How To Epoxy A Garage Floor
Epoxying residential garage floors has become increasingly more popular & even more accessible for people of all skill levels to do. Back when I still owned my own painting business, epoxy floors were an additional service I would recommend to the homeowner if I was painting their house. Epoxy floors can be a lucrative add-on to a painter’s services, especially with the flooring systems I’ll talk about here today.
One of the biggest barriers to entry into doing epoxy floors is the equipment. A lot of painters working on small residential jobs don’t have the money to buy or rent a floor grinder, and working with chemicals to acid etch a floor comes with a whole host of risks & danger. But, as long as a concrete floor isn’t severely damaged, and is properly cleaned beforehand, Rust-Oleum’s Seal-Krete® and Citadel® Flooring lines of epoxy flooring systems both offer a minimal surface-prep primer that promises adhesion of your epoxy coatings. These products have 10+ years of proven efficacy, especially against hot tire pickup. I’ve used these primers myself, and have never seen them fail!
If you’re interested in more in-depth content and information about completing epoxy floors, check out my online Epoxy Course, which contains videos of me & my friend Tony, a concrete coating specialist from Rust-Oleum®, using these exact systems I’ll talk about here to complete several epoxy garage floors. There are also several videos available on my YouTube video that I’ll link to at the end of this blog post.
Cleaning the Floor
The very first step is to come in and clean the floor. With a proper cleaning of the floor, and the primers in the epoxy systems in this course, you can have proper adhesion without grinding or acid etching. This is how I clean garage floors before applying epoxy:
1. Blow any dirt & debris with a leaf blower.
2. Pre-wet the floor before applying any cleaning products
3. Spot treat the floor with the Krud Kutter Pro Cleaner Degreaser
4. Mop the floor with the Krud Kutter Pro Neutral Floor Cleaner
5. Use an all-surface cleaner
6. Pressure wash with a rotating nozzle
7. Go around with a smaller scraper to make sure that there's nothing still stuck to the floor.
8. Wait at least 24-48 hours to ensure the floor is dry before applying any epoxy.
Masking
When it comes to doing an epoxy floor, there is some masking that you will need to do. The most important is going to be masking at the edge of the garage so that your epoxy doesn’t extend outside. To know exactly where to place your masking, snap a chalk line at the back of the railing where the garage door comes down. Double check this, just in case!
After doing a couple of floors with these systems, I’ve come to prefer using T-Rex tape for my first layer of masking. Epoxy dries hard, and typical painter’s masking tape will become more difficult to remove - splintering and tearing easily under these circumstances. After applying a row of tape, next is applying 2-3 rows of paper masking for overflow. A dropcloth will also be close to the edge of the garage for extra protection. You’ll need to apply and remove the masking between each coat you’re applying.
Sealing Saw Cuts & Cracks
Every floor is going to have various seams, cracks, or saw cuts on the floor. To achieve a seamless look to the floor, these need to be filled before applying any primers or epoxy coats. Make sure you overfill your saw cuts so that you can scrape off the excess to make it flush with the rest of the floor.
Throughout the different project in the course, there are several different sealants that we used for this step.
○ Rust-Oleum Concrete Saver Flexible Joint Sealant
■ This is a two-component sealant that we used in a double-barrel caulking gun to fill in the saw cuts. You will be going through a high-quantity of these tubes.
■ This is a two-component polyurea sealant for use in saw cuts. It is self-leveling with a fast cure.
○ Rust-Oleum Concrete Saver Pro Self-Leveling Sealant
■ This is a single-component polyurea toolable sealant that we used to fill the area where the slab concrete meets the stem wall. There is usually cushioning/buffalo board there that will have gaps around it.
For scraping the sealant, I use a small hand scraper. It's very important to make sure that the blade is fresh and sharp. You might use two or three in an average-sized garage. Only scrape off the excess sealant in the saw cuts.
Priming
Seal-Krete®: Epoxy-Shell 550
Citadel®: EP-55
Both of the featured primers in this course are two-component, water-based, low odor, minimal surface prep primers with a 45-minute pot life. These primers are adhesion promoters that are designed to do nothing other than stick, as long as the surface is clean and dry.
These primers are applied with an 18” roller. Before that, we use throwaway chip brushes and small buckets to apply the primer on the stem walls. For every epoxy coat, doing the stem walls first is going to be easier and will also make the floor look better in the long run.
Wait a minimum of 5 hours dry time before applying the next coat.
Applying the 1st Coat
Seal-Krete®: Epoxy-Shell 1000 EPL (extended pot life)
Citadel®: PLE-100 FC (fast cure)
Before starting applying this coat, you’ll want to apply your masking once more. If necessary, you may want to use a leaf-blower to get rid of any debris that blew in, or acetone to remove any visible dirt or footprints that has collected.
Tools to use:
● Squeegee
○ 8-12 mils: A typical thickness for a garage floor
○ 15-20 mils: Use this if you want a little bit thicker of a coating
● Roller
○ 18-inch roller, with a White Woven Pro roller cover from Premier.
● Spike Shoes
○ Allows you to walk on the epoxy as you're applying it.
Once again, you’ll be starting with your stem walls first. Use a dustpan to lightly throw your epoxy flakes into the coated stem wall. Once this is done, shop-vac up the excess flakes before starting on the rest of the floor.
Start by pouring out a thin ribbon of epoxy onto the garage floor, starting at the back. For all additional ribbons, pour into the wet edge so that everything is properly mixed and nothing is settling. Use the squeegee like a snowplow - with a gentle 45 degree angle. You can start back-rolling the epoxy once at least half of it has been laid out with the squeegee. Back-roll north to south (back wall to garage door) first to go the opposite direction of the squeegee, then east to west (side wall to side wall) to ensure that you don't see any roller lines on your top coat. This method of backrolling will be the same for all additional coats of the flakes.
Broadcasting Your Flakes
When it comes to epoxy floors, there is a lot of variety in finished looks, with some of the most popular being a solid color floor, a sparse/full flake floor, and a hybrid flake floor. On the Seal-Krete® system floor, we did a full-flake floor with our flakes at the ¼” size. And on our black epoxy floor, we did a Torginol hybrid-flake floor with added mica flakes in the Tidal Wave blend.
Use a bucket and your hands to throw out the flakes - whatever way works for you. Be very generous and ensure every area receives some flakes. You might end up going back over some areas as the flakes initially begin to settle too. Start broadcasting your flakes in the back of the garage, like where you started applying your epoxy. On a hybrid-flake floor, the flakes are going to be a variety of different sizes. This is going to change the way that you throw the flakes. You’re going to want to use a sidearm throw, with some force behind it to help the large and small flakes fall at the same rate.
Scraping the Flakes
A standard floor scraper with a stiff metal blade is the best option to use, with a smaller hand scraper for the stem walls. The goal with scraping the flakes is to create a smooth even surface for the next coat of epoxy to go onto. Use a light amount of even pressure to get the scraper to glide across the floor - too much pressure and you’ll start to gouge the floor. Scrape in at least three directions before collecting the new loose flakes - north-south, east-west, and diagonal. Run those directions with your vacuum as well.
Applying the 2nd Coat
Seal-Krete®: Poly-Shell 8000, 30-minute working time, 2-4 hour dry time
Citadel®: UL-80 - UV-stable polyaspartic coat, 35-minute working time, 3-4 hour dry time
For our Seal-Krete® floor, this was the last coat we applied. With top coats, it is important to de-lint your roller, even if it claims to be lint-free. Using tape, there will still be some fibers that come off that would’ve been stuck in your final coat once it dried!
With both floors, we used a flat flexible trowel for this step, pushing it forward on the Seal-Krete® floor and backdragging it on the Citadel® floor. The application should be similar to the previous coat, including the squeegee and backrolling process. On the black epoxy floor, we threw our second coat of flakes on top of the UL-80. We came back 3-4 hours after this and scraped the flakes down again.
The Final Coat - Citadel®
Top Coat 1: UL-80
Top Coat 2: Poly-1 HD UDP (ultra durability plus) - polyurea epoxy, abrasion-resistant, helps with dust & hot-tire pickup
After our last flake coat was dry, scraped, and cleaned, we were ready to apply our two top coats. The UL-80 coat was applied just like the others before it, with a flat flexible trowel.
Three to four hours later, the floor was ready to sand. The mica flakes are liable to stick up through other coatings applied on top of them, so I used my Ekasand 6” sander with 150 grit FilmTek to lightly knock down that mica, ensuring a flat surface for the final coat to lay on.
The final coat on this floor, the Poly-1 HD, was applied as a thin coat with mohair rollers. We were aiming for about 500-sq feet per gallon. After this coat dries, your floor is done! Pay attention to the TDS to know how long this coat needs to cure, and how long before vehicle traffic is okay to enter the garage floor.
These videos are available on my YouTube channel with more information:
Do You Really Need to Grind Concrete Before Epoxy? | Garage Floor Prep Explained
Garage Floor Epoxy | Broadcasting Flakes
How to Epoxy Your Garage Floor Like a Pro | Affordable Rust-Oleum® Industrial Floor Coatings