A New Epoxy Garage Floor That Shines

September 1st, 2009 by Eppie G Florence

If you'd like to know what it would be like to drive onto your own personal auto showroom floor, you may want to give thought to an epoxy garage floor. This type of floor is not only durable, but it's also very shiny. Imagine seeing your own car in the floor's reflection, be it either a brand new car or your old '76 beater that's seen better days. An epoxy garage floor coating is viewed as the best in garage flooring to many, and for very good reason. Epoxy garage floors last a very long time, often as long as the concrete itself, though you will have to sacrifice quite a lot of time, and there is a bit of difficulty. Every once in a while the garage floor paint will have to be refreshed with a new coat, but other than that, the initial install covers most of the work. Epoxy will not move or crumple under car tires, which is a problem with some other garage floor coverings.

Durable Epoxy Garage Flooring

Epoxy is an extremely tough, very long-lasting coating that is painted on concrete. It's different than normal paint, though, in that it will resist oils, grease, and lots of other things that would dissolve and ruin ordinary paints. This is why it's suitable for garage floors, as regular paint would obviously not be able to handle such things as motor oils since most regular paints are oil based. When two oil based substances come in contact with each other, they'll try to coalesce which, in the case of motor oil and paint, would destroy both. Grease would have the same effect as it is also oil based, as would any break fluid, power steering fluid, parts cleaner...the list goes on and on. It's amazing just how petroleum based our lives and products actually are. That's the beauty of epoxy based paints, however. Their resin base keeps them from being susceptible to the damages of oil and oil based substances.

Old Epoxy Garage Floors That Shine

Of all the different types of garage flooring, the epoxy garage floor is unique in that it bonds with the concrete at a microscopic level. This means that once the epoxy coating is years, sometimes decades old, it can still be cleaned just like the concrete by itself. The difference is that it doesn't stain since it doesn't absorb the oil based chemicals that are so often found in garages. Since it doesn't stain, it's usually just a matter of power washing the garage floor, if that. Most chemicals will just sit on top of an epoxy coating and can be cleaned up with either a towel, or possibly pushed out of the garage with a squeegee or broom. Be careful, though, that you don't contaminate the earth around your garage with chemicals that, before, you would've absorbed with kitty litter or the like and thrown in the trash. Just because it doesn't damage your garage floor doesn't mean it won't damage the environment, and everything that hits your soil will eventually end up in the groundwater - that's drinking water.

Colorful Epoxy Garage Floor Coatings

Most epoxy coatings are gray. Very shiny, very attractive gray...but still quite gray. Just because it's gray, though, don't think you're not going to notice a very obvious improvement over a cement garage floor, because you definitely will. Lots of people would prefer to have some sort of color, though, and such things do exist. It's an unfortunate fact, though, that colorful epoxy kits are kind of rare. It's not uncommon for a hardware store to tell their customers that the only color that epoxy is available in is gray, which is not at all true. You may have to do some looking, but it's not hard to find garage floor coating kits on the internet, and a lot of times they're cheaper than at the hardware store. The only problem I ever have with buying things online is that it becomes such a problem if you need to do a return...but with a garage floor kit, I doubt that would be an issue.

Will Your Concrete Garage Floor Take An Epoxy Coating?

As opposed to pretty much every other type of garage floor, epoxy does require quite a lot of preparation. In the end, some concrete just won't be able to take a solid epoxy coating. Even if the concrete is determined to be in good enough shape for coating, it has to be cleaned and etched which is usually very labor intensive and tedious. There really is no part of laying an epoxy garage floor that is for the faint of heart...or maybe I should say faint of back. Those of us who aren't in the best shape physically may want to opt for something less time sensitive, like garage floor tiles that you can finish whenever you feel like and not have to worry about them setting in the correct order, or garage floor mats that can be moved around to where they're needed. However, if bank account is up to paying someone to do the job, or if your body is up to doing it yourself, an epoxy garage floor coating is definitely the way to go.

Eppie likes to write articles about her garage flooring and epoxy garage floor .

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