Quality Epoxy vs Cheap Epoxy
WHEN IS AN EPOXY BARGAIN NOT A BARGAIN?
Everyone likes to get a good deal and save money. But sometimes a good deal is not really a good deal at all. That’s most often the case when dealing with epoxy floor coatings. There are many different types and prices range from $75.00 for a Home Improvement store kit to our kits that are north of $500.00. What is the difference? And how can you tell high-quality epoxy, like the epoxy at Epoxy Flooring Sugar Land, and low-quality epoxy that’s not going to help your floor at all?
Well, first there are epoxies made with different types of bases. There’s water based, solvent based and solids based. With solids based epoxies being the best. Then there’s different classes of epoxies such as Aliphatic, cycloaliphatic, polyaspartic and polycuramine.
Let’s talk about bases first. Water based epoxies are your lowest quality epoxies since about 50% of the epoxy is water. So that as the epoxy dries the water evaporates out and you’re left with only about 50% of paint material on the floor. In addition to that, water based epoxies have low abrasion resistance, poor adhesion and will wear off your floor very quickly. The same applies to most solvent based epoxies, they’re just not good quality coatings. Solids based epoxies are the most expensive to make and when you apply it to your floor you get whatever percentage of solids in the epoxy onto your floor. For instance, if you apply a 100% solids epoxy, you get 100% of the epoxy onto your floor. If you apply a 90% solids epoxy, you lose 10% of the product to evaporation. Our Garage Floor epoxies are 100% solids.
Now let’s talk about the different classes of epoxy. You will hear and read all sorts of things that this epoxy is X times stronger and this epoxy is superior to standard epoxies, etc. Take it from somebody whose made and used every type of epoxy out there, Aliphatic is the best tried and true type of epoxy. A 100% solids Aliphatic epoxy combined with a Urethane epoxy topcoat is the best floor coating you can use on your floor. Cycloaliphatic epoxies, even if they’re 100% solids are no match. They’re not as abrasion resistant, not as thick and are not UV stable! Some of our competition try to pass off their epoxy in a clear version as a topcoat. Don’t be fooled, you are just wasting your time and money. Polycuramine epoxies claim to be 20 times stronger than epoxy but we never see any specifications as to what and where they are stronger. The fact is that these well marketed epoxy kits are only 3.6 Mils thick as opposed to our Armor Chip & Armor Granite epoxy flooring that are on average 20 Mils thick. The polycuramine kits are not UV rated and do not provide the stated coverage. So you have to buy a lot of extra material to finish your floor and then the colors don’t match cause you have different batches. So the bargain you thought you were getting is now costing you almost as much as an ArmorGarage epoxy floor and it’s nowhere as durable and it looks terrible. So now if you want your floor to look right you will end up spending much more money and time than if you just bought an ArmorGarage kit in the first place.
Polyaspartic epoxies are good in the right applications, they cure very fast but are thin mil and are difficult to work with. If you need a polyaspartic epoxy we recommend you consult with one of our experts.
So in sum, when dealing with water based, cycloaliphatic and polycuramine epoxies they may all seem like a good deal but at the end of the day you will be disappointed. You will have curing issues, color issues, coverage issues and most of all they won’t last anywhere as long as you thought they would.
Saving a few dollars should not be your main goal when doing and epoxy floor job. With epoxy coatings you really do get what you pay for!