Shop floor epoxy coatings

I'd ask the local home handyman store people (Home Depot, Lowe's, etc.). I'd also either get my car fixed or invest in a drip pan.

Hope This Helps! Rich

Epoxy floor coatings are a great idea for the guy selling them. For the end user, they are expensive, slippery, and hard to repair (it's a shop, and no floor coating is going to take all possible abuse, though a "coating" of end grain wood about an inch and a half thick does pretty well and is easily repaired.) A properly selected floor paint is none of these things. All of them need 30 days cure, minimum, before use.

White will help with the light level in the shop.

Oil is going to stain pretty much anything if you are going to leave it there from constant drips. Lay out a sheet of plastic and cover it with oil-dri.

First things first, you will need to wait a while for the concrete to finish curing - around 30 days minimum. RTFM for the waiting period.

And the concrete slab always cures better if you keep it well hydrated till full cure. If they didn't apply a curing sealer after pouring and finishing the floor, get in there and hose out the garage every day for a week or two.

The epoxy coatings work - but DO NOT apply the fancy "Color Flakes" they put in the kit for appearance, stay with a solid color. The main reason is because you are using it as shop space.

When you drop that little nut or spring or screw and it bounces off to parts unknown... Now you have to pick out that little part in the random scatter pattern of all those flakes. Not Easy.

Then you go for the pick-up magnet... The part is stainless.

The secondary reason being if you do have to patch the color coat later you'll play hell duplicating the scatter pattern on the patches

- it's like a car with metallic paint, you have to respray the whole panel to make it match properly.

Or you run out of color flakes and go off to get more, only to find out they discontinued that line/color three years ago. Which is a good argument for stocking up on an extra can of flakes now if you are going to use them.

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Oh, for anyone who has that little warning stamp molded into the concrete in the corner of the garage, the one that reads "WARNING Post Tensioned Slab - Do Not Cut Or Drill" do NOT try to fill in the lettering on that with too much epoxy, and by all means skip the color flakes in that area.

That HAS to stay legible for the health and well-being of yourself and any future owners of the house. Cut one of those tensioning cables with a saw or drill bit, and you might as well be staring at the business end of a Claymore Mine as someone hits the switch.

You want to make any holes in a Post Tensioned slab structure (even little ones) you have to get the slab X-rayed first to mark the clear areas. Been there, Dealt with that.

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They were quite the thing in Air Force shops while I was still in the service. They do protect the concrete from absorbing oil but can be slippery when wet or oily. The A.F. (I believe) came out with a policy of walkways being painted with some sort of non-skid.

I was assigned to a machine shop at the time and we went to a lot of trouble to acid treat the old concrete floor and paint it with epoxy with non-skip areas around the machines. It lasted for years and did keep the floor looking good.

Cheers,

Bruce (bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)

What works pretty good is to glue down a cheap vinyl floor covering for the area you will park the car. Oil spills wipe right up and it lasts a lot longer than one would expect.

Not my experiance at all! I epoxied my shop floor maybe 8 years ago. I love it, I wonder why I waited! Sure it is a bit more slick than plain concrete, but not like you have to worry about it. No oil stains, although I spilled some dirty laquer thinner in a few spots and that stained the epoxy. Clean up is a breeze, wipe up any bad messes and wash with a good degreaser and water. The shop looks brighter, not so gloomy. I am considering doing a re-coat, and as far as I know I will have to scuff it with a sanding screen with a floor buffer, wash it good and re-coat. As for waiting for use after aplying the epoxy, I think I waited 2-3 days before rolling all my tools back in, and maybe a week before I drove the car on it, after all it was a two part epoxy and the hardner does the work of getting it to cure faster. Greg O

e

I have a 1990 mustang that I rarely drive and it has a small reaer main seal drip. Alot of headach to replace that thing.

I am guesssing the floor will be slicker so I will have a harder time using my ramps on the mustang to change the oil. Any ideas on that?

Remember too guys, I dont have a machine shop like most of you. I have

2 welders a sand blast cabinet, a jointer, table saw, planer, hand tools and will park two vehicles in this thing. I am not sure if the floor will get as much a workout as most of you.

I would like to rebuild my old 8n though!

stryped fired this volley in news:55edf2be-b969- snipped-for-privacy@k6g2000yqn.googlegroups.com:

Just re-paint it. It's amazing how much better 8N and 9N tractors run after a proper paint job.

(think about it; you'll figure it out eventually)

LLoyd

You have to wait ~30 days after the concrete is poured before coating it (with anything). Best to keep it damp/wet during this time to help the cure. Plain old one-part floor paint for concrete has been on my floor for 5-1/2 years now - since I used the "flat" version it is not (IME) any more slippery than bare concrete, without the need for any additives/sand/etc. Repainting any damage is as simple as scrub it clean, let it dry, paint. Cost was less than 20% of the cost for epoxies.

DWYL.

Don't use the color chips. use a nice sprinkling of fine silica play sand for kids sand-boxes in the wet epoxy, spread with a flour sifter or a coarse screen collander to get it even. That'll stop the slips for people.

There are other traction additives like finely ground walnut shells, but they might add color you don't want when used as a sprinkle, and it's hard to get them spread evenly if they are mixed into the paint. A good paint store that sells "magnesite" walk surface roof deck paints will carry an assortment and know all the pros and cons...

For ramps, you might want to get a few scraps of indoor-outdoor carpet to keep them from sliding. Or better, 1/8" tempered hardboard (pegboard minus the holes) and a floor jack. Much cheaper to replace the hardboard when it gets dented and oily than to refinish the floor.

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I was talking to a guy that collects the 4" diameter concrete test pieces from construction sites. They crush these to make sure the concrete is up to spec. They apparenly collect and crush test dirt from around foundations as well.

He had some general concrete tips

- keep it wet as long as you can, like people here mention. He said spray it down and cover it with plastic to keep it damp. He claims this prevents the concrete from cracking in the future than if if dries out quickly.

- if you order concrete for a "small" project as in less than a truck load, have them come in the morning. This makes sure you get fresh concrete that wasn't rejected by a customer that tests the stuff and rejects it for being too old. He said anything over an hour and a half old from the cement mill (this is in Chicago) would be suspect, and you don't want leftover batches that have been in a truck all day.

I am guesssing the floor will be slicker so I will have a harder time using my ramps on the mustang to change the oil. Any ideas on that?

You could try tying a length of rope to the front of the ramp so the car drives over it first. If you still had problems I guess you could make the rope long enough so its under the back wheels when the front wheels hit the ramp.

Ditch the ramps and buy a floor jack and jack stands. Greg

stryped wrote: ...

I have a hard time on my uncoated floor. I put a couple of holes in the floor to hold the ramps.

Bob