How Do You Prevent Peeling When You're Applying An Epoxy Garage Floor Coating?
Epoxy garage floor coatings add texture and color to your garage floor, and they're practical as well — they make it much easier for you to remove oil, paint and chemical spills from the floor. Unfortunately, many who have tried using a DIY kit to apply their garage floor coating have found that it quickly beings chipping and peeling away from the surface. Worse, it's fairly difficult to completely remove the ruined coating to apply a new one.
If you want to apply an epoxy garage floor coating, it's important to do it correctly the first time. To help stop your new epoxy garage floor coating from peeling, read on to learn four tips to do it correctly.
1. Use a Diamond Grinder to Prepare Your Floor
Surface preparation is the overall most important part of applying an epoxy garage floor coating. In order for the epoxy to properly adhere to the floor of your garage, it needs to have a rough, porous texture. It also needs to be entirely clean — some contaminants like oil and silicone will break down epoxy, and you'll quickly end up with bubbles and peeling areas in your garage floor coating.
DIY garage floor coating kits come with an acid that's used to etch your garage floors. Unfortunately, this often isn't enough to prepare your garage floor properly. If you only use acid etching, your epoxy won't adhere as well.
Instead, you need to rent a diamond grinder from a home improvement store in order to properly prepare your floor. While renting one of these tools can be a bit expensive, it's a fairly easy way to grind down your garage floor well enough for your epoxy to adhere. Wash your garage floor well with trisodium phosphate, rinse it off, wait for it to dry completely, and then run the diamond grinder over its surface. The rough surface will allow epoxy to soak in and adhere to the concrete.
2. Don't Use Low-Quality Coatings Containing a High Level of Solvent
Another problem with DIY kits is that the quality of the epoxy coating included in them is typically low. If you don't want your garage floor coating to begin peeling, you'll have to order quality products.
When you order your epoxy coating, look for a solids content of 90% or greater. This represents the ratio of epoxy solids to solvent contained in the epoxy. Higher solvent content makes the epoxy coating easier to apply, since it's easier to spread around the floor. Unfortunately, all of that solvent will evaporate as the epoxy cures. Only the solids are left behind. Using an epoxy garage floor coating with a low solids content leads to thin coats that are vulnerable to chipping and peeling.
3. Don't Use Too Many Coats
Another reason why using a high-quality epoxy garage floor coating is important is that you can use fewer coats overall. Trying to replicate a thick coat of epoxy with multiple low-solid epoxy coats usually leads to peeling or bubbling. You're more likely to encounter this problem if you apply a coat over another coat that hasn't fully cured. It leads to coats not bonding properly with one another. Using fewer coats reduces the chance that you'll accidentally run into this error.
4. Hire a Professional to Coat Your Garage Floor
Finally, the best way to make sure that your epoxy coating doesn't begin to bubble, peel or chip is to have it done by a professional garage floor coating service. They have access to the highest-quality garage floor coatings — these are industrial coating products that are used in factories and other areas where maximum durability and longevity are required.