Professional garage epoxy flooring installers are often asked how effective the discount epoxy kits at the big box home centers are. As we all know, big home centers sell (relatively) inexpensive one- and two-part epoxy kits from major manufacturers. Discount kits have their time and place, such as for laundry room floors and light traffic areas. But, for the heavy duty use required for automobile parking, discount kits generally will not fit the bill.
Unfortunately, some commercial installers are using discount kits in order to keep their costs down. If you have received a low-ball bid on a concrete coating job at your home, you should be quite suspicious.
Always ask your installer:
The brand of coating they intend to use?
Where the installer intends to purchase it? High-grade coatings are purchased from concrete specialty supply houses and directly from manufacturers.
What is the installer’s method of preparation of the concrete?
It has been our experience, in reviewing and inspecting concrete that is coated with such products, that the discount coatings fail prematurely for two reasons. The first problem with such coatings is that they lack sufficient abrasion resistance. Thus, such coatings are prone to scratching. Scratches dull a coated surface and make it appear lifeless; also, scratching promotes the accumulation of debris in the coating surface.
But the more important, and more significant failure that occurs with these coatings is the failure of adhesion between concrete and coating. When a concrete coating fails to adhere to the concrete below, the coating chips away, revealing the concrete underneath.
Repairing a peeling floor can be expensive–much more expensive than doing it properly the first time. To remedy the failure of a coating system, the entire floor must be ground down to the concrete underneath–at a tremendous expense to the customer.
The failure of discount coatings is attributable to two factors. First, the coatings themselves lack the commercial strength adhesive properties of more expensive coatings–such as the coatings used by professional garage epoxy installers. We do not use discount coatings on any floor. The greater factor, though, is the lack of proper preparation available with the discount kits. Only some discount kits offer any preparation materials at all–and the kits that do offer it, offer a meager packet of acidic powder. Experienced installers know that acid preparation is an inferior method of concrete preparation.
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