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 first in a three part series, and deals with planning and preparation.

General guidelines for applying an epoxy coating to your floor:

Do no harm.

Investing in prep produces the best value, (cost divided by years of service).

Let the chemicals and equipment do the work.

What can go wrong, will go wrong, unless you think ahead.

Technique is what separates mortals from Rembrandts.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Now let's get started with tips on how to plan your job and prepare your floor.

Plan the job.

Stick your coating to something that is not going to move

The better the tools, the less work you have to do.

Removing loose concrete is as important as removing dirt

Different types of dirt require different cleaners

"Shocking" the floor can help free dirt and contaminants.

Some things must be abraded off.

Don’t blow bubbles through your finish

There is only one way to remove gum

Asphalt bleeds

If you coat over things that move, your floor may move

Vacuum out those holes

Gravity is unforgiving

. Once you prep your floor, anything in the air will eventually end up as dirt on your floor. So don’t wait too long to do your coatings. Bugs, leaves, dust, and lint can eventually compromise the quality of the job you end up with.. Water settles in floor cracks and holes. If you vacuum them out or blot them with a rag, you will not have the problem of unexpected delays due to finding water still in your floor after the surface has dried.
. Adhesives are often a problem to remove on floors. But if you leave the adhesive, your coating is like an eggshell. A hard exterior with a soft interior will often let the shell crack and peal away.
. If you use a solvent-based floor coating and coat over any asphalt spots, the solvents will make the asphalt bleed into your finish spoiling the color. Use a scraper to remove any asphalt. Then follow with some degreaser or mineral spirits.
. Modern gum is actually synthetic rubber and is not affected by cleaners or most solvents. Scraping is the most common method of removing gum but a 190-degree hot water jet works fast if you have one.
. Gases often come up through your porous concrete floor. Methane and radon gas are very common under concrete slabs and move their way through the concrete causing some bubbles in the finish. But most often bubbles are caused by the chemical reaction still going on between your cleaners and the floor. One or two good scrub rinses are needed to help avoid generating gas bubbles in your floor.
Gum, adhesive, asphalt, some paints, concrete splatters, silicone sprays from Rain X, and Tire Shine are just some of the blemishes that you may need to scrape or grind off by hand when preparing a floor.
When you do your laundry you put your shirt in the wash and it is probably at a pH of 6.5 or 7. Then you add your detergent, which may bring the pH up to 8 or 8.5. That pH change is part of what make the dirt particles want to let go of the fabric. When we do floors, we shock the floor by bringing the pH up to 12 and then hitting it with the acidic cleaner dropping the pH to 5.5 or so. That really helps make concrete particles that are about to let to, let go.
. If one cleaner worked for everything there would only be one cleaner sold. But some dirt and contaminants, like fats and oils, respond to alkaline-type cleaners and some dirt and contaminants, like minerals, rust and concrete respond, to acidic-type cleaners. If alkaline and acidic are mixed they cancel each other out to neutral, so two separate cleanings are needed for your concrete floor, one alkaline cleaning and one acidic, followed by a good scrub rinse to stop the chemical action.
. If you walk over concrete with your socks on, you will usually see that they get all dusty. That’s because the concrete is constantly deteriorating and breaking away. Your preparation should leave only concrete that is well attached, so aggressive scrubbing is a must.
Renting power scrubbers, walk-behind vacuums, double-bladed squeegees, and long-handled scrapers are all multipliers that reduce your work and increase your performance. You can try to do without lots of fancy tools, but you might have to ask yourself, will you stop your work earlier than you should because it's just too much work.
. Remember that a floor that has 3000 lb. or more going over it every day needs much better adhesion than a wall that may get brushed by an elbow occasionally. Stick your coating to something that is not going to move.
Save trips to the store and costly delays by getting everything you need ready before the job starts. One quick step would be to go to a website like www.concrete-floor-coatings.com for a free cost analysis which will list everything you need to do your job, including step by step instructions.

Remember, "Life imitates Star Trek." You may begin to notice in the future that virtually every floor in the galaxy seems to have a flow-coated, two-part coating on it. I am seeing fewer and fewer new wood floors, linoleum, or oriental rugs. How about you?

Follow the rules and your job will turn out with the great look you want.

For more information, contact Harvey Chichester at harvey@concrete-floor-coatings.com or phone 1-800-466-8910 or 952-888-1488 (24/7).

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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:

Do no harm.
Investing in preparation produces the most years of service.
Let the chemicals and equipment do the work.
What can go wrong, will go wrong, unless you think ahead.
Technique is what separates mortals from Rembrandts.
An once of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Now let's get started with tips on how to coat your floor with an epoxy or urethane floor paint.

 

Plan the job.

Good floor prep is key to a long lasting floor.

Take a break.

Mix 200 strokes.

Easy work makes for a better job

No one is perfect

Don’t worry about tricks of gravity

A rag may not save you

Technique, technique, technique.

This is an application pattern I like to teach and can serve you very well. Tip your roller and remove it quickly before it fills with liquid. Apply a quick wet line 3 or 4 feet back from where you had stopped coating. Now fill in the area between that wet line and your previous rolled area. As you overlap the new wet part, . The strong two-part coatings you are applying are not the water-based latexes that wipe easily off with a rag or a little water. If you get the coating on something you did not want to coat, it may be less harmful to leave it than to smear it all over the place. You may be better off chipping it off once it dries a little, or coating over it with paint that matches what you got it on.
. As you put your first coat down, you will find things, bugs, sand, water, lint, and the like. What was in the air eventually will be on the floor. Remember this is a two-coat process. Yes, remove what you can as you go but those small bits of debris may be easier to remove when you screen between coats and sweep before your second coat.
. I do floors lots of floors and still have misses, marks, and errors. I just can’t rely on myself to be perfect all the time. That’s why two coats are always planned.
. Tape your cutting brush to a broom handle, use a wheeled bucket for 18-inch rollers, and several pails if using 9-inch rollers, and wear a mask if using solvent based products. Save your back and let yourself move quickly. Moving fast is more fun but it also sets a rhythm, which keeps a repetitive job interesting enough to maintain focus.
Two-part flooring products can produce floors that click when you first walk over them. That clicking often means that the two parts were not mixed well. Clicking is sucking dust off your feet and could cause both lifting and discoloration problems down the road. Yes, the floor will usually stop clicking and harden, but it may come from aging rather than a strong chemical change. Mixing is not a science, but you must be able to count to 200.
I always take a break after floor preparation to let the floor dry. Putting down a coating can be smooth and uniform or splotchy with misses. A little rest before the artistic part of the job will improve the quality of your application process.
For this article, we will assume that you have done a good job of doing you’re preparation and repair work already.
Two-part coatings harden in the can once mixed, so it is best to have everything you need at the start of your job. A useful first step is to go to a website like www.concrete-floor-coatings.com for a free cost analysis report that also lists everything you need to do your job including step-by-step instructions.
you re-wet your roller
and as you overlap the previous area your roller is re-moistened. When you get to the end, roll back over the same area a second time. This re-rolling will spread any lines that may have come off your roller edges as you move across the floor.

Push the roller on, not off.

I always flip my roller so that I move towards the open end. This little step pushes the roller onto the frame not off it. Each time the roller moves on the frame you have the danger of opening a gap at the end that fills the roller with coating as you dip. Soon you are getting lines as the liquid drips out of the ends of the roller. And soon the roller is sliding back and forth on your frame because the interior is now very slippery.

Don’t hit the roller.

If your roller cover starts to slide off the frame, don’t tap the roller, tap the frame. If you tap the roller, you often get dents in the roller that show up as marks as you roll. If you tap the frame end of the roller, it will slide on without changing its shape.

There is dirt in that pail.

I can’t say how often I have compromised the quality of a job by pouring my last amount of coating out of the pail onto the floor as I exit. The problem is every piece of sand, lint, or bug that had stuck to the roller is resting at the bottom of the pail. Right where I have wanted the floor to look its best (at the entrance or exit), I have poured out all my debris on the floor so that I can use that last 3-oz. of coating. Don’t do it! You will be sorry.

Screen the floor after your primer coat repairs are made

. By screening your floor with a 60 grit screen after any additional repairs are made, you can usually shave your floor flat. This screening removes bubbles, lint, sand, bugs, leaves, and fillers that are above the desired surface.

Sweep your floor with a kitchen type broom before coating.

Push brooms just don’t pick up enough of the small grains. A kitchen broom takes a little longer but does a better job.

Vacuum the corners

. It is just too hard to get grains of sand and other small particles out of corners and along baseboards or out of holes unless you use a vacuum.

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