24 hour epoxy floor install

The first morning

We start by blowing the dust and grit off the slab. Then we grind all of it with a diamond grinder, which takes the smooth top skin off the concrete so the coating has something to grip. Grinding makes dust, so we vacuum the whole floor before anything goes down. If your slab has cracks, we fill them now, and that shows on your quote as an add-on.

Then the epoxy base coat goes down. On a flake floor we broadcast the flake into it while it is still wet, which means scattering the color flakes by hand across the base coat. A full broadcast covers the base completely, and a light broadcast lets some of the base color show through. When the flake is down, we pack up and leave the floor alone.

The night between the coats, and why same day epoxy fails

Epoxy comes in two parts that react with each other once they are mixed, and that reaction is what turns it from a liquid into a hard coat. A top coat rolled over a base that is still curing seals in what is still curing, and the two layers never bond properly. The night between the coats is the time that takes, so the base coat cures overnight before anybody touches the floor again.

A same day install puts both coats down in the same visit, so it skips the hold. When a coating fails on a garage floor, it usually fails at the bond. Hot tire pickup is the failure most people have seen: a car parks after a drive on a hot day, and when it pulls out, the coating comes up off the concrete under its tires. Thin coats and weak prep are the usual causes. That is why we grind every floor and give every base coat its night. Both are about the bond, and a coating that has let go of the concrete has to come off before a new one can go down.

The day after

We come back and scrape the whole floor first. Scraping knocks off any flake that didn’t stick and takes down the ones standing up on edge, so the top coat goes on smooth. Then we roll on the polyaspartic clear coat. Polyaspartic is the clear top layer, and it goes on top because it stands up to sunlight, where plain epoxy turns yellow and chalky. It seals the flake in, and it is the final coat.

The whole job is done within 24 hours, from a morning start to a finish the day after. You can walk on the floor 24 hours after we finish, and park on it after 48 hours.

What the 24 hours mean for you

From the morning we start until we finish the day after, the garage, or whichever room we are coating, is out of use, and so is the floor for a while after. The cars live in the driveway or on the street until you can park inside again. Both coats smell while they cure, so keep the door into the house shut and let the garage air out when you can. Kids and pets stay off the floor from the moment we start until it takes feet.

Jayson is on the job both visits, from the grind to the top coat. Every floor gets the same system and the same night between the coats, whatever it costs. In Jayson’s words, “Everything's gonna be premium.” We install right through the Arizona summer, with no season off.

Every coating gets the same 24 hours

The 24 hours are the same on a garage floor, a patio, a driveway, an RV pad, an interior floor, a shop floor or a walkway or sidewalk. If there is an old coating on the slab, epoxy coating removal comes first, and concrete cleaning is a job of its own with no coating after it. The services page has all nine in one list.