How To Choose The Best Epoxy Garage Flooring System That Provides Long-Lasting Protection To Garage Floors And Are Highly Resistant To Chemicals And Heavy-Duty Traffic?
Whether you use your garage as a man cave, work shop for projects and repairs or just a place to park your car, it's important that the floor is durable enough to resist heavy-duty wear. Epoxy is a great solution that looks excellent, provides easy cleaning and is highly resistant to chemicals and heavy-duty vehicle traffic.
Variety Of Aesthetic Options Available
The downside is that epoxy floor coatings can be expensive. However, you genuinely get what you pay for - a budget product will give you budget performance and a high-quality, professional application will provide long-lasting protection to your floor at an affordable price.
Low Quality Epoxies Often Consist Of Water Based Products
There are a wide variety of aesthetic options for an Epoxy Garage Flooring system that can really make your space look unique and beautiful. You can choose from a full color flake broadcast, a brindle flake option that offers a granite and stone look, a solid metallic finish or a smooth solid epoxy. Each of these choices can be mixed and blended to create a look that is uniquely yours.
You can also choose a different color for your base coat or go with a clear topcoat. The most popular option is a full color flake broadcast. The color flakes are added while the base coat is still wet so that they are fully encapsulated by the epoxy. This creates a rich, vibrant look that is highly customizable. You can also opt for a clear topcoat which will lock in the color flakes and offer the best chemical, stain and wear resistance.
Best Durability & Performance
One of the most common mistakes we see is contractors trying to cut corners by using water based epoxies or by not prepping and grinding their floor properly before applying their epoxy. These cheap epoxies are often marketed with a low selling price, but they can be up to 50% water that evaporates out of the coating as it dries leaving only 2 Mils or less of a dried thickness than a 100% solids Aliphatic Epoxy.
The cheapest, but lowest performing systems come from the big box retail stores and usually consist of a single layer of Epoxy Garage Flooring paint with no base coat or flakes broadcast to rejection. The Best Kit comes with a full, 100% solids, aliphatic epoxy base coat with broadcast flakes to rejection and a polyurethane or polyaspartic topcoat for the best durability and performance.
If you watch some of the DIY videos that are out there you will see that many people are using very short-cuts when installing their floors. This is often done by using hand grinders instead of a professional floor grinder that can be adjusted for the specific needs of your project. It is also very common to see people adding flakes to their own base coat or not using a primer or moisture barrier.
Conclusion:
A true professional will always use a proper prep, the correct epoxies and topcoats and will do their work in a way that will allow you to get your garage back as quickly as possible. They will also understand the importance of a proper abrasion loss rating of the topcoat to ensure your floor is protected and ready for vehicles and heavy equipment to be driven over it.
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