Garage Floor Coating In Cambridge, Ontario

Road Salt Breaks Down Uncoated Garage Floors

Garage floor coating keeps brine on the surface instead of inside the concrete. Every winter, cars carry salty slush off the 401, Hespeler Road and Franklin Boulevard and drop it on the garage floor.

Uncoated concrete wicks that brine in like a sponge. Every cold snap after a mild day turns it to ice inside the surface, and bit by bit the top layer pops off. A sealed garage floor coating ends the wicking, so meltwater gets pushed outside and the slab below stays whole.

Why Store-Bought Garage Floor Coating Kits Fail

Most kits peel because they are thin and go down over acid-etched concrete. Warm tires lift them at the wheel tracks before long, and salt creeps under the edges.

Every garage floor coating we install starts with a pass of the diamond grinder, which scuffs the slab like coarse sandpaper so the primer has something to bite. The film we build on top is several times what a kit leaves. If a kit is already peeling, we grind it all off before we begin.

Newer And Older Cambridge Garages Need Different Prep

Garages in East Hespeler and Silver Heights are younger, and their builders sprayed a curing compound on the fresh slab. Primer will not hold to that film, so the grinder removes it first.

Older garages in East Galt and Preston often have cracks, oil stains and old paint. We clean the oil, fill the cracks and repair the edges before the coating goes down. Deeper damage goes through our concrete floor repair process first.

Choosing A Garage Floor Coating Finish

Flake wins in most Cambridge garages since it disguises grit and grips tires. A polyaspartic topcoat cures fast and resists yellowing in the sun. You can see flake colours on our epoxy flake flooring page.

Garage Floor Coating Should Reach The Edges

Coatings fail first at the edges, so we take it right to the walls. The strip under the overhead door, the step into the house and the base of each wall all collect salt and water. We grind those edges by hand and coat them the same as the middle of the floor.

Plenty of Cambridge garages have a floor drain or a slope toward the door. We keep that slope and seal around the drain so water still runs off. A coating that stops a few inches short of the wall leaves raw concrete for salt to creep under, and that is where peeling starts.

How Long A Garage Floor Coating Job Takes

The first day is for masking, grinding, patching cracks and laying the base coat. Flake and the clear topcoat follow on the second. You can usually walk on the floor that evening and park on it a few days later, depending on the system and the weather. Your garage floor coating quote lists the dates so you can plan where the cars will sleep.