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Jay, my experience has been a good one using Swisstrax tile flooring. This is a superior U.S.-built engineered product and should not be compared to the inferior Asian-made floor tiles that can be purchased at Costco. The guys at Swisstrax were extremely helpful with my floor design and various color choices. Some of the weak points of using plastic floor tiles is the plasticky noise that occurs when walking on them. Also with darker colors, they tend to expand when exposed to direct sunlight; so leaving sufficient clearances to your walls is a must. Other than that, they clean well and provide positive drainage through the built-in drain holes.
Other options are polyaspartic and epoxy coatings however, the cost is substantially higher. The colored chips that are sprinkled on the top coat are a must if you don't feel like taking a spill on a suoer shiny & smooth floor finish. This option should be performed by a flooring professional since diamond roughing of the concrete surface is a must for good adhesion.
my experience has been a good one using Swisstrax tile flooring. This is a superior U.S.-built engineered product
That's a funny company name for a USA product.
I have a professionally installed epoxy floor. Love it. Heated (gas, separate zone) garage. Over 10 years old. Would do epoxy again if ever needed. A 3 foot floor squeegee is very helpful.
I had an epoxy floor done with 100% chip coverage. Love it. It took them 3 days total. I just park a 24' uhaul in the driveway. Put all my garage crap in there for the 3 days and unloaded it on the 4th day.
Recommend tiles or other laid down surface.
One big downside to coated / painted floors is getting a proper prep. If it is not new concrete or super clean the coating will not stick for the long haul. Especially problematic to clean are oil stains / spills and any other petroleum / synthetic liquid spills prior to application.
I have never seen a through clean-up mainly due to the concrete absorbing these spills.
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Recommend tiles or other laid down surface.
One big downside to coated / painted floors is getting a proper prep. If it is not new concrete or super clean the coating will not stick for the long haul. Especially problematic to clean are oil stains / spills and any other petroleum / synthetic liquid spills prior to application.
I have never seen a through clean-up mainly due to the concrete absorbing these spills.
_________________________ https://rennlist.com/forums/porsche-...meet-otis.html
My concrete was only a few years old and zero stains. I agree the prep is the biggest and hardest step of the project.
Only bad thing I have read about tiles is moister and mold under the tiles.
The key to epoxy coating is to have the a layer of concrete ground off before the application. I did Ucoat it on mine which held up about 3 years. Winter is the worst if you live in cold climates. I know 3 people he in WI that have the epoxy coating professionally done by grinding the floor first and have had no problems whatsoever.
There are two types of epoxy flooring. There is the regular epoxy and fast cure. If I remember correctly, having them installed by professionals will run $4 and $6/SF respectively (for a solid color). It all depends on how long you are willing to not use your garage. When you go for epoxy coating make sure it's 100% solids and not a water based epoxy. The water based DIY kits have a tendency to grip the tires after your hot tires cool down in place and contract on the surface creating wear marks. Surface prep is the most important followed closely by application thickness. Good luck and post some pictures.
I had an epoxy floor professionally done for big bucks since I wanted it guaranteed, and had nothing but problems with it - primarily it sticking to the tires of my heavier vehicles - pickup, Infiniti QX, and lifting when we drove out - you could actually hear it peeling up as the tires rolled forwards. I think the prep was the issue as when the floor was first poured, I had clear sealed it and I don't think the floor company ground down far enough to get through the depth to which the sealer penetrated. After I had them make about 6 retrips to correct lifted chunks in the tire areas, I finally convinced them to come and redo the complete floor at no cost to me to save themselves the bad publicity in my local community and to keep them from having to make retrips for repair every month. They did all the reprep in one day and because of my 4-post lift that won't clear the garage doors so it couldn't be rolled outside, we did one of the 2-car bays one day, 24 hours later, applied the clear with the shark-grip, and 24 hours after that did the other 2-car bay with clear again 24 hours after that and I left it for 3 days before I put a car back into the garage. So far, no lifting, so as others have said, it's all about the prep if you want it to last for many years without issues.
Alternatively, check into concrete polishing. This is probably what I'll do when I build my annex garage as it's just gorgeous - makes the floor look like the bottom of a riverbed without any risk of lifting. The stones in the concrete end up being polished and contrast with the regular cement areas that then look like sand. After they polish, they used the same type of clear top coating with a non-slip additive. This looks better if you know that you'll be polishing the floor afterwards as you can add more interesting rocks into the concrete and more of them than you'd have in a regular bulk concrete pour.
Grabbed a few pics off the internet of these.
This is the result you'd likely get if polishing a pre-existing poured floor - not quite as nice as the top 2, but still pretty cool.
06-01-2017, 08:49 AM
Garage Floor Finish
