I did my garage in January 2017 with Nohr-S Polyurea from Legacy Industrial. Not inexpensive, but it IS a professional product. And, it was a bargain compared to what a friend spent having a local company epoxy coat his garage floor just a few months before I did mine! In any case, I am VERY PLEASED with the results!!! I used the Tan color w/ Latte 1/8" chips applied very heavily, but not "full rejection."
- Nohr-S primer tinted Tan
- Nohr-S polyurea coating, tan
- Nohr-S clear with chips (I ordered the extra 4 lbs of chips)
One of the great things about the Nohr-S product is that it has a much longer pot life, so you don't have to race the clock to roll it out before it begins curing. It did take longer to cure, possibly due also to the cold and rainy weather we had when I did it, but the results were worth the extra cure time!
https://www.legacyindustrial.c...yurea-kit-pigmented/
DIY garage floor coating products from Home Depot (e.g. Rustoleum) are only 1-3 mil thick and are known to chip, flake, and pull up from hot tires cooling if you park on it right after a drive. The professional products are usually 9-13 mil thick and are MUCH MORE DURABLE than the hardware store DIY kits.
I filled ALL the joints, cracks and chips in my garage floor resulting from 53 years of usage and tool droppage, and rented a commercial grinder to grind everything smooth. I also did a final acid wash after all the grinding to ensure a good bond. The secret is in the prep!
It's been almost 6 years now and I haven't experienced a single chip in the coating! I've dropped tools, dragged floor jacks with metal wheels across the floor, jacked cars and put them on metal jack stands, directly on the floor, etc. And I discovered a gas leak from my Pantera at one time, so gas sat on the epoxy for weeks before I discovered it, and the floor has held up great!
I was originally planning to use no chips so it would be easier to find dropped nuts, washers, screws, etc. as other's have suggested, but after seeing a friend's garage with no chips that looked like a patchwork quilt because his color was inconsistent between sections, and after seeing mine in the tan primer, which showed EVERY imperfection in the floor even though I was way overly detail oriented in fixing any flaws, I decided to use the chips, and I don't regret it. They hid all the imperfections in the floor. I did find that broadcasting the chips was an art. The first handful or two that I threw spread out in the air and rained onto the floor coating in a nice even distribution. The next handful or two stayed together in a handful/clump in the air and fell onto the floor in a single spot without disbursing as expected. If I ever do this again on another house, I'll throw smaller handfuls more often, or even cut the bottom edge off of a milk jug and tape an air compressor gun to the mouth and use that as a hopper to disburse/broadcast the chips more consistently. When the garage is empty you can see where they are heavier and lighter, but once I put everything in there you can't see any inconsistency in the disbursement of the chips.
If I drop a screw or washer, I get down low to the ground with a flashlight and usually have no trouble spotting the dropped piece of hardware.
A couple of the benefits of the coating...
- The floor is MUCH cleaner than the concrete, doesn't collect dust, and is easy to clean. Spills wipe right up rather than soaking into the concrete.
- It's much warmer to walk on if I go out to the garage bare footed in the early morning or the middle of winter. This was an unexpected but pleasant surprise.
- It looks great in my opinion!
