Yearly Archives: 2017

Deck paint this spring

 in Deck Paint & Deck Coating  tagged deck coating / deck paint / deck primer / deck restore / deck resurfacer / Renew It Deck coating / super duty deck painting / waterproof deck basecoat by

SPRING TIME = DECK TIME

Well it’s almost that time of the year again. The snow and ice will be melting off your decks and for many of you so will your deck coatings. If you don’t deal with this then the elements will damage your deck and you’ll need to get someone like Austin Fence & Deck – Repair & Replacement in to sort it. So you have a choice, do the same thing you do every year, strip and repaint or just repaint or reseal with that same clear sealer. All of which doesn’t work. So why not try something different?

ArmorGarage’s Renew It Coating is not a paint, stain or sealer. It’s a super thick cementitious coating that will stick to your concrete or wood decks like glue and stay looking new for many years. Off the shelf paints, stains and sealers are just not hearty enough to last as long as you want and need them to.

So strip off whatever you have on your deck now or should we say strip off whatever is left of whatever you have on your deck now. Then apply our deck primer and let that dry. Next apply two thick coats of Renew It with our special rollers and see how beautiful your deck can look and stay looking that way.

The key to good results is to clean your deck really good, you want the primer going directly on and into the deck surface. Then make sure the temperature will be above 50 degrees for the next 72 hours and no rain for the next 24 hours. Then roll on one coat and let dry for about 4 hours till hard to the touch. Then roll on the second coat. Don’t try to stretch it out, Renew It goes on really thick. That’s how in fills in cracks and holes. So it coats and repairs your deck surface at the same time. You should have approximately an 1/8″ costing on the surface. Any rotted boards should be replaced. You should replace them with untreated boards and give them a rough sanding prior to priming. This can be quite a long process, but it’s worth it. There are a number of things to consider when fixing your timber deck up, so follow this guide on sanding a timber deck. By following this guide, you’ll be sure to have the perfect decking you desire in no time.

So give Renew It a try and take next spring off from deck chores!

Before you buy an epoxy floor coating

 in Commercial Epoxy Flooring / Epoxy Flooring / Garage Floor Epoxy / Industrial Epoxy Flooring  tagged commercial epoxy flooring / epoxy flooring / garage epoxy / garage epoxy flooring / garage epoxy flooring price / garage floor epoxy cost / industrial epoxy flooring by

KNOW WHAT YOU’RE BUYING

Whenever you are buying anything it helps to know what exactly it is you’re buying. By that, we mean not simply knowing you’re buying a certain product such as a car, a steak, or an epoxy floor coating. A question that we get asked a lot is why is your epoxy coatings or garage flooring is more expensive than the other coatings and flooring products out there. Of course, you want the best Garage Flooring NH but you also should want it for the best price too.

Garage Floor Epoxy

To answer that the best way we can; lets use the analogy with the items above such as the car and a piece of steak. If you’re car shopping you can ask why is a Mercedes so much more than a Toyota? Well as we all know the Mercedes is a higher quality vehicle with much more expensive components and options. But why is a Mercedes S class so much more than a C class. Well again it’s a higher quality car, it’s bigger, with a bigger engine, more horsepower and has a lot more expensive options. Now lets take a piece of steak as an example. You can buy a nice Ribeye for about 9 bucks a pound and you can buy one for 29 bucks a pound. Why the difference, they’re both steaks? People tend to think that way with their epoxy flooring and garage flooring purchases. Why is one garage tile or epoxy floor paint so much more than the next one, they’re both tiles and paint. Well with the steaks, the $9.00 a pound steak is probably Choice grade, the $29.00 a pound steak is Prime grade, big difference. The more expensive steak may also be Dry Aged and Hormone free. We could go on but I think you get the picture.

The point we are trying to make here is that knowing the details about the products you want to purchase will give you a better understanding about the price levels of each product. For instance, before you buy an epoxy floor coating you should know whether it’s water based or not. If you buy an epoxy that’s water based you can be paying for water that comprises up to 50% of the product versus a high quality epoxy that is 100% epoxy. Lets say the 100% solid epoxy is like the Mercedes, now you have a C class epoxy and an S class epoxy. What’s the difference, they’re both 100%? One way to know is does the epoxy come with a true topcoat that has a hardened finish and not just a clear version of the unhardened epoxy? A true Topcoat is a hardened epoxy. To find out, check the abrasion rating, the lower the mg loss rating the better the coating. An abrasion rating over 20 means the Topcoat or epoxy is not hardened and it will not last. Check the impact rating, check the thickness of the coating. Thinner coating will obviously wear out faster than thicker coatings especially if they do not have a hardened finish with an abrasion rating of 20mgs or less. These are critical things to know. Knowing these facts will make sure you are buying an epoxy that will be up to the traffic load on your floor. It will also make it easier for you to make the purchase knowing that you are getting a much higher quality product.

The same can be said for garage tiles, some tiles are hollow core and made from recycled soda bottles versus our tiles that our solid high quality PVC. Again, a big difference. A hollow tile weighs less than a pound of the cheapest quality plastic while our tiles weight 4.5 lbs each of high grade PVC. So there is a perfectly good reason for the price differential just as there was for the steaks and the Mercedes. You just need to know there’s a difference and what that difference actually is.

So before you buy, check the specification, ask questions and make sure you know what you are buying and that you are satisfied with the level of quality you are purchasing.

Quality Epoxy vs Cheap Epoxy

 in Epoxy Flooring / Garage Floor Epoxy  tagged best floor epoxy / commercial epoxy flooring / epoxy floor types / epoxy flooring / garage floor epoxy cost / solid epoxy / water based epoxy by

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!

Wait before you park on new epoxy floor

 in Epoxy Flooring  tagged DIY Epoxy flooring / epoxy coating / epoxy paint / floor epoxy / garage floor epoxy by

HOW LONG DO I HAVE TO WAIT BEFORE I PARK MY CAR ON MY NEW EPOXY FLOOR?

epoxy flooringThis is a common question that has a few different answers. It depends on what type of vehicle you will be parking on your new epoxy floor and what type of epoxy paint you used. You normally have to wait a few days before parking any vehicle on a newly coated floor. The reason being is that although the epoxy will be dry to the touch in about 8-10 hours the chemical curing process is still going on.

Technically speaking the molecular cross linking is still occurring and as time goes on the cross links get tighter which means the coating is getting stronger and harder.

Depending on temperature and humidity we recommend you keep standard size vehicles off your floor for at least 3 days. Larger vehicles and SUVs should stay off 4 days. Heavy commercial vehicles should stay off for 5 days.

If downtime is critical we do make our Ultra Fast Drying military grade epoxy flooring system that lets you paint and be back in service, the next day! Although this coating is costlier to purchase, it can save you considerable sums of money from not having to shut your operations down for more than 24 hours.

So depending on what your needs are, what kind of vehicle you have, what the temperature is and what kind of epoxy you’ve applied it will all play a factor in when you can start driving a vehicle over your newly epoxy painted floor. If you can wait an extra day, it’s better to be safe than sorry. You can also always contact us for our advice when it comes to questions about your floor.