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The answer is how well will the coating resist wear and tear, Abrasion is the biggest enemy of any epoxy floor coating. If your coating doesn’t have the proper thickness and a true high performance urethane topcoat your floor is going to look great the first day you put it down. But then 90% of the time its downhill from there. The destructive forces of your vehicle’s tires, road salts and chemicals will see to that and once they penetrate the surface of your coating ever so slightly it begins an irreversible process of dirt spots, dull spots, staining, moisture and or chemical degradation. The key is to have an impenetrable layer over your actual epoxy. Some companies just use the same epoxy in a clear version, that’s not a topcoat. Your topcoat has to be much harder than your epoxy otherwise it’s a waste of money.

ArmorGarage has the best topcoats in the business, it’s why our floors look so great even after 15-20 years! That’s not just us saying that either. Take a look at the video at the top of the Home Page, it’s an Armor Chip floor with our military grade topcoat done almost 16 years ago and it still looks new even with big SUVs,and several cars turning in and out of their parking spaces several times a day! It’s still glossy enough where it still reflects light! This is not what you’re going to get with off the shelf garage epoxy floor coatings.

Now take a look at this CASE STUDY towards the bottom of the page. It’s a floor done with Armor Chip, primer and the military grade topcoat. When you first look at the pictures you’re going to say to yourself that floor looks like bloody hell and say what are the ArmorGarage guys thinking of showing this floor off. Well when you hear the facts about the floor you’ll realize why we’re showing it off. The floor is in a large Liquor warehouse store in NJ that has an average of 3000 customers per day walking through the store. There is also all sorts of other mean nasty and abusive things being done to the floor 7 days a week 365 days a year. There’s forklifts, pallet jacks, hand trucks running around all day, there’s employees dragging pallets across the floor by hand all day and shopping carts rolling around nonstop. On top of all that the floor has gotten zero maintenance, no washings or cleaning at all. The only time it’s cleaned is if a customer drops a bottle of alcohol on it and it’s wiped up by an employee. That’s the extent of maintenance performed. So when you take all that into account it’s easy to see why the floor looks like it does but in reality it’s in great shape after 14 years of abuse and neglect. So how does this apply to you? Just think about your application, you have a car, a pickup or SUV that you basically pull straight in and out everyday. That’s child’s play for this floor and why your floor will still look great at it’s 20th anniversary.

So at the end of the day you might be told that’s what you’re getting and what you think you’re getting with another product you’re considering to purchase but it’s just not going to happen. The video and this case study is all you need to know to purchase your epoxy floor coating with peace of mind!

The following is from a customer who had a very badly pitted garage floor. He used Rapid Set Concrete Mix instead of our concrete Crack & Joint Repair Compound because he had to basically patch the entire floor. Our product is easier to work with and is suited for cracks, divots and joints but not really a skim coat product. He also advised not to use the Rapid Set Mortar because it doesn’t set right. Here’s a picture of what his floor looked like originally before he used the Garage Floor Epoxy kit in Pattern #2.

As you can see this floor was a disaster and you’ll be amazed at what it turned into with some elbow grease and the AmroGarage Granite Garage Epoxy Kit. So now comes the part after he has applied the concrete mix and let it cure. When using the Rapid Set Concrete Mix you have to work quickly because it sets up in 10 minutes unlike our patch products that give you 30-40 minutes to work with.

Here he is using a right angle drill with a grinding disk to smooth out the patch. You can rent a diamond grinder to make it faster and easier to smooth out the patching. So for large resurfacing jobs you can use the Rapid Set, it’s a quality product and our follow ups with him have told us that the patching has not cracked or chipped up in any way. For normal patch jobs use our Crack & Joint Compound or our Instant Crack Repair. The Instant Repair lets you paint right over the patch without having to wait for it to cure!

Now comes the good part, this after he applied the Granite Epoxy Flooring kit using our pre selected color combo of Pattern #2.

He also used our Epoxy flooring primer which we always recommend especially when doing such a large patch job. Then he applied our high build military grade epoxy with 20lbs of color flakes using the supplied spike soles. Then he chose the Military Grade Clear Topcoat instead of the standard heavy duty topcoat. This allowed him to do only one coat instead of three coats. He also used the supplied nonslip additive in the topcoat.

The military grade topcoat is a chemically hardened version of the standard topcoat. It has an abrasion loss rating of only 4 mgs(the lower the number the better) which is the best in the industry. Most other brands provide you with fake topcoats that have ratings of 25-50mgs or higher. They offer little to no protection and no guarantee against wear whereas ArmorGarage provides the only 5 year wear guarantee. No one else provides a guarantee against wear and make no mistake if you don’t have the right topcoat your tire abrasion will wear out your epoxy coating very quickly. Wear won’t be covered under any warranty despite what you may be led to believe.

We get asked a lot of times by customers whether they should shotblast or grind their floor. In this post we will discuss the Pros and Cons of each. First lets start with the fact that shotblasting a floor is cheaper than grinding at the outset. The problem with shotblasting is that unless using an aggregate such as sand or doing a heavy flake job you will see what we call lawn mower lines in the finished epoxy. The reason being is that where you overlap with the shotblaster as you go up and down the floor it leaves a line of deeper indents from the shotblasting beads. Then as you apply epoxy those deeper indents hold more pigment and thus show up as lines as you can see in this photo below.

The benefits of shotblasting other than the lower cost is that it gets down into the small nooks and crannies of very dirty floors that are in poor condition. We would recommend grinding after shotblasting to remove as much of the shotblasting lines as possible but when you do this it obviously increases the cost dramatically.

So grinding 95% of the time is the way to go and most times on smaller floors you can rent the floor prep machine from Home Depot which will do the job just fine. For larger floors or extremely dirty floors you will need a larger machine from a tool rental place. When renting a grinder get the biggest grinder you can handle it will make the job easier and faster also whenever possible get the Vac attachment, that goes for the Home Depot machine too. Grinding generates a lot of dust. After grinding make sure to remove all the dust. If time is not an issue you can hose or power wash the floor and while the floor is wet you might as wet scrub some etch in. This will accomplish two things, one it will open up the concrete pores more and second it will clean any low spots the grinding wheel could not reach.

Once the floor is prepped we like to hit it with a good leaf blower just before apply the coating to get the last bits of dust off the floor, you’ll be surprised at how much dust is left. So in conclusion figure to grind rather than shotblast in all but extreme floor situations. Use the floor prep machine from Home Depot on small to medium floors and for larger floors use an industrial size grinder preferably one with at least 3 heads and new diamonds in about the 25-30 grit range. Always try to use a Vac attachment with your grinder, shop vacs won’t work, they clog up in two minutes. Grinding Vacs have pulsating filters to keep them clean as you vac up all the dust. And as always if you have any questions on the condition or preparation of your floor just give us a call or shoot us an email.

Take a look at this image and you’ll see that the epoxy has delaminated from the floor in an upward motion. Notice the underside of the piece of epoxy the person is holding and you’ll see the top layer of the concrete slab stuck to the underside of it, notice the granularity of the concrete. The culprit here is the concrete letting loose! This is one of the best examples of sandy or granular concrete we have seen. Usually caused by the contractor using too much aggregate/sand to save some money. The other issue here maybe that there was moisture in the floor and that the moisture pushing up on the epoxy had enough pressure to cause the weak concrete to let loose.

Here’s another example of why you can experience peeling of your epoxy. Although this is not common some floors were poured with a high content of river stone/pebbles also known as pea gravel floor, again most likely due to the contractor trying to save money on the job. See all those black spots they are pea gravel/pebbles that are very smooth and are not porous whatsoever which means its very difficult to get anything to stick to it. If you have this type of concrete you must use the Bonding Primer to ensure adhesion to these types of concrete floors. The above floor where they used too much sand is different as the surface is more granular and loose. This floor is hard and very smooth almost like a polished floor so you need the Bonding Primer as opposed to the sandy floor you need our Standard Primer or better yet our High Solids Primer. Our High Solids Primer is amazing and better than most actual epoxies on the market.

So how do we try to prevent this from happening ? First thing is to always make sure your concrete is 100% dry after etching. We recommend a minimum of 24 hrs to 48 hrs depending on temperature and humidity. If the humidity is very high when you’re floor is drying it will take longer for that moisture to evaporate out of the slab. Secondly take a good look at your floor and if you notice that there is a lot of exposed aggregate or it has sandy type of texture to it use a primer. Our Epoxy Flooring Primer will penetrate into the slab, getting in between the tiny spaces in the aggregate binding them together which greatly strengthens your slab. Also sometimes contractors use pea gravel which are small round stones that are very smooth. This is also a good candidate for the top layer of the concrete letting loose. If you have a pea gravel floor use our Bonding Primer that will bond to the smooth surfaces of the pea gravel thus ensuring a solid bond between your floor and the epoxy.

The good thing is that these types of situations are rare, so chances are you don’t have to worry about this but if you have any doubts just send us a picture and will let you if there’s anything to be concerned about and guide you accordingly. We’ll make sure you use the necessary products so that you don’t have any issues.