Why Epoxy Garage Floor?

If you have just moved to a new home, then chances are the garage floor is not well-furnished. Many people avoid painting the garage due to the costs associated with it or they are just not bothered by an ugly-looking garage floor. The garage floor is always left with cracks, dents and tire marks.

The best way to transform such a garage into a sleek place is by painting. So here,  you are not sure which type of paint to choose.  If you are wondering why apply epoxy to your garage and not something else, well then these are the main reasons. Perhaps after reading this, you might be convinced to epoxy your garage floor.

Why Epoxy Garage Floor?

Protects Concrete

So you have a concrete floor, that floor may pick up dust, it may pick up something else, it may be prone to scratching the surface being damaged. So if you apply an epoxy paint, it keeps the concrete protected.

Easy maintenance

Epoxy is easy to clean because it doesn’t absorb. So if you have oil spills, water spills and chemical spills, you can clean this up quickly if you have epoxy. This is why we see a lot of epoxy floors in garages, in car repair shops, in printing presses, all these areas where they have lots of chemical spills, oil spills.

It’s really convenient. If you have concrete, the oil will go into the concrete it will stay there forever and then you just have this permanent stain. The great thing with epoxy is that you can clear it up and you don’t have any stains left over. That’s the main reason why we see it a lot in places where you have a lot of chemicals spilling onto the floor.

Industrial purposes

This is a continuation of the second reason, but we see this a lot. Epoxy is one of the products that’s accepted to be applied for example in food manufacturing or in pharmaceutical manufacturing. So in these types of industries where they have very strict specification as to what type of floor you can, epoxy is the best. Because the floor can affect the production process and the food that goes onto our plates, so they have very strict requirements.

Epoxy is a great product because epoxy does not allow the buildup of bacteria. You can clean it easily. There is no dust in the atmosphere when forklifts drive around. So that is why you will see epoxy floors in food manufacturing and also pharmaceuticals, but also in many other types of all types of even agricultural storage facilities.

Aesthetic value

You can color epoxy various different colors. You can custom color the epoxy according to the walls of your garage interior.  You can have a blue floor if you want and you can even go into metallic floors where you can just play around with lots of different types of floors or you can have a multicolored floor. There’s lots of things you can do with decorative anesthetic. That’s also an aspect of epoxy floors.

Long term investment

Is it cheaper than tiles? Now, please do not think of epoxy as a cheap solution. The number of your number one priority should be what is that for going to be used for and what is the need for it, and what are you going to be needing it for?

There are certain types of floors where tiles are better than epoxy. There are certain floors where it is recommended that you put in a wooden floor etc. Epoxy is not suitable for all uses. Have an expert determine if it is the best solution for your garage.

Don’t focus on the cost, focus on the need. What are you trying to achieve with your floor? And if epoxy can answer this question for you, then yes maybe epoxy is a very good solution for you.

Types of Epoxy for Garage Floors

Many people don’t really know what an epoxy floor is in the sense that there are so many different factors that will affect the epoxy floor. There’s so many different types of epoxy floors.

1. Thin Coat

These are most common types of epoxy floor. These are epoxy floors that are applied with like a paint. These are usually thin paints not maybe 200 microns per layer. Maybe you apply a primer and two coats. These are great if you just want a space that doesn’t pick up dust. You just want it clean. you want it protected. It’s a great concrete protection’s solution.  And as long as you don’t have very heavy use, it’s a very good solution. They are usually applied with a roller or a squeegee or a combination of the two

2. Self-leveling.

Self leveling is a more impressive looking epoxies and they are cool on garage floors. Self-leveling are usually thicker in thickness, so a self leveling coat might be two or three millimeters. They are applied with a trowel. You need a spiked ruler as well to break the bubbles. It’s a great floor and very common in manufacturing facilities and food facilities and pharmaceuticals where they need to just keep on cleaning the floor all the time.

It is one of the best type of floor because you can just do so many great things and you can cover any uneven surface that has little holes. You can just cover it by applying a two millimetre coating on top.

3. Quartz floors and heavy duty floors

These are epoxy were basically the main component is not the epoxy coating itself, but it’s usually some sort of quartz sand or maybe it’s some sort of segmentation screed that you mix in with the epoxy to you make it more strong.

Heavy duty is common in the dairy industry where they use some semi-tissues squeeze and here you can also talk about poly. You can enter urethane and polyurethane screeds. Just understand that these are types of floors where you kind of combine the resin of the epoxy with some other sort of aggregate that makes it stronger. So these are cords and all types of heavy duty screeds.

4. Metallics

You can do some really interesting thing with Metallica so great for decoration. Keep in mind though that Metallics are very difficult to apply. You need to learn the basics first. Please do not start talking about Metallics or 3D proxies if you don’t know the basics. Learn the basics, learn the basic principles of applying a floor and learn art or painting and then go into these more serious things. The guys today that are playing Metallics are guys have been around for a very long time. They’ve been hit over the head so many times to be making these really good projects. So keep that in mind. Metallic is not that easy to apply. It’s very, very difficult. They look cool but keep that in mind.

5. 3D Transparent Epoxies

This in is a bit of a bit of a fad. In many parts of the world like in Africa and the Middle East, people love this idea of you putting image on the floor and then pour a transparent epoxy resin on top and then that looks like a 3D image. It’s a bit of a fad. They are quite difficult to apply. Most people just talk about doing or they’re teaching 3D boxes and are doing seminars on how to apply 3D epoxy, but no one’s actually doing them.

Conclusion:

For a garage, all you need is simple epoxy coating. The good thing is that you can easily apply it and they dry up very easily. Hope you have learnt the different types of epoxies available and you may not easily need them for other uses, but it is good to be knowledgeable on the types of epoxies coating on the market today.

In summary, epoxy should be applied to a garage floor because it protects the concrete. It’s easy to clean, industrial floors very commonly use epoxy or it could be a decorative reason.

Concrete Primer Before Painting