Here are useful tips learned during more than 40 years of installing epoxy urethane floor seals and coatings on Fortune 500 company concrete floors, as well as in basements, garages, and decks. These tips can help you avoid mistakes that can limit the life of your floor.
There are three broad steps to doing your floor project: planning and preparation, repairing, and applying the coating. This article is the third in a three part series, and deals with applying the epoxy paint to the floor.
General guidelines for applying an epoxy coating to your floor:
Now let’s get started with tips on how to coat your floor with an epoxy or urethane floor paint.
Category Archives: Flooring
Garage Floor Repair, Repair
All too often homeowners and businesses try to repair worn, eroded and pitted floors with materials that crumble which ends up leaving large holes or depressions. Once the repair attempt fails the fix is often more difficult then the original problem. Instead of having a few damaged areas, the new holes in the repaired material leave lingering doubts about the remaining repaired surfaces. Will more of the repair material fail? Should the owner go to the expense and effort of trying to remove it? While these questions do not have a universal answer you can make efficient and long lasting repairs to original repairs using 100% epoxy.
Top-coat repairs to floors are often laid with cement like materials that deteriorate from moisture and abrasion. These materials have limited adhesion and are subject to having pockets blister off the substrate which eventually crumble and become dust. A coating of 100% solid epoxy can level those floors and seal them from further damage. By using a squeegee type motion, liquid epoxy can be pulled over floor irregularities allowing them to fill in. Because epoxy is hard, durable and impervious to liquids once sealed further erosion is usually stopped.
Repair of repairs follows several steps.
You should have repairs to your repairs which will have a good chance of lasting quite some time. A heavy impact to your floor may still allow layers of cement type patch to let go but more often than not you will avoid additional problems. Your floor will be relatively flat and good looking while being easy to keep clean and maintain.
Durall Industrial Flooring supplies kits of materials that are customized to owner specification and delivered directly to the job site. Kits include full directions and 24/7 help lines staffed by seasoned flooring experts, so professionals and amateurs alike can successfully install a quality floor.
Web visitors can obtain free, job-specific quotes on materials or nationwide turnkey installations by completing a simple questionnaire at http://www.concrete-floor-coatings.com.
For a high-resolution photo example, visit: http://www.concrete-floor-coatings.com/photos
For more information, contact Harvey Chichester at: harvey@concrete-floor-coatings.com Phone: 1-800-466-8910 or 952-888-1488 (24/7)
Flooring Provides with High Performance System
Resin bonded flooring provides a high performance system which will undoubtedly meet your specifics for different types of flooring requirements. It is steadily gaining world-wide popularity, especially in the U.S. and U.K. It can be suitable for a wide array of service conditions, from regular foot traffic to constant heavily loaded hard plastic-wheeled trolleys, all the way to severe fork lift truck impact and frequent heavy duty vehicle passage. This category of flooring is a natural winner during floor selection process because it is considered by many to be satisfactorily long-lasting.
If you are considering resin bonded flooring as a stand-out option for your home or industrial improvement projects, it would be very beneficial if you would be able to take the time out to look for contractors who are specialists in resin surfaces, several of these companies are located in the U.K. and they are definitely catering to customized resin bonded flooring, as well as resin bound paving. These contractors carry out domestic or commercial paving services and they would surely be able to furnish you with all the necessary information regarding the general durability description and typical thickness of resin bonded flooring which will best suit your needs and that are readily available in the market.
Commercial paving service manufacturers in the U.K. can produce a variety of decorative resin bonded flooring effects, which can be achieved by incorporating colored particles or flakes in the surface. Slip resistant and anti-static or conductive versions that are mainly used for resin bound paving can also be requested or acquired from industry specialists in resin surfaces located all across the U.S. and U.K.
There is no doubt that most people will normally choose resin bonded flooring over any other material because of the quality of the product. It is also evident that both commercial and domestic paving service contractors are quite happy to take advantage of the versatility of resin bonded flooring or resin bound paving in terms of design and the numerous usable functions where it may be applied.
Real Estate Investment Trusts
Investment has returned to the retail market throughout Australia and investment levels continue to increase as the market stability.
Into the future, this trend is expected to continue to improve as economic confidence and employment grows, retail spending returns and interest rates remain on hold.
There have been a number of signs of increasing confidence over the past few months and the retail sector has generated surprisingly positive trading results.
The recapitalization of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) has seen many local buyers return to the market and a number of offshore investors have remained in the market because of Australia’s strong economic growth prospects.
While retail assets remain highly sought after, investors have become more selective in their acquisitions. Larger retail assets are becoming more popular in 2010 as investors re-visit their overall investment strategies and attempt to position themselves for the next cycle. The value of neighborhood shopping centers is likely to remain stagnant, and construction and development activity is expected to continue to rise over the next five years.
Continued expansion plans by retailers is supportive of investors’ increased focus on the redevelopment pipeline, with investors finding it hard to access new investment stock.
A stabilization of yields in 2010 has given owners the confidence they need to test the market for larger assets.
Australian commercial retail sales transactions totaled close to $3.183 billion at the end of the September quarter, exceeding the $2.539 billion total annual sales figure recorded for the full year of 2009.
Tara Downey is Communications Officer for McGees Property, Brisbane. She has a media background spanning more than 10 years with working experience in business reporting, travel writing and newspaper journalism. McGees Property specialises in commercial real estate with our successful and highly skilled sales, leasing, valuations and professional services, and asset management teams.
Garage floor paint does not have to peel
Lifting and pealing paint is too often the end product of a homeowner’s efforts to dress up their garage with floor paint. The problem is worse than having no finish at all. Dirty, dusty, and stained concrete is usually accepted as the standard for home garages, but the eyesore of blisters, pealing, and chipping of a garage floor gone wrong is testimonial to the homeowner’s failure. Fortunately, new technology in flooring, when combined with systems for preparing concrete properly, can now avoid disasters that leave garages looking worse than before the treatment.
Epoxy flooring is weather-resistant, and unharmed by rain, snow, oil, and flooding. This resistance is due to the fact that epoxy coatings, unlike paints, come in two parts. When mixed, a catalyzing process changes these two parts from a liquid to a permanent solid. In contrast, paints are carried in water or solvent bases that evaporate to leave the finish. If you reintroduce one of those carriers to the surface, the paint often is able to re-dissolve back into a liquid state.
Even though painted garage finishes are formulated to resist re-dissolving into their carriers, under stress they can be susceptible to blistering, pealing, and chipping. But water and most solvents have no effect on sealed epoxy surfaces. Epoxy flooring goes on at the job site and requires no seams, creating a continuous membrane that seals what is above from what is below. These epoxy surfaces have been used in food processing plants for over 50 years now. Mold mildew and other contaminants cannot penetrate the epoxy membrane, and wash off easily.
Modern architects often use the flexibility of epoxy flooring to allow spaces to flow together creating expanses of unbroken line. Now the living room and deck patio can appear as a single integrated living space. Exterior gardens and interior upholstery tie together with access walkways provided by colored epoxy flooring. As a result, snow, rain, leaves, and other outdoor changes provide unique variety to the outdoor spaces that can also be enjoyed from the indoor space.
Preparation is everything when applying finishes. You can only expect a surface to stay in place if its substrate is permanent. Obviously, if the substrate crumbles or moves, your surface will move with it. Today, after 40 years of application experience, flooring experts have developed application preparation procedures that help minimize the risk of substrates moving. New floors are especially vulnerable and require extensive preparation. New concrete is dusty for the first few years while the latents of concrete on the surface are kicked, walked, or driven off. Those latents must be removed before quality epoxy topcoats are applied or the topcoats will move with the latents as they break free from the substrate.
One should not rely on retail store clerks to help with a floor that will be used for 10 to 20 years. Factory-direct kits of materials including step-by-step instructions and a 24/7 help line are now available online. With these resources, anyone can put a quality floor down in their garage that will last for decades. Like a car finish, you may get some scratches and marks, but also like a car finish, a little touching up can keep those finishes looking great for decades.
Durall Industrial Flooring offers no-cost, no-obligation quotes for its fully customized kits of materials, including all preparation materials and procedures, for installing industrial quality epoxy or urethane coatings at www.concrete-floor-coatings.com. These beautifully sealed and easy-to-maintain floors come in over 20 colors. The floor finish can be gloss, flat, or satin and may be easily accented with decorative chips. Additionally, the floors may be skid-resistant like emery paper, yet still easy to sweep or squeegee.
For photo examples and more detail, visit www.concrete-floor-coatings.com
For more information, contact Harvey Chichester at harvey@durallfmg.com
Phone: 800-466-8910 or 952-888-1488 (24/7)