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You are here: Home / Archives for muriatic acid

Three Ways to Make Your Garage Floor Look Great and Withstand Use and Harsh Weather

August 23, 2016 by Rick Scully

We seldom think about the garage floor. However, this important surface undergoes continuous abuse. It must bear the weight of vehicles, withstand damage caused by debris tracked in on tires and shoes and hold its own against leaking automotive fluids. Fluctuating temperatures of sweltering summer heat and frigid Canadian winters cause concrete floors to expand and contract. Then there is the battle of the elements: rain, sleet, snow and salt that gets tracked in on shoes and tires.

Examine your garage floor. Is the surface beginning to show wear? Bare concrete tends to crack, stain or become pitted with age. Cracks and stains not only diminish the beauty of your garage floor, they can compromise the surface, making it vulnerable to degradation. A garage floor coating or covering can preserve the surface and add instant pizzazz. Let’s examine three different garage flooring system options that will enhance the look of your garage and reinforce your floors to better withstand use and harsh weather.

Cover and Protect with PVC Tiles

2 car garage, stouffville, left rear door, pvc floor tiles, punched aluminum baseboard, slatwall, custom overhead platform, shelves, bike rack, bicycle storageThere are several factors to consider when selecting the best garage flooring system. Budget and personal preference play a major role. However, the condition of your garage floor is also a consideration. Substantial pitting or cracking requires that voids be filled before coating is applied. Alternately, an interlocking PVC tile floor will hide imperfections and protect floors from further damage.

PVC tile offers a less permanent solution. Individual 19 5/8” x 19 5/8” square tiles lock together like puzzle pieces. Available in a range of colors, this modular flooring system can quickly and easily transform the look of your garage while hiding stains and imperfections. Choose tiles in a smooth, matte finish or select a raised medallion surface for additional skid prevention.

4 car garage, greater toronto area - garage floor tiles, slatwall organizer, hooks, shelves, overhead storage, bike rackInterlocking PVC tiles are sturdy, attractive and chemical-resistant. They can easily be adapted to fit any garage configuration. Since no adhesive is used, simply remove and replace a single tile in the event of damage. PVC tile can be hosed down, pressure washed, mopped or hand scrubbed.

The area where drywall meets the floor is susceptible to damage caused by moisture or abuse—like dents from scooters or bicycles. Protect this vulnerable area of the wall by finishing off the look off with six-inch vinyl baseboards. This prevents water damage to the wall and stops water from seeping beneath the tiles, creating mildew.

Seal the Deal with Epoxy Coating

Epoxy is a floor coating that is applied directly to concrete floors. While it is sold in big box stores, consumers run into problems when applying epoxy because they dismiss the importance of surface preparation. More than a simple, weekend DIY project, applying epoxy paint to a garage floor requires several steps in order to achieve the very best results.

washing garage floorProperly applying epoxy to a concrete floor can require three or four days—during which the garage must remain empty. Major cracks must be repaired to create a smooth finish. Most importantly, the moisture level of the concrete must be checked to determine if a barrier is needed. Skipping this step is the critical mistake most DIYers make. If too much moisture is present, it will seep through the concrete, preventing proper adhesion of the product. When applied under such conditions, the coating begins to flake or chip within a year.

Next, a professional garage floor installation team will use a commercial grinder to remove 1/16th of an inch of the uppermost layer of concrete. This opens the pores of the surface and prepares it to accept the coating. Some may consider bypassing professional installation and using muriatic acid to clean and open the pores of the surface. We do not recommend the use of this hazardous chemical, which isn’t always effective on older concrete surfaces.

Once the surface is properly prepared, a moisture barrier must be applied if the concrete has a high moisture content. After application of the water seal, the epoxy is rolled onto the surface. It must cure before the surface is used.

Epoxy coats the top layer of the surface, sealing it. This stain-resistant coating causes water and oil to bead on the surface, so it can easily be wiped away. Epoxy comes in a wide range of colours and provides some skid resistance. The look is finished with vinyl baseboards in a complementary colour.

Epoxy provides a great, water-resistant coating that can give your garage floor a new look. While it costs much less than polyaspartic coating, application takes at least twice as long. Since the coating sits atop the surface, it is vulnerable to cracking and fading over time due to thermal expansion and contraction of the concrete. However, an epoxy coating application can provide a beautiful, stain-resistant floor for many years.

Polyaspartic Coating—Beautiful, Flexible and Long-lasting

1 car garage, toronto - garage flooringAt Garage Tailors Garage, polyaspartic coating is the preferred garage floor coating. The same preparation steps described above, are required. However, since polyaspartic coating doesn’t take as long to cure, it can be applied in as little as one day. It can also be applied over minor cracks in concrete flooring.

Water-soluble polyaspartic coating penetrates the concrete, providing better surface protection than coatings which only coat the top layer. The water-soluble nature of polyaspartic coating makes it fluid, allowing it to shift with the concrete through the expansion and contraction caused by hot and cold temperatures.

Polyaspartic coating is available in an array of attractive colours. A professional garage floor installation team can even create a custom colour for you. To achieve the look, a base coat is applied to the floor. A specified combination of colour flakes is sprinkled over the base coat and allowed to cure. Excess chips and sharp edges are shaved off and vacuumed away before the final sealant is applied. This textured coating looks great and provides excellent skid resistance.

polyaspartic flooring over stairsStandard vinyl baseboards can complete the look. However, polyaspartic coating affords an additional baseboard option that gives a garage a more polished finish. The thicker consistency of polyaspartic coating is ideal for creating a seamless baseboard or wainscoting effect. Plywood is attached to the walls. Then the coating is applied over the wood to create a unified baseboard.

Polyaspartic coating is versatile and provides a durable, attractive finish that is guaranteed for the life of your garage floor. To maintain it, simply clean the floor with soap and water or pressure wash it twice a year.

Bare concrete floors generate dust and are susceptible to staining and cracking that gets worse with age. Garage floor coatings and coverings are not only beautiful, but functional. They protect concrete floors from stains and other damage. While garage floor covering or coating is an investment, it can protect floors indefinitely while improving the look and value of your home. Prepare your garage floor to withstand the beating of heavy use and thermal expansion and contraction. Request a consultation to review the available garage flooring systems and see which one is right for you.

 

Filed Under: Garage Floors Tagged With: chemical-resistant garage flooring, concrete floors, epoxy floor coating, garage floor coating, garage flooring system options, interlocking PVC tile floor, modular flooring system, moisture barrier, muriatic acid, professional garage floor installation, stain-resistant floor coating, water-resistant coating, water-soluble polyaspartic floor coating

Garage Flooring, The Untold Story

August 13, 2013 by Rick Scully

2 car garage willowdale showcase - painted garage floor, cement block floor

Nowadays many homeowners who want to refinish their garage floors start with online searches or queries with the neighborhood big-box store.  Oftentimes, these inspired homeowners walk out with a do-it-yourself recipe that is sadly lacking a few key ingredients.  Much like leaving out a key ingredient such as yeast when you want to bake a loaf of bread, it’s the missing ingredients that can make or break the success of your garage floor refinishing project.

 The Facts about Proper Garage Floor Refinishing

You have undoubtedly heard the wisdom from the old days about how it’s all about the preparation. That is especially true with your garage floor.  The initial preparation steps are essential to properly finishing your garage floor.

First of all, before any real action starts, the garage floor must be tested for moisture content.  Some of those D-I-Y recipes often fail to mention how important is to determine how much water there is in your concrete floor.  The professional installation team here at Garage Tailors Garage begins each and every floor refinishing project by conducting a moisture test at various sample points around your floor.  You see, without the appropriate strategies to prevent water seeping up into your new floor finish, any existing moisture may well propagate through the concrete and lead to pop ups, peeling or even cracking.  Knowing how much moisture is already there tells the installation team how best to proceed when your new floor coating is applied.

Now that the moisture content has been checked and recorded, the real preparation work begins.  This phase of the project is referred to by the professionals as “opening up the pores”. For now, here’s what you need to know about this process.  You might have seen or heard some recommendations to use muriatic acid to clean or open up the pores in your concrete floor.  This is a lousy idea for a couple of reasons.  As you know, muriatic acid is a hazard.  You do not want to be using this chemical in an enclosed space, or certainly, not without the proper breathing attire, hand and eye protection, that sort of thing.  But more importantly, muriatic acid does not actually perform well on older concrete to clean or open up the pores.  Muriatic acid reacts with existing organics in or on your floor to bind them or lock them into the cement.  Organics are substances such as oils, greases, plant matterand so on. When organic compounds are bound in place, instead of being chemically removed, it does not allow concrete pores from being opened up for a long lasting floor application.

concrete floor preparation grinderProfessional garage floor preparation is best accomplished by an abrasive grinding process which removes the top 1/16 of an inch from the top of your floor.  Understand this grinding process is not even possible without the proper equipment.  The commercial grinder used by professionals is equipped with a large circular carbide blade which removes the uppermost layer of the existing floor.  Additionally, these industrial grinders are equipped with a continuously running vacuum which captures any resulting concrete dust.  You will see the installation team wheel this monster tool into your garage and then carefully grind the entire floor.

The newly exposed concrete is now ready for the next phase of the project.  At this point, the installation team does an exceedingly careful inspection of your garage floor.  They look for and carefully identify and mark any cracks, voids, pitting, etc.  These areas are then carefully repaired one by one with hydraulic cement, a common concrete material found at the big box stores.  This patching material is a fast-curing concrete repair material.  This repair material is allowed to dry, which takes less than an hour.

At this point, your preparation steps are just about complete. The installation team carefully sweeps up any loose material, smoothes out any rough repair material and ensures the entire surface is ready for the next step.  After removing all the loose material, the team  works on the  moisture barrier.  In this case, the moisture barrier is a solution that is carefully and methodically applied to the entire surface of your floor.  This highly specialized sealant material penetrates through the freshly opened pores of the concrete to bind the sealant and create that essential water barrier that prevents floor coatings from lifting.  Once it is dry, this sealant protects your floor and your new floor covering from moisture intrusion.

Does all of the above sound like a lot?  Well, for a homeowner or a weekend D-I-Y ‘er, it might be, but for the professional installation team here at Garage Tailors Garage, it’s all in a day’s work.

Next: Once the floor is prepared, how is the new floor coating applied? 

Filed Under: Garage Floors Tagged With: abrasive grinding process, breathing attire, circular carbide blade, commercial grinder, concrete floor, D-I-Y recipes, floor coatings, floor covering, floor refinishing, floor test, garage flooring, hand -eye protection, moisture barrier, moisture content, moisture intrusion, muriatic acid, Garage Tailors Garage, organic compounds, professional installation team, sealant, water barrier

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Mississauga, Ontario
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