Info-Blog

What To Do If You Miss A Spot On Your Garage Floor Coating?

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So you’re apply your garage floor coating or commercial epoxy flooring and all is going well until you get a few sections along in the application and you look back and suddenly you see to your horror that you have missed a spot!. First thing is not to panic and what every you do do not walk back on the wet epoxy to fix it.

Here’s what you can and should do. This is where those spoke soles come in handy! If you have them and it hasn’t been to long since you noticed the missed spot that walk over to the spot with the spikes and fix. This goes for a missed spot of the color flakes. You can simple add more flakes to a bald spot. If you haven’t noticed it till after you’re completely done and you don’t have spikes. Just wait for the floor to dry and go over and patch it. In the case of wanting to add more flakes you need to apply a very thin layer of epoxy for the flakes to stick onto.

Then apply the topcoat but stay clear of the patched area if you just did it. Don’t wait for the patch to dry since once you go past 24 hrs between coats you need to sand the surface to rough it up. Just stay about 6″ away from the patch spot. Once the rest of the next coat dries you can simply fill in the patched area,

A very common occurrence is missing a spot with the clear topcoat. Since these topcoats are Gin clear it’s easy to do while you’re applying them. This is no issue at all. After the topcoat dries just very lightly sand the epoxy and perimeter clear coat with 100 grit. Then brush on some clear to fill in. To help avoid missing spots dry to have someone looking at the floor from an angle while you are rolling on the clear.

So in sum, don’t panic, having spikes is a good idea for emergency puposes and for applying the flake into the epoxy, they make getting an even pattern much easier, don’t let the main part of the floor dry for over 24 hrs before apply next layer and if you have a more serious issue just contact us and one of our expert support guys or gals will get you back on the right track.

WHY AND WHEN TO USE AN EPOXY FLOORING PRIMER

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Sometimes a floor needs an update. It could be that wood is splintering or concrete is cracking. you can reclaim original flooring but if there’s a lot of damage, sometimes new flooring is the answer. It’s easy to find the flooring you want, especially when you can find affordable flooring on sites like reallycheapfloors.com. However, different flooring needs to have different primers. We get asked so many times about using a primer that it deserves a blog post. The majority of Garage Floor installations do not require a primer if you are using a high-quality epoxy. There are times however that a primer is recommended. If your floor has concrete that is old it may be in poor condition from being uncoated for many years. Road salts may have started to break it down. You may have pitted areas, a primer will help in filling in the pitted areas. Your floor may have become what we call chalky or dusty, this is where no matter how much you clean the floor there always seems to be concrete dust or chalk on it when you rub your hand over it. This is where a primer comes into play. It will penetrate into your concrete and bind up the chalky loose top layer of the floor. You should use a shop vac for your floor, thoroughly to get down to the solid part of the floor as best as possible before applying the primer.

You may be doing your floor and your square footage is slightly above the standard kit coverage. Your choice is to buy an additional Add On Half Kit or you can purchase the Epoxy Flooring Primer that will do several things. It will penetrate into the slab deeper which provides better adhesion and it will extend the coverage of the epoxy by up to 20% since the epoxy is now going over a sealed surface. So in addition to giving you another layer of epoxy for a thicker floor finish(thicker is always better) it can also save you some money.

You may have a floor that you previously coated with another epoxy that is failing. If it’s not a Home Improvement Store epoxy you can possibly still save it by coating directly over it with one of our epoxy kits. But first you must sand the floor to clean it and rough it up and then put down a coating of our Proprietary Bonding Primer. This lets our coating stick to any other kind of coating. This is not to be confused with the Epoxy Flooring Primer above which is strictly for bare concrete. The Bonding Primer can be used to go over Wood Floors or Molding prior to applying an epoxy coating to them. Or you may have a plastic or metal drain cover you want to coat with the epoxy to make the floor look really nice. Epoxies don’t stick will to metal or plastic, Bonding Primer solves that issue. However, if you’re wanting epoxy for wooden flooring options, you could look into some of the best wood epoxy coatings available to you.

You may be the type of person who has large toys in their Garage or Man Cave or uses their space as a work shop. Or you may be the type that just wants the strongest, toughest epoxy flooring there is. This where you need and want a primer. If you have a heavy tonnage vehicle like a large Motor Home that can weigh up to 50,000lbs, you definitely want a primer. Any heavy vehicle that will have twisting or turning tires with standstill dead weight on them requires the highest amount of adhesion to avoid the epoxy being literally ripped off the floor. This is where a high performance primer is needed. Our primers are really high quality epoxies that don’t have as much Solids in them as are actual floor epoxies do, to allow them to soak a little more into the slab. They lock deep into the slab and provide a surface that the Epoxy to actually chemically bonds into thus making an inseparable layer of primer and epoxy. If you stopped at our Primer layer you would still have a better coating on your floor than the vast majority of other actual epoxy coatings you can purchase.

So there are many uses and times when you need and should use a primer and often times when you don’t. If you are unsure of whether you should or shouldn’t simply give us a call-866-532-3979 or email us at info@armorgarage.com

HOW HARD IS IT TO DO METALLIC EPOXY VS TRADITIONAL EPOXY SYSTEMS?

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We have been getting an increasing amount of callers asking about doing a metallic finish epoxy floor. The first thing we ask is if they have any experience in doing this sort of floor. The answer is always no and that they saw it on YouTube and that it looked fairly easy to do. This is when we tell them it’s not as easy as it looks. It looks easy cause the person doing it most likely does it for a living or has done it many times before. Most of the companies selling metallic epoxy state on their websites or will tell you that their products are not that easy to work with if they’re honest. They say this at the same time as stating that there is no wrong way to do it. While that statement is true because the finish is random, there is definitely good and bad results and sometimes even very bad results. So while it looks like you are just splashing different colors on the floor it really takes skill and experience to get the ratios and the spreading of each color right for it to actually come out looking good rather than an eye sore.

Doing metallic floors are much more labor intensive. You need to grind the floor usually and do a black base coat, then sand it and apply a seal coat and then splash the colors into the seal coat and then sand that when it dries and then you need to apply a topcoat. Some systems use a primer then a black base coat that you sand and then metallic paint that you sand and then a topcoat. Anyway you look at it, it’s a lot more work and the results most likely will not look like what you were expecting. There is skill and artistic talent involved in getting the looks you see on the internet. With traditional epoxy there is no skill level or artistic talent required. Just some good old fashioned elbow grease to clean the floor properly and then just apply the epoxy similar to regular paint. We package our epoxy in turnkey systems to make easy and simple for you to install a complete epoxy flooring job. There is some measuring and mixing involved so that takes a little more consideration than just sticking your roller into the roller tray and rolling the paint on like a semi gloss. But it’s way simpler to do than metallic and 99.999 times out of 100 you are going to be happy with the results. Check out our Epoxy Floor Systems on our Home Page and choose the one that fits your application best or give us a call for some expert advise on which to use.

If you’re truly set on doing metallic, give us a call and we can price our metallic system out for you with a disclaimer that we are not responsible for the results. Also just to let you know that in the New York Tri-State area whenever we get a Metallic job we sub it out to a professional who does only metallic floors. We don’t even let our own professional installers do it! You should take that accordingly.

Why Your Bargain Roof Coating Is Leaking & Why You Can’t Stop It.

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Finding and fixing roof leaks is very often a frustrating and futile endeavor. It can also be a very costly endeavor if you go about it the wrong way. Luckily there are insurance companies that can help you with the cost of fixing any property damage you may face. Visiting sites like www.homeownersinsurancecover.net could give you the policies and plans that could cover any home repair or improvements.

First thing you should know is that where you see the water dripping into your home or business is most likely not where the leak is. All roofs are pitched to some degree so leaks can occur on one side of a roof and the water will run to the first opening it finds and leak through. So the source of a leak can be far away from where the actual leak is occurring.

So when you go up on your roof hunting for the source of the leak don’t automatically concentrate on where the drip is located. The best way to find a leak is to walk the roof in sort of a search grid. Up, down and then side to side. You must carefully inspect every inch of the roof. You are looking for any pinhole, crack or split in a seam. Anything that looks like an opening for water to get into. You must also check all HVAC equipment for any loose or damaged panels or shrouds, also check all the curb flashings. These are the usual suspects.

If by chance you locate the source of the leak and it’s simply a split in a seam or small hole from someone stepping on a screw. Then you can apply some roof cement to fix it but make sure you embed some roof mesh into the roof cement. Roof cement is notorious for cracking and needing constant maintenance. Roof mesh will help extend the life of the roof cement. In general roof cement should be viewed as only a temporary fix. Which is ok for a couple of small fixes. What you don’t want to do is go up on your roof with buckets of it and start smearing everything in sight with it.
This will cause more issues than it solves for sure. When you do this you tend to apply the cement way too thick and then in no time it will start to alligator and then crack or chip off. Then you put more on which works for a short time and then when it leaks again you apply more and it now works for an even shorter time and when it fails yet again you have a much bigger problem.

Same goes for when you apply some bargain water based elastomeric roof coating to try and stop your leaks. They always fail way sooner then you think and if you bought it from a Home Improvement Store they will tell you there is no warranty because you didn’t have it professionally installed. Same goes for a lot of other roof coatings. Most times that great sounding warranty isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. The best thing is NOT to ever have to need to make a warranty claim in the first place. That happens when you use a high quality Industrial Roof Coating vs a water based residential grade elastomeric coating.

You must look at the performance specifications so you don’t get fooled into buying what you think is an industrial grade coating when in fact it’s nothing of the sort. Once you start slopping roof cement all over the place and then put on an inferior coating and then have to recoat because your roof keeps developing leaks you end up going down the proverbial rabbit hole and your situation keeps getting worse until you have to rip the roof off and have a new roof installed at a tremendous cost. All of it could have been avoided with the use of the right coating at the start. Yes it cost you more money up front but in the long run you come out way ahead financially and stress wise.

The biggest reason roofs leak and no matter what you do you can’t seam to find the leak is because the actual roofing material or roof coating you used has become porous and water is actually leaking right through the microscopic pores of the material. This is where reading and understanding the specifications come in handy! One of the items in a specification of a roof coating is Perms. Perms is short for permeability, which is how fast moisture can pass through a material. You may have heard of a Perm test for soil, this is where they test the rate water passes through the surface of the soil. Where land that is mostly clay will not be very permeable as compared to soil that is mostly top soil.

Same goes for materials, all physical materials are made up of atoms and the tighter the atoms the less permeable that material is. All roof coatings have microscopic pores, spaces in between the atoms. The size of those pores determine the perm rating. In the case of roof coatings the smaller the Perm number the better. It means moisture has a smaller opening to pass through. When a coating is new the size of it’s pores are smaller than water molecules thus they prevent the water from passing through, much like the clay did in our soil example. However as a coating ages from the sun and begins to stretch out from constant expansion and contraction the pores begin to widen until they get to a point where they are now just slightly larger than water molecules.

So guess what happens, you’re correct, your roof starts leaking. The worst part about it is that you can’t see this so you have no idea why your roof is leaking. Especially since you put a ton of roof cement on everything in sight. What’s even worse your roof may not leak every time it rains. If it’s cold out the roof coating may contract enough to keep water out or if doesn’t rain long enough there won’t be a lot of water weight on the roof coating so again it might not leak. This makes it even more maddening.

So having said all that what you need to take away from this is that you want to start with a roof coating that has the smallest Perm rating to start with. So as your coating stretches and ages it takes a lot longer for that coating’s pores to start passing water. That is why water based elastomerics and most other roof coatings don’t live up to their claims. ArmorGarage uses the highest quality Butyl Rubber and no water in our roof coatings. Butyl rubber is even far superior to EPDM. This gives our coatings the Best Perm ratings by far, compare our Perm rating to your roof coating. This means ArmorGarage roof coatings will stay moisture proof far longer than any elastomeric, water based or EPDM based coating.

So in sum if you go by just the first cost when deciding to do your roof you will most likely end up worse off then you started. Look at the specs, in addition to Perms, you need to look at Hardness ratings and Elongation ratings and what the roof coating is made of ie: water or Butyl rubber and epoxy. A quick word on silicone here, silicone is a must for ponding water and is the only time you should use it. Silicone is soft and subject to damage very easily and once you use silicone you can never use anything else since nothing can stick to it. So when it fails prematurely as most of them do you will be stuck with having to put the same inferior product back on and worse yet you will find out that that amazing sounding warranty is worthless due to one of the small print exceptions they pin on you.

Knowing what you’re buying will help you avoid being in the position of spending untold amounts of time and money trying to fix an ever growing mess you can easily get into. At which time you call in your roofers Roanoke and they are 99.9% of the time going to tell you that you need a new roof for a gazillion dollars. It’s as easy to predict as if you would ask a Barber if you need a haircut.

When You Need To Shot Blast & How To Do Full Broadcast

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Take a look at the finish of the concrete in the photo above, you’ll notice that it was very poorly finished, not to mention how dirty and oil stained it is. It’s full of swirl marks with large ridges and deep grooves. 99% of the time diamond grinding can take care of prepping a slab for an epoxy coating but in cases like this where you have deep swirl marks or the floor is pitted then the best solution is to shot blast. Shot blasting will clean out all the low spots while a grinder would ride along the top of the ridges and not get down into the valleys. You can do an aggressive grind followed by a couple of strong Muriatic acid washes if you have the time. The acid will clean out the low spots. We would do a final rinse with TSP powder to neutralize the slab back to the proper PH.

Shot blasting also removes oil stains better than grinding. The drawback of shot blasting is that it’s not a first time user friendly endeavor. You can very easily shot blast parts of the floor more than others resulting in a very uneven finish. Also when overlapping with the machine from one section to another you will get lawnmower lines that can show through your finished epoxy finish. This can happen with any epoxy coating since it’s caused by the fact as you overlap you are creating deeper shot indentations which will hold more epoxy. The more epoxy in those overlap strips have more pigment and therefore will be a shade darker. Most experienced shot blasters know how to avoid this but if you’ve never done it before it could be an issue. Notice the lines in the image below

So if your floor looks like the above and you want to shot blast it yourself we suggest you do either our Armor Granite or a full broadcast color flake installation. Full broadcast is simply covering 100% of the floor with color flakes, thus hiding all the floor’s imperfections. The Armor Granite is about a 90% coverage and in most cases will hide all the imperfections. We offer a full broadcast version of the Armor Chip garage epoxy kit.

We would strongly recommend the Armor Granite for two reasons, it’s much easier to install and it’s less expensive. It’s also a gorgeous finish. Full broadcast is not as easy as it looks. You need a tremendous amount of chips to start with and it’s very easy to end up with uneven blotches and lumps of the colored flakes.

Here’s a quick rundown of how to do a full broadcast. As you apply each section of the epoxy you walk in the epoxy with spike soles, don’t even think of doing this without spikes. We would suggest you have a good size box of flakes in one arm and with the other take large handfuls and toss them in the air in a left to right arc at about a 45 degree angle. Try to avoid throwing them straight up in the air. This will result in the dreaded lumps and blotches of flakes. You will do the floor one section at a time until complete.

Once the epoxy has dried you will need a good floor scraper such as the one in this photo. Notice how the floor is fully covered with flakes.

With the scraper you will remove all the loose flakes, the flakes sticking up and hopefully any lumps you have created. Once fully scraped down you need to vacuum the floor with a shop vac. If you still see some spots not to your liking, you can hit them with some 80 grit sandpaper to smooth them out some more.

Next you will now need to apply the topcoat and you will have to do two coats since all those flakes create millions of nooks and crannies. Do one coat and let dry, apply second coat with 24 hours with a nonslip additive for traction. Let dry and now you have a full broadcast epoxy floor.

HOW TO DO A BLACK & WHITE CHECKERBOARD FLOOR

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This floor takes a little extra effort and some patience but is a beautiful look when done. After cleaning the floor properly you will apply two coats of our Armor II commercial epoxy base coat in white. Then apply the bright white topcoat. It will be three layers of white in total. That’s how you get the ultra bright white floor that won’t yellow. Then you will mark out in pencil the black squares. The squares in this floor are 23″ square. If you have a laser it will make the job a lot easier to get the lines straight. We recommend you use 3M pin-stripping tape to avoid bleed through. This is where the extra effort and patience comes in. Getting the tape lines down straight is crucial to having the floor look symmetrical when done. Once you have all the squares taped out you will apply the black in one thick coat using a good 3″ cut in brush and a 4″ roller. Take care not to get black paint into the white squares. It’s a good idea to have some Xylene handy in case you do you can clean it up right away.

Let the black epoxy dry about five hours and then remove the tape. That’s it nothing complicated, it just takes some extra time and a little patience.

The Products used on this floor were the Armor II Commercial Epoxy Paint in bright white and the black topcoat. To order just select this option in the Color drop down menu.

When Should I Do Crack Repairs Before Or After Etching?

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Just about every concrete floor will have a crack or two in it. So what is the best way to repair them and when should you do it. Let’s start with surface cracks. These are tiny stress cracks that are at the surface and can be filled in with our Military Epoxy or our Garage Epoxy. Next are Hairline cracks, even though they are relatively small cracks they often run down through the whole depth of the slab. Trying to fill these in with the epoxy may or may not work so best to fill them in to be safe. We would recommend you use our Instant Crack Repair. It’s a two part epoxy you mix together and putty knife it into cracks and divots. Then you can paint right over it. It won’t crack or chip out either. You would do this repair after your floor has been grinded or acid etched.

Next would be cracks lets say from 1/4″ and up. We would recommend you use the Crack & Joint Compound. This product gets mix with Playground sand in about a 50 lbs sand to 1 gallon of mixed liquids. The idea is to add the sand to the mixed epoxy until it gets to a grout consistency. Then you can apply it to cracks, divots, holes or pitted areas. This product should be applied before you do your prep work.

For large areas that are pitted or cracked you can use the Skim Coat Patch or one of the Self Leveling Slurries on our concrete floor repair page. Just keep in mind when using any skim coat or floor slurry it’s strongly recommended to use a primer. The reason being is that the patched areas will absorb the epoxy paint at a different rate than the concrete. This can result in color variations if you don’t use a primer. In the case of resurfacing the entire floor with a slurry. The slurry will absorb more than the concrete yielding much less coverage if you don’t prime first.

If you have concerns about prepping your floor correctly please give us a call and one of our flooring experts will be glad to help you out.

What To Do With a Rusting And Or Painted Metal Roof?

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Metal roofs are great but if left unattended too long they can start to rust and or have the factory coating wear off. If you’re interested in getting a new roof installed, check out a website like https://austinroofingcompany.org/roof-replacement/ to learn more about what’s involved. Lets start with a roof that is rusting and is bare metal. You first need to remove as much of the surface rust as possible. Power washing and or wire brushing works best. Next you need to apply a high zinc primer to all rusted areas. Be sure the primer you choose can act as a primer for a solvent based coating. Once the zinc primer has dried you can apply our Roof Repair Mastic to any areas that are in need of repair. The mastic is a patch material that can be put over split seams, bolt heads, curbs and other roof flashings. For really bad areas we would embed some roof mesh into the mastic for added strength.
Once the mastic has dried you can apply two coats of the Armor Metal Roof Coating by either roller or spray or a combination of both. Now you have a completely encapsulated metal roof that is protected against rust, water tight and heat reflective.

Alternatively, if your roof is either beyond repair or you do not want to go through the fixing process, you might want to contact an affordable roofing company for a repair or replacement. This is essential if the state of your roof has greatly deteriorated.

Now lets talk about metal roofs that have a paint coating or factory coating on them, that you might find somewhere similar to www.powdercoatservices.com among other places. First thing you need to do is to determine that the coating is still bonded to the metal. If the coating is delaminating from the metal then it must be removed completely. You never want to coat over another coating that is failing. That goes for whether you’re doing your floor, deck or roof. If the coating is still adhered to the metal firmly then clean it, let it dry and then coat with the Bonding Primer. Let the Bonding Primer dry 24 hrs and then apply two coats of the Armor Metal Roof Coating. If there are any rust spots treat them as detailed above.

If you have a bare metal roof you can apply the Armor Metal Roof Coating directly to it.

So to summarize, never coat directly over rust or a paint finish. Zinc prime any rust areas and then coat the entire roof with bonding primer, same goes for painted metal roofs. Roofs with no coatings or rust can be coated directly with two coats. If your seams, bolt heads and flashings need repair. Do the repairs using the Armor Roof Repair Mastic after any zinc and bonding primer application. If you have any questions as to how to properly coat your roof contact us and one of our roof experts will guide you accordingly.

If you’re looking to make improvements to your fascia and are concerned about its longevity, recycled plastic fascia doesn’t rot like wood and doesn’t rust like metal.

COVE BASE & EPOXY FLOORING

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When doing an epoxy flooring job where you need a 100% water tight floor or you need a 100% sanitary finish between the wall and the floor, cove base is your answer. As you can see from the picture cove base is curved at the top and bottom so that it finishes flush with the wall and floor. This is important for commercial kitchens and food production areas that cannot have a seam or ledge for bacteria to sit on and grow. It’s also great for wash down areas since it protects the walls from water splatter and makes it easier to wash down the floor.
A lot of times even in residential applications you have a garage or other such room over a finished room below. In the case of a garage application you can get snow melt and rain run off that will work its way through the concrete and into the finished space below. Remember concrete is porous so water can and will penetrate all the way through, so make sure you get a quality waterproofing product from a respectable company like WR Meadows to ensure that the concrete won’t become waterlogged.. With a good floor epoxy and some cove base, you can turn your garage floor or any floor for that matter into a waterproof tub. Simply install the cove base around the entire perimeter of your space and then run any of our epoxy systems across the floor and up the cove base. You now have a monolithic watertight coating over the floor and up your wall. If you’d rather leave this job to the professionals, contact a company like Spec 7 Group to see which type of waterproofing solution they may be able to offer you. No one wants to have a waterlogged room so get it sorted!

Cove base is available in different heights to accommodate any application requirements. It’s easy to install and can be fitted around corners also. We like www.easycove.com. They make a good product that is epoxy paint ready. Or you can make your own cove base out of mortar and a cove base tool. However this very often doesn’t turn out as nice as the easy cove and is very time consuming. Either way you do it, cove base is a great way to finish you epoxy flooring project both from a finished look aspect and for the waterproofing and sanitary benefits.

CAN I EPOXY PAINT MY CURB WALL?

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Many garages have a small 6-12” high curb wall around the perimeter. The question is can you epoxy paint that. The answer is yes. But you have to allow for sufficient amount of material to do it. Curb walls are notorious for using up a lot more material than normal. So when you calculate the square footage of the curb wall you should at the very least double it, we like to triple it to be safe, especially if it’s cinder block.

If the size of your garage is 550 square feet, you should not order just one Armor Chip Kit since that is right at the max coverage. You would need to order the Add On Half Kit. With the half kit you will have plenty of material to do your curb wall. If you don’t have a curb wall and your floor size is close to or just over the max coverage, the other option is to purchase the Epoxy Primer. The primer will add an extra layer of epoxy so that you end up with a thicker coating and it also will increase the coverage of the epoxy since it is now going over a sealed surface.

To prep your curb wall you can simply scrub some etching solution on it and rinse well. Prep on the curb wall is not as critical as it is on the floor since you will not be driving or walking on it. You can apply the color flakes to the curb wall by tossing them underhanded at the curb in small quantities. Using a brush is usually the best option to apply the epoxy.
You can do the curb wall first and cut in the floor edges at the same time. We would do a cut in strip of at least 6” on the floor so that you can have at least a 4” strip of wet epoxy without flakes in it. This lets you overlap onto the epoxy without chips in it for a smoother finish when you do the floor.

Topcoating your curb wall is optional. Again since there is not traffic load a topcoat is not necessary. But if you ordered a sufficient amount of product you should have plenty of topcoat on hand. So you might as well go ahead and use all the topcoat.