test. If not, it may be concrete sweating (condensation) that you are experiencing (not a problem). The article below explains the differences.

Why your Garage Floor Sweats and How to Stop it | All Garage Floors

Discover the best methods to stop your garage floor from getting damp when it rains. Learn why concrete sweats and how to prevent it.

allgaragefloors.com

Unfortunately I did, but again, only coinciding with the rain.

 

[Armorpoxy]

If the water came through the door then it should be fine, just let it dry before coating. We sell garage door gasket material to prevent this going forward too.

Perhaps to make sure in the Spring get a couple of actual Moisture Test Kits to test it accurately and then contact us directly for guidance as we have a variety of solutions to make sure you get a good outcome.

 

[cosmic_kitchen]

If the water came through the door then it should be fine, just let it dry before coating. We sell garage door gasket material to prevent this going forward too.

Perhaps to make sure in the Spring get a couple of actual Moisture Test Kits to test it accurately and then contact us directly for guidance as we have a variety of solutions to make sure you get a good outcome.

There is water that came through the door in the photo, and replacing/adding gaskets is definitely in the plan. But my concern are the moisture patches closer up in the photo. Those did not result from direct surface water.

I’ve ordered the moisture tests and will run them a few times over the next few months and track the results. I’ll give you guys a call in the spring before I coat.

 

[Armorpoxy]

Great, let us know what you find. We also have a nice spray on treatment and is inexpensive that has worked well to hold back moisture.

True Moisture barrier epoxy is expensive since it goes down at only 100 sq ft/gal and needs aggressive grinding or shot blasting for adhesion so we try to steer clear of that if we can.

 

[FJ4FUN]

All Moisture Vapor test procedures represent a snapshot in time, so for those of you considering a spring/summer coating project, now is a great time to check for MVT. Most quality primers will handle up to 3.0 - 3.5lbs per 1,000sf MVT. If you are seeing calcium chloride results above this make sure that you reach out to your vendor/s of choice to get their guidance before proceeding.

Calcium Chloride test kits are cheap and easy. Considering the investment in time and materials to do a proper floor coating, skipping this step makes very little sense.

Here's a good FAQ re: Calcium Chloride testing

 

[Shea]

Unfortunately I did, but again, only coinciding with the rain.

Well, shoot. You need to perform a calcium chloride test then to determine exactly how much moisture comes up through the slab in those conditions. As the previous posters stated, there are products you can use depending on how much moisture you have.

 

[cosmic_kitchen]

Reviving this thread to provide my results. Out of three moisture tests two of them were 1-1.5 lbs/1000 sqft. One of them was 3.2 lbs/1000sqft. Going to try to call Armorpoxy today to see what this spray is all about and if they'd recommend anything. Hoping to get the floors done in the next two weeks....finally.

 

[Armorpoxy]

Hi, the product we recommend (and you can buy direct) is this product which is an inexpensive vapor barrier. But with the readings you have you shouldn't need to use this, but there is no downside.

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.vanhearron.com/pdf/DS-PD.pdf

 

[cosmic_kitchen]

Awesome thanks for the response. I got a hold of someone at Armorpoxy that didn't have this information. They said they used to carry something that matched my description but no longer do.

Despite my low results, I think I'd like to apply something like this as a safeguard. I think there is a large variability in the moisture transfer in this slab and my highest result of 3.2 lbs I think may have been a little skewed (user error) with a large majority of that moisture occurring in a short window on the first day of the test. I got busy one day and ended up leaving the test for an additional 24 hours. I included the additional time in my result calculation, but the extra day was very dry/I don't believe added much (if any) recordable moisture weight, in theory "time-diluting" my calculated result.

 

[Armorpoxy]

Thank you, we responded via GJ as this product since we don't direclty sell it frequently not everyone in our Sales Office is familiar with it.

 

[cosmic_kitchen]

So I've now chatted with someone from Sales and someone from technical support at Armorpoxy, neither have heard of this product or were able to offer any information about its compatibility with the Armorpoxy products I have. From what I can read the Deep Seal is a water-based concrete sealer and all of my research up to this point has indicated that epoxy floor coating should never be applied over a sealer and that it needs to be ground off prior to application?

I'm hesitant to order the Deep Seal without some sort of assertion from someone at Armorpoxy or some literature that may indicate the products are compatible.

 

[Armorpoxy]

Hi, we have recommended this product many times over the years, again it's a specialty product that we don't carry hence why our Sales Team is not familiar with it.

If moisture is your concern, the next step would be to use MVB (moisture vapor barrier) epoxy which we sell lots of, but is much more expensive.

We have had zero issues with using Deep Seal and our epoxy in the past. Sorry for any confusion on this.

 

[Armorpoxy]

Also per the Deep Seal technical data sheet they recommend it for use with epoxies and such, see below,

USES: Deep Seal hardens, densifies, seals and cures concrete while it
reduces vapor emissions for application of surface coatings such as
polyuria coatings, epoxy coatings, urethane coatings, as well as carpet,
floor tile, sheet vinyl, and hardwood flooring materials.

 

[cosmic_kitchen]

Thanks for the reply, I continued my research. I wasn't aware of the different types of sealers (negative side vs positive side) and had just always read that any sealer on a pad needed to be removed prior to epoxy going down. I ordered a couple jugs of Deep Seal

 

[DirtyV]

We sell garage door gasket material to prevent this going forward too.

I searched, to no avail. Do you mind sharing a link?

 

[Armorpoxy]

Thanks for the reply, I continued my research. I wasn't aware of the different types of sealers (negative side vs positive side) and had just always read that any sealer on a pad needed to be removed prior to epoxy going down. I ordered a couple jugs of Deep Seal

No worries happy to assist.

 

[Armorpoxy]

I searched, to no avail. Do you mind sharing a link?

Hi we recently discontinued this item since they are availble on Amazon, There are a bunch of them, different widths.

https://www.amazon.com/Garadry-Garage-Door-Threshold-Seal/dp/B01FR2G6HQ/?tag=atomicindus08-20

 

[cosmic_kitchen]

@DirtyV I can't comment on the effectiveness of the different designs, but out of the ones on amazon, those Garadry brand ones are on average 500000% more expensive as the other alternatives.. Some on there for a 20' door are only $35 while the Garadry is $135-300.. for a literal strip of rubber

 

[Armorpoxy]

Agree, there are lots of options. We recently built a whole new website and online store and we cleaned up and removed some of the slower moving items to focus on our bread and butter coating systems.