Daily Archives: November 25, 2015

To Full Broadcast An Epoxy Floor Coating Or Not

 in Application Tips by

Full Broadcast An Epoxy Floor Coating

When doing an epoxy flooring job with color flakes you have the choice of how many pounds to broadcast into the epoxy. Some epoxy kits come with a ridiculously small amount of chips that makes your floor look like it got the measles. We offer two kits Armor Chip & Armor Granite. Armor Chip has 8lbs of color chips for a medium chip coverage, about 75% and Armor Granite has 20lbs of chips for a heavy chip coverage about 90%.

How much you do is up to your personal taste. We give plenty of chips so you can toss them into the epoxy until your eye tells you to stop cause you like the way it looks without worrying about running out of chips at the end. If you start out with insufficient amount of chips you will be forced to stretch them at the end and your floor will have a very obvious uneven chip pattern.

What we want to point out to you in this article is that although a full broadcast system looks great it is much more difficult to do. If you’ve never done it before we advise against you doing it. It is very difficult to get the chips to come out looking right, it takes a LOT more chips to do the job right and it take a lot more topcoat to cover the chips because you have to fill in all the nooks and crannies. It takes experience to get a full broadcast floor to look  professional. Plus it adds significant cost in the amount of chips and extra clear topcoat that you will need.  This is the reason why we offer our Armor Granite kit, you get the benefit of that beautiful granite look without the difficulties and cost of a full broadcast floor.

So if you want a full broadcast look, hire a pro to do it for you. If you like the way the floor looks below then you can do it yourself with one of our epoxy kits. We don’t know about you but we think it doesn’t get much better than this floor which happens to be an Armor Granite kit.

CHARCOLE

PS: You can still purchase our epoxy kits and have someone experienced apply it for you if your heart is set on full broadcast. Just call us so we can order the right amount of extra chips and topcoat for your floor size.

Floor Leveling

 in Epoxy Trouble Shooting Guide by

Floor Leveling before Floor Epoxy

When doing a slurry to level out an uneven floor it’s critical that the preparation is done properly. It doesn’t matter if you are going to apply an epoxy floor coating over it, put down some type of flooring or just leave it plain. The concrete must be profiled properly so that the slurry will bond to it. We recommend a shot blasting. It’s cheaper than grinding and it leaves a rougher surface.

Also use a good quality product such as Aedex-15 or CMP. These are commercial grade products that will last you a lot longer than the bargain stuff you can buy at your local Home Improvement store.

If you are applying an epoxy coating always check with the manufacturer on the wait time after curing. The cure time before you can apply any coating varies greatly between products. Also make sure the product you use is rated for the thickness you need to float the slurry at and that it can handle the intended traffic load at that thickness.

Most times the slurry is applied with a Gage rake which is simply an adjustable flat blade on rollers. You set the blade for the desired thickness and you roll the rake over the slurry. It spreads the slurry out at the desired thickness.

Done right slurries can save a floor that is in really bad shape, they are not just for leveling. But done wrong and you’ll end up like this:

Floor Epoxy

For less drastic floor repairs visit our concrete repair page for a selection of products that can repair cracks, divots and holes in your slab.