Epoxy Floor Covering Information & Fiction
What You Need to Know & What you Absolutely Don’t Need To Know
The first thing you need to know is that garage flooring epoxy finishes are not such as routine flooring paint and that all epoxies are not the same.
So exactly what are epoxy floor finishings? Epoxy floor finishes are normally 2 part solids based, solvent based or water based. Epoxy floor covering contains a Material component and a Hardener component, similar to epoxy glue. Routine garage flooring paints are one component oil based or water based. Premium quality epoxy flooring paints are neither part, oil based nor water based and all epoxies are not the same as well as you need to understand why so you don’t need to do your floor a 2nd or 3rd time. Our resource is Epoxy Flooring Co out of Orange County.
What You Required to Find Out About Epoxy Flooring
Putting epoxy flooring in the exact same group as traditional garage flooring paints is like stating a Volkswagen Beetle is the exact same as a Ferrari due to the fact that they are both automobiles. An epoxy floor covering will certainly adhere to your garage flooring or any kind of concrete flooring for that issue means far better than any traditional oil based, water or enamel paint, assume epoxy glue kind attachment vs duct tape bond. Below we go over what we have learned from over 25 years of being in the epoxy business and also from being the biggest epoxy floor covering installers in the Tri State area.
Exist Various Kinds of Garage Coatings?
The very best flooring epoxies are solid based; with Aliphatic 100% solids being the best type. What does that indicate? It implies that with 100% solids you are obtaining 100% paint so that whatever you put down is what you obtain. With epoxies that are not 100% solids, whatever portion less than 100% is the percent of the paint that will certainly evaporate away as it dries out. The component that vaporizes is either solvents when it comes to solids paints or water when it comes to water based epoxy paints. For example, if an epoxy is 50% solids it means that 50% of the finish you apply will evaporate away as it dries. The reduced the percentage of solids the reduced the top quality is a good general rule, with water based paints being the most affordable high quality. The exceptions are Primers & Topcoats, Primers generally have a reduced percentage of solids since they are made thinner to type of saturate right into the pores of the concrete, Topcoats ought to have Urethane which displaces a percentage of solids. So it’s ok for guides & topcoats to be lower in solids, just attempt not to utilize water based products. If you see a WB in the item name or component number it’s water based. Likewise one final note high percentage solids epoxies are not like 100% solids epoxies. Never have actually been never ever will certainly be. Exact Same with Cycloaliphatic Epoxies which are a price conserving Crossbreed Epoxy that use prematurely and also yellow.
100% solids epoxy is not just for hiding imperfections it’s to make certain you’re acquiring the highest grade epoxy feasible, place the greatest build feasible to prevent warm tire lifting when utilizing chips. Polyurea coatings are similar to lower percent solids epoxies with similar efficiency problems. We identify these as pietistic concrete sealants.
One Component Epoxy Coatings & Coatings That Don’t Required Flooring Preparation
One thing we understand for certain is that all the one part epoxies we’ve tried do not work. They have a tendency to be thin, hard to deal with and not a good idea when using color flakes. They’re thin to begin with and afterwards when you transmit flakes onto them the flakes displace some of the epoxy below them leaving you with an even thinner finish on the concrete. In much heavier flake applications the flake can actually sink down onto the concrete meaning you have little to no epoxy on the concrete. This is why we don’t utilize shade flakes with our commercial covering. The skim coat is developed to be a little thinner to soak right into the concrete and it functions excellent of what it’s designed for. However it does not hold flakes well and we don’t desire flakes displacing any one of the coating. It’s why our Ultra Military, Shield Chip as well as Shield Granite epoxies are very thick and also viscous. When you toss chips onto them they remain on the surface leaving plenty of epoxy finishing underneath them.
Epoxy flooring paints that don’t need flooring prep leave us scraping our heads. Flooring prep is important on all epoxy flooring jobs. We would never ever before do a flooring without prepping it as well as neither ought to you. Yearly there appears to be some new magic formula that hits the marketplace with extravagant pledges. We make and will certainly continue to make what has worked in the past as well as will continue to work int he future. Don’t succumb to advertising hype, we wish you best of luck if you do.