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shop floor coatings

empower

Titanium
Joined
Sep 8, 2018
Location
Novi, MI
Hey guys, our tenant is moving out at the end of the month and we're taking over another 3500 sq ft of shop space.
plan is to demo the entire floor (4" thick concrete and cracked really bad) and pour a whole new slab probably ~8" thick or so.
once the slab is in, really wanna do a nice durable coating. any suggestions on what stands up to use/abuse?

thanks.
 
Talk to you cement guy , there is a power he can add to the cement as they trowel the surface flat that increases the psi of the surface...Phil
 
If you want color just have it added into the mix, way easier than to do anything else later.
I did a shop floor and I think it was a 7 sack mix. The concrete rep came out and mentioned that was pretty much what they called a winery mix. I think there was both plasticizer and water reducer added in also. Lots of abuse of the floor in winerys. It had 1" minus rated aggregate.
My plan was to lightly "hone" the surface with a diamond polisher and use lithium densifier to toughen the surface even more. Have not got to that point yet....
Even if you do pigment or color later still you should pigment the mix, it will take less pigment later and if it craks or chips it will be close to the right color. Instead of a light grey scar on a nice colored floor.
 
I recommend you go with diamond polished concrete....part of the process of doing this involves applying densifier. You'll get a very durable surface with much lower maintenance that going with epoxy paint, etc...
 
At our old shop we used epoxy floor paint. Reasonably durable and good for poorly finished concrete, but not as durable as the concrete itself.
 
not color, looking for a smooth shiny coating that holds up, does that exist?

-From what I've seen on the garage-shop boards, you get what you pay for. I don't know any specific names, but the general consensus is either go cheap and resign yourself to regular touch-ups and periodic complete-refinishes... or go fabulously expensive- like north of $10-$12K for 3500 square- and have it last maybe twice as long.

That's why the recommendation for straight, polished and sealed concrete. Virtually nothing is as long-lasting.

Doc.
 
In winery's the wine is quite acidic and eats concrete. Especially at edges of strip drains or anywhere water / juice sits.

We use a 3 part coating system which needs to be applied correctly. The floor gets ground to remove the top layer and open up the surface. Then the first layer of epoxy is applied which is quite thin soaks into the concrete and is a key for the build layer. When that is tack dry they apply a high build epoxy to a thickness of whatever your pocket can tolerate before finishing with a coloured coat on top of that. If you just do it straight epoxy it can be smooth as glass but for wet area / non slip floors we have a grit applied to the build coat and our top coat is a urethane.

Thickness depends on how hard the area is being used. Some areas are over 1mm and they are having sharp steel gouged into it by forklift drivers and it's holding up well.

Not sure what your paying for concrete floors but 150mm slab 40mpa for us is worth about $75m2 and floor coating is about $50/m2. More if its damaged and a bit less if it's new.
 
In winery's the wine is quite acidic and eats concrete. Especially at edges of strip drains or anywhere water / juice sits.

Our current shop is in a building previously used for distribution of hard ciders. The damage to the concrete is insane. It etched through nearly half an inch in some cases, and left a very rough finish. We never saw it at first because the whole floor was covered in 1/4" of congealed dust/sugar.

We still find patches of "floor syrup" that soften and get sticky when water gets spilled on them.
 
Our current shop is in a building previously used for distribution of hard ciders. The damage to the concrete is insane. It etched through nearly half an inch in some cases, and left a very rough finish. We never saw it at first because the whole floor was covered in 1/4" of congealed dust/sugar.

We still find patches of "floor syrup" that soften and get sticky when water gets spilled on them.

When times get tough at least you can get down on your hands and knees to get a buzz................:D
 
-From what I've seen on the garage-shop boards, you get what you pay for. I don't know any specific names, but the general consensus is either go cheap and resign yourself to regular touch-ups and periodic complete-refinishes... or go fabulously expensive- like north of $10-$12K for 3500 square- and have it last maybe twice as long.

That's why the recommendation for straight, polished and sealed concrete. Virtually nothing is as long-lasting.

Doc.

gotcha, do you know any recommendations for sealer?
is the cutting/polishing something we can do ourselves or best to hire pros?
 
gotcha, do you know any recommendations for sealer?
is the cutting/polishing something we can do ourselves or best to hire pros?

I recently did a diamond grind to prep for epoxy coating, in this case I was turning ~1500 ft² from "shop" space to "lab" space. My understanding is that once I had finished the 30-grit diamond, if I wanted polished concrete I'd load up a finer diamond and go again. Rinse and repeat until the floor is as shiny as you want. Took about 6 hours for me to do the 1500 with the rented big boy propane grinder, would have gone a fair bit faster with a second pair of hands to run another HEPA vac.

As for whether or not you can do it yourself, how do you feel about mowing grass, really really slowly? :D
 
I recently did a diamond grind to prep for epoxy coating, in this case I was turning ~1500 ft² from "shop" space to "lab" space. My understanding is that once I had finished the 30-grit diamond, if I wanted polished concrete I'd load up a finer diamond and go again. Rinse and repeat until the floor is as shiny as you want. Took about 6 hours for me to do the 1500 with the rented big boy propane grinder, would have gone a fair bit faster with a second pair of hands to run another HEPA vac.

As for whether or not you can do it yourself, how do you feel about mowing grass, really really slowly? :D

opportunity to relive my teenage years? /shudder...

do you remember what grinder you rented?

so far we're looking to demo the old crap and do the rebar ourselves, just bring in a crew to pour the concrete and level it. then do the grinding/polishing ourselves also.
anything we should look out for?
 
opportunity to relive my teenage years? /shudder...

do you remember what grinder you rented?

so far we're looking to demo the old crap and do the rebar ourselves, just bring in a crew to pour the concrete and level it. then do the grinding/polishing ourselves also.
anything we should look out for?

Concrete Grinder/Polisher-Tri Disc Prop | Sunbelt Rentals

If I remember correctly it was that one. The $700 per day was about 1/3 of my out the door cost for the job, since you need to buy 9 diamond pads per grit level (3 for each rotating disc, $57 each :fight:). They are supposed to be good for about 3k square feet each, I was doing 15-1800 so mine ended up with quite a lot of life left. You might be pushing it for 3500, but since it will be a fresh slab with no existing coating to grind off you might be OK. Your cost will be even higher if you want polish because you will need to buy multiple grits.

And you will need to rent a HEPA vac, the one that attaches to the machine basically keeps dust out of the air and not much else, I still needed to run the vacuum over the area after grinding it. Takes as much time as the grinding itself, so that's why I mentioned renting two vacs and having a second person following behind for dust cleanup.
 
Get a good crew with experience doing slabs to be polished. A nice slab to begin with will save a huge amount of grinding/polishing time.
For machines you want the biggest machine you can get. Bigger dia disc will be easier to get a nice flat looking surface.
Another important tip is to put the densifier in the coolant tank as the grinding is starting to not leave piles of grinding dust. This will force the small wet dust particles into any air bubbles or voids in the crete and then lock them in.
Something else to do is spray a thin layer of water on the slab, enough that it only puddles in the low areas, leaving maybe 25% dry. Mark these and grind down those islands first.
The grinder will just follow the uneven concrete surface and you wont see it until it is shiny enough to reflect light.
 
Concrete Grinder/Polisher-Tri Disc Prop | Sunbelt Rentals

If I remember correctly it was that one. The $700 per day was about 1/3 of my out the door cost for the job, since you need to buy 9 diamond pads per grit level (3 for each rotating disc, $57 each :fight:). They are supposed to be good for about 3k square feet each, I was doing 15-1800 so mine ended up with quite a lot of life left. You might be pushing it for 3500, but since it will be a fresh slab with no existing coating to grind off you might be OK. Your cost will be even higher if you want polish because you will need to buy multiple grits.

And you will need to rent a HEPA vac, the one that attaches to the machine basically keeps dust out of the air and not much else, I still needed to run the vacuum over the area after grinding it. Takes as much time as the grinding itself, so that's why I mentioned renting two vacs and having a second person following behind for dust cleanup.

good info here, thanks a bunch!

starting to sound like it might be worth it to just have someone do it...
got a quote just now for ~10k to cut/polish 3500 sq ft, sound reasonable?
 








 
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