DIY Epoxy Flake Garage Floor Coatings (What Most People Don't Tell You)

all right so we got a 24-24 garage putting an epoxy flake coating on this so the first step is we're going to grind it prep it get it ready for the coating so that's what we're going to do today we got we got all our stuff coming out we're going to clean it out brush it out repair anything that needs to be repaired and then we'll get the diamond grinders out keep everything right in the trailer so there's one hand grinder we'll use and then we'll get the rest right out trailer hey everybody so this video is going to be about how to install your own epoxy flake garage floor coating and how to do it the right way now there's a lot of ways to do it and a lot of the the big box stores where the cheap epoxy will tell you one thing but we do this for a living so i'm going to show you how we do it and make sure you do it right this is the right way to do it right here now what what luke and i are doing is we're grinding the concrete with some diamonds to give it the proper surface profile without the proper surface profile on the concrete the epoxy really won't adhere to it properly so you got to really scratch up that concrete you got to make it look like 80 grit sandpaper these are the types of diamonds we use under our machines now this is our big walk behind floor grinder we use on bigger garages but on smaller garages you know you can just use a little floor buffer there with a with a diameter brush attachment that goes underneath it and it'll scratch up the concrete you can see how it's scratching it up really good right there so we'll go over the whole floor with that while luke's going around doing the edges with a smaller five inch hand grinder and then we'll vacuum that out and clean it and and then we'll decide do we need to buzz over it again just to make sure it has the right profile so you can see how easy that buffer is to run i mean with t is running it right now and as long as you just you know you push down on the handles it goes one way you lift up on the handles it goes the other and then luke's going around making sure he's getting really close to the edges about a foot out just makes running the floor buffer a little easier up against the edges but that's the proper way to to profile a concrete floor right there i'm cleaning out the side joints with a multi-tool just to get those out nice and clean those joints always fill up with dirt and debris so then you can vacuum them out but the big box doors i mean that cheap epoxy you're they're going to want you just to acid at your floor so they're going to tell you just to brush it out rinse it degrease it acid etch it and then rinse that out and then let it dry and then you're good to go with your epoxy coating well not really not if you really want it to last we grind i grind off so many of those coatings in a year from people that have done it like that and then we come and they hire us to come to our coatings so acid etching really isn't going to get you the right profile yeah we'll clean it it will give you somewhat of a profile but not enough for the epoxy to really bond to you know right where you drive in especially when when you drive in your garage your tires are really really hot and then you park on that epoxy with those really hot tires it wants to pull at that epoxy and that's where it's first going to come up if you don't grind it like we do if you just acid etch it that's the first place your your coating is going to come up so this is the right way to do it so we got it all ground we went over it with a diamond brush and then we also went over it with a five inch hand grinder with a diamond cup wheel so this is what it should look like just before you put the base coat on you got to get it cleaned out we got a vacuumed one so we'll vacuum it again and then we'll put the base coat on but this is what it looks like this is what a garage floor should look like before you prep it for epoxy so that's the first really important step right there is the prep you know if you don't get it prepped right you're going to end up with problems down the road the second really important thing is using the right product the company we use has a really really good product i have a i actually have a course i built that shows you step by step how to do this so each step i break down into little bitty pieces it's three different jobs like this i go over and it teaches you how to prep what products to use how to apply them how to do the flakes how to put on the top coat everything you need to know about doing one of these floors successfully so if if that interests you that's there's a link for that down in the description of the video you guys can check that out so the product is really important the big box stores tell you to put down just one coat really really thin it's too thin the one they want you to put down it just won't last and then most of them don't even have you put a top coat over it to protect it and i mean a lot of you guys probably don't know this but epoxy will yellow in this direct sunlight it needs a protective top coat of urethane of polyaspartic to keep it from yellowing so they're not going to tell you that for sure so what we're doing right now is we're putting on the first kit for the base coat you know every manufacturer has their own mixing instructions their own coverage rates how you should put it down how thick and so you definitely want to make sure who you who you end up using is you know you read the instructions and make sure you put it down just like they want you to we we have a two to one ratio here on our epoxy and we mix so two quarts of one part uh one quart or the other and that'll cover about 180 square feet so that we measure that out we'll dump that whole little three quart kit out in that 180 square feet and get it rolled out to make sure we have the right thickness you don't want to put this stuff on too thin and really really you don't want to put it on too thick either it's important you put it on you know the way they they want you to and the way they made it so i'm the mixing guy i'm over there mixing another kid as luke and tea are getting this spread out again this is a 24-24 garage so we're gonna end up using you know 180 180 180 about three kits to get the base coat on and then we're gonna broadcast it the flight to full what we call full rejection so we're gonna completely broadcast flake over this whole thing i don't like just sprinkling in flakes i mean the flake will help give it a little bit of durability too plus it also gives it a little bit of texture so when it's a full broadcast you have a much much better floor than if it was just the flakes were just sprinkled in here and there that's why the pros do full broadcast mostly and um the diy kit you buy they just give you a tiny little like 16 ounce jar of flakes i i buy it by the pound so we're gonna broadcast on about 60 or 70 pounds of flake on this one versus a 16 ounce jar you get it the big box store so we just fill it up put the flake right in the buckets fill it right up and you can see how i'm just throwing it on i'll just grab a handful throw it up in the air and i'll make sure that i completely cover the base coat and that really adds a lot of durability to the floor also so these floors end up being pretty thick when we're all done when you add all that flake to it and then you protect it with a with a really good top coat you can see the flake comes in a box like that you can get them in 25 pound boxes or 40 pound boxes there's all kinds of different colors i'll have a link on down below to my website page where it shows you all the different colors of this too so what i'm doing now is this is about an hour hour and a half later i'm checking it to see if we can get on it scrape it now a lot of epoxies you'll leave at this stage you'll come back the next day and do this but because we do so many and we travel pretty far we use epoxies that dry really really fast so we can do this whole project in one day so the epoxy we use dries in about 60 to 90 minutes we can get right back on it scrape it and then we can vacuum this up and top coat it and get get it all done in a day the reason i was scraping it is because when you broadcast flake into epoxy you know it falls down into that epoxy at all different types of ways and shapes and stuff so we want to scrape it to make sure we smooth it out really good cut off any little sharp pieces of the flake so we'll scrape it north to south and east the west and then we'll vacuum it out and then it'll be all cleaned and ready for the top coat when we get done vacuuming sometimes we'll take a leaf blower like this and just blow it out real quick just to make sure we get any loose flakes sometimes those flakes are hard to vacuum up see i'm using my nice backpack vacuum on that i'll have all a link for all these tools and stuff down in the description guys if you need any of these to do your for you can click right on those links it'll take you right to them now we're putting the top coat on we use a clear polyaspartic top coat polyaspartic is they're similar to epoxies as far as coatings goes they're just a little different chemistry they're more chemical resistant more scratch resistant they're uv resistant so they're not going to yellow in the sun and they're really going to protect your coating here your floor under hot tires this stuff's not going to peel off on the hot tires if you do it right we apply this a little thicker than the base coat ours goes on at about 130 square feet a gallon so we're gonna use you know between between four and five gallons of top coat on this luke's just spreading out each kit making sure he gets it nice and even the owners on this one they didn't want to put flake on that little tiny outside piece the piece that when you put the door down you see on the outside of the garage they want just to leave that bare concrete so we're just rolling on the polyaspartic coating over the bare concrete just to protect that part most of them i'll say though we do go out over the edge with the flake we'll do the whole the whole floor on it but occasionally we'll run across somebody who just doesn't want that done so if you want to do your own epoxy flake garage floor coating you're a little unsure of the process and what product to use again check out my course down below in that course i i completely go through everything for you so you'll find out all you need to know in there thanks guys

Channel: Mike Day Concrete

Views: 182,840

Rating: 4.9183674 out of 5

Keywords: epoxy garage floor, garage floor epoxy, garage floor epoxy coating, epoxy flooring, flake floor garage, garage epoxy floor coating home depot, garage floor paint, how to concrete, diy concrete, epoxy basement floor, how to pour concrete, how to form concrete, concrete finishing techniques, concrete skills, concrete floor, concrete slab, how to, concrete tools, how to pour a concrete slab, how to pour a concrete floor, how to pour a concrete patio, pouring concrete, concrete

Id: 5w2Rrp8iKiY

Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021