Tired of etching. When is good enough?

[mattlikesbikes]

Slab was poured six months ago but construction just finished up this week so I am clear to start finishing out the garage. I initially thought I wanted to use Seal Krete Clear Seal, but now that I have really washed down the slab the floor is not so hot looking. I'll get to that.

So I started with the single car tandem spot and used the Seal Krete Etch and clean product diluted 1:1 per the container. Damp floor, let is sit and got almost no reaction/bubble. Scrubbed it in, rinsed it off and squeeged it dry. Still smooth. Gave it a full second coat this time straight from the bottle, no dilution. Slightly better reaction, but still pretty smooth. and only a few spots of heavy etch where the sprayer leaked out large pools of the chemical.

So I tried the Behr clean and etch product today. Applied it to a dry floor straight. Great reactions so I did the entire 3 car garage. Spread it around, kept it wet and let it sit 20 minutes. Scrubbed it in, got lots of bubbles then too. rinsed, scrubbed, rinsed, squeeged, and let dry. Still some dust on the ground but overall still slick as snot.

Do I just have un-etchable concrete? As with the Seal Krete, where the Behr really pooled i have a good etch, but to pool enough of the stuff for the whole garage I am going to need 5-8 gallons.

At what point is it good enough to just put down a sealer? There is a lot of inconsistent patterns so I am not leaning towards a darker tinted sealer to better hide flaws.

I am really getting tired of the 2-3 hours it takes to etch, only to have nothing to show for my work.

Thoughts? Give in and try to find a rental grinder?

 

[doubloon]

From what I've read many people on this site consider etching to be an inferior route.

People seem to think renting a diamond grinder gives better results but you have to be willing to live with the possible swirl marks from the grinder.

 

[hpw]

do your local rental stores carry one of these

 

[mattlikesbikes]

Well I gave in. Yesterday I picked up the HomeDepot rental floor machine and put a nice grind on the whole floor. What a royal pain. Averaged out to roughly 100sqft/hr with washing and rinsing.

Now I am rethinking my flooring options from a simple wet look to an epoxy. Time to read more.

 

[Shea]

Clean and etch products clean more than they etch. They do OK on hand troweled patios and sidewalks, but not very well on professionally poured concrete surfaces - especially if they have been power troweled. They should never be used for floor prep for and epoxy floor. Muriatic acid works best for etching but requires you to be much more careful. The next best is phosphoric acid which is a little safer to work with.

Acrylic sealers like the one from Seal Krete do not require the same porous profiles as epoxy. If the surface of your concrete will absorb water after you used the Behr product, then your surface should be OK. If you decided to go with an epoxy coating instead, then grinding like you are doing now is the best prep or use a muriatic acid. And yes, no matter how you look at it, grinding for the DIY installer is a pain... It's worth it in the long though