How to Epoxy a Garage Floor START to FINISH | Step-by-Step Guide for Pro Results

All right. So, I'm going to talk about a little bit about the system that we're using. So, we're using Citadel's flooring system and I'll talk about the products that we've applied and we're still we're not 100% done, but I'm going to talk a little bit about, you know, those products. So, the first product we applied was a primer. So, we came in pressure wash, clean the floor. We primed it with ES-55. So, that's a primer kind of a system you can use, you know, instead of acid etching, grinding, and stuff. So, it it works extremely well. So, we laid down our ES-55 primer. Then, we uh waited a day, came back, and then we did our first flake coat, which we use PLE 100 FC, which is a performance leveling epoxy. So, that's in with the FC as a fast cure. So, we wanted it to dry fast cuz we're uh doing multiple coats, you know, in a day. So if you're don't have a lot of experience with, you know, products that dry, you know, fast cure products, it's 15minute cure time. So pot life is extremely fast. That stuff that where you're working doing your cutins starts to um go off in 15 minutes and harden. So if you don't have a lot of experience, something you might not want to use, probably want to use something with a longer cure time. We did our first coat of PLE 100. Uh threw down our flakes. We took about I think it was 3 hours 15 minutes. Uh took a a break, waited for that to cure, you know, we came back and then we scraped those. And this was a system we don't want to drag this out, you know, quite a few days. We're trying to get this done, you know, in 2 days. So we did the scraping, then we came back and did a coat of polyaspartic on top of that, which is a longer cure time. 35m minute cure time, gives you more working time. So, we threw down that first clear coat of uh UL80 from Citadel. Threw down another flake coat on top of that. That was later in the evening when we got that done. Then we shut the garage doors, left them open a little bit so things can ventilate. Got here early in the morning, raised the garage doors, tested it to make sure that it was um dry enough, cured enough that we can get on and walk on it again. It was uh you know, completely cured, dried. We did our scraping once again. Um, scraping three different directions. Now, we're getting ready to apply our next coat of UL80 polyartic with our gunmetal uh our gunmetal glitter in it. So, that's going to enhance, you know, what this is going to look like. Our final uh top coat is Poly1 HD UDP. And that is a performance top coat, a polyurea top coat that is going to be more resistant to hot tire pickup and more resistant to scratching cuz we do have a really dark floor. We got, you know, a black uh floor with tide pool flakes on it. So, lighter floors don't show scratches as much. So, we're not so concerned about that with lighter floors. with a darker floor. The top coat is going to be a better performance top coat in this situation. So, that's kind of like what this whole system that we got going on here. A multi-day system. It's not a one-day floor. It's a multi-day, you know, floor. It's going to look absolutely amazing. You'll end up seeing the final results. Our durable top coat's going to be absolutely amazing for the customer. All right, I'm getting ready to uh do an epoxy floor. Here we are going to be showing you the first process and that is cleaning the floor. This is a new construction house, so it's brand new. Homeowners are getting ready to move in next week. We're going to be doing the floor prior to them moving in. I'm going to show you the cleaning process. This is a lot simpler than an existing garage floor where you might have car oil spills and stuff like that where we've got to deal with oil. We got to deal with contaminants on the floor. This is fresh concrete. It makes it a lot easier to clean. The cleaners that I typically use even on all my floors, I use CRUD Cutters Pro neutral floor cleaner. And then I use a spot cleaner degreaser. If I got any type of contamination from automobiles, like oil leaking from the automobile, this is what I'd be using to spot, you know, clean any of those oil spills. Here, since it's new construction, it's um cured already. They've been working on this house for, you know, several months. The floor is ready to go. The concrete's ready to go to be pressure washed and clean. It's pretty simple. We got to make sure there's a lot of sawdust, dirt, and debris down in the saw cuts. We want to make sure we clean all those out really good. We're going to be putting down in those saw cuts. We're going to be using um backer rod, stuffing it down there so our filler doesn't just disappear endlessly down into those saw cuts. I want to make sure we clean those saw cuts out well. We want to make sure we clean any drywall mud off the floor. I'll scrape. I've got, you know, um a 5 in1 tool where I can scrape any, you know, large chunks of mud off, but it's water-based. It typically comes off really easy. The process is pretty simple. I'm going to start off by just uh pre-wetting the floor. I'm just going to come in here, wet it just with water. Then I'm going to take my uh cleaner uh right here, my neutral uh floor cleaner. This is a professional product by uh CRUD Cutter. I just put this into a sprayer. I'm just going to spray it out and then I'm going to just take my all surface cleaner and begin uh cleaning it with my all surface cleaner. So, it's pretty simple. This was being built in the winter time, so you got some, you know, dirt on the floor, stuff like that, but nothing nothing major. It'll be it'll clean out pretty fast, pretty easy. So, this cleaner, I'll put this on. We'll use our all surface cleaner, rotating cleaner. it'll just kind of foam up and um clean really really well. So, typically have a couple gallons of my neutral floor cleaner for a floor, a typical uh garage floor, twocar garage. We've got an RV bay also here. Floor is going to look pretty cool. It's going to be once again a black epoxy floor with a micica flakes, colored micica flakes. It's going to be pretty cool uh doing this um floor. So, here's the cleaners. This is just another uh Rustoleum product right here. Cleaner degreaser that I keep on hand. Also, I typically CRUD Cutter works really well. Rustoleum, you know, has a product, you know, similar. If you have, you know, any heavy grease, any heavy grime, typically exa existing floors, you're going to get, you know, cars going to pull in. You're going to have oil drips, uh transmission fluid drips. You could have steering fluid, um you know, a brake uh fluid, DOT3 brake brake fluid, any of that stuff. The foaming cleaner is is all you really need cuz we actually use epoxy shell 550 as a primer prior to doing our epoxy. So, we're going to clean the floor, let it dry, fill it with our backer rod. We're going to go over that with our filler, shave it off flat, and then we're going to epoxy the floor with epoxy shell 550, which is a primer that will go, you know, on our concrete. So, it's meant for like this is um trled concrete, pretty smooth. I don't have to acid etch it. I don't have to grind it. You might um some people might question that. You know, it's it's not an industrial floor. There's not going to be heavy equipment driving on it. This is a residential garage floor that's um it's not going to have anything any like heavy heavy equipment. It's not going to be exposed to super harsh chemicals. The epoxy shell 550 is an awesome primer, you know, for garage floors without having to grind and without having to use, you know, acid and acid etching the concrete. So, here we go. Let's uh get this going. I'm going to show you what it looks like to thoroughly clean a new construction floor. get it ready for epoxy. So now I got my floor pretty red. I'm gonna spray this cleaner crud cutter crud cutter cleaner down here. So I'm going to get this floor covered pretty good with floor cleaner. Wherever I see, you know, a bunch of got a lot of drywall mud over in this area. If I got any heavy chunks, I'm going to get my um putty knife and I'll start scraping some of these areas. You see out here where it dries, you know, really fast. It's in the sun. Um, unlike acid, I don't have to worry about this getting outside and [music] discoloring the concrete. >> So, I've got the RV bay done now. Now I'm working on uh the garage side, twocar garage side. So if there's any drywall mud on the um the footings, you the little stem walls, you want to just spray some cleaner on that. It'll pre-wet it, help it clean it off. Cuz all these footings right here, we actually epoxy these footings. So, this expansion joint along here, we actually epoxy that too. Uh, fill it. We fill all the cracks. We fill all the joints. So, so you'll see me start to run my all surface cleaner. Now, what I like to do, I'm going to run my all surface cleaner. I run it one direction, then I go back and run it another direction. So, you know, in painting terms, you know, we call that cross-hatching. I'm going to start out here because the sun starts to dry this where it's the sun's hitting it. So, I'm going to start there first. I'll work my way up and then I'll work my way way way back. So, here we go. [music] right. So, I've got my, you know, floor all clean. Now, it's going to dry out pretty fast. We're going to be begin putting backer rod, you know, down in our saw cuts. You know, just give you kind of a few pointers when it comes to doing a floor. There was some overspray. high saw on the floor that you know where the drop cloths didn't cover the floor. So, just pay particular attention to stuff like that. Overspray paint, um drywall, mud. You don't want any of that stuff left behind. We had some overspray over there. The rotating nozzle, I use a rotating nozzle. It agitates the concrete, cleans it out deep into the pores. I also use um a shut off valve. So, shut off valve cuz you're switching in between your gun and your all surface uh cleaner constantly. So, this this gives you the ability to, you know, switch from gun to all surface cleaner, turn it back on, and then you've got, you know, water once again. The option is, which is actually a pain in the neck, is you got to go to your pressure washer, turn the pressure washer off, you know, pull the trigger on your gun, release the pressure, then take your quick release off and hook it onto your all surface cleaner, which is kind of a pain in the neck. So the quick release shut off valve is awesome. So you can see, you know, we got water feeding it. So I can switch, you know, back and forth. So I use once again a rotating nozzle. You really uh should be using a rotating nozzle, you know, to clean the floor, to clean the footings. You want to make sure all the debris is out of these saw cuts, you know, really, really well. And then do, you know, a final rinse. Rinse down your walls. This is all dry. You know, you typically got to wait a day. It's pretty sunny, hot out. Right now, it's in the high 80s. It'll be dry, ready for primer. Typically the next day, I like to wait 2 days, you know, before we do our priming. I can start doing my backer rod now. And I'll show you, you know, what that looks like. So, so I'm putting 3/8 inch backer rod in. I'm gonna be doing a poly URA self-leveling two-part filler right here. If I don't put back rod down in these saw cuts, the filler will just disappear endlessly down there. So, take the uh backer rod, stuff it in down about an inch, 3/4 of an inch, and then I'll begin doing my filler. Otherwise, you're just going to spend a ton of money on filler. But we do seamless floors, so we've got to fill these so you actually don't see any of the saw cuts when the epoxyy's all said and done. So, see, I just like work along. I just kind of stretch it out, punch it down in here. Um, just make sure you're not pushing too hard and tearing, you know, your backer rod all up. So, you just got to just lightly press it down in there. You don't want it sticking up because, you know, you want your it to go down in about a half inch. That way, um, your filler, you know, fills, you know, the crack itself and, um, if you have your this stuff is sticking up at all, like up in the air, then it's going to cause a lump, you know, in your seam. So, just make sure it's punched down in there. about a about a half inch. So, kind of just like, you know, a painstaking process. You just kind of you'll go along here, but it'll only take you about 30 minutes to, you know, do all this backer rod and where I wherever I get like if I get to an end, all I got to do is just hold my knife, pull it, and then wherever I want to stop. So, just like that. All right. So, I've got now everything blown out. One of the things I'm going to do in the very beginning chalk line. So, I'm going to chalk a line where my two doors are cuz a few things I don't want to extend my epoxy floor outside of where my garage comes down. So, the garage comes down. The products we're using, they're interior products. They are UV stable. We don't want our products going outside. So, I typically chalk a line at the back of the rail. So, right where the door comes down. So the door will kind of just sit right on that line. You won't see the epoxy out outside. The other thing is we want to chalk a line now cuz they don't want to extend my filler outside also cuz that could look um a little bit unsightly and catch somebody's eye. So I just run my filler right up to where our epoxy goes. So I got two floors that I'm going to be chalking a line on. And the railing comes down right here. the back of your door is going to sit, you know, right around the back of the railing. So, I'll chalk a line there, and that's where I'll I'll have that that chalk visible to know where my filler goes to. When we get ready to do our primer, we uh tape our chalk line. That way, we don't get any of the product outside or accidentally touch the concrete outside. I just recently saw a floor where the clear coat, they didn't have any uh tape down or masking down. They ran the roller, touched the outside of the concrete, and there was a mark, a clear shiny mark right there. So, typically I'll run our um tape down, then I'll run a row, one or two rows of 9 in paper before we begin priming. So, I'm going to chalk a line and um begin the process here. So, I got my chalk line chalk. Now, one thing you should do is actually double check that line. So, I'm going to drop my door down. I'll drop the door down over here. Verify where that door sits relative to that line. So, I'll check this line right here. So you can see this line is significantly back from the actual um door. This door sets a little bit different in the railing than any door I've actually done before. So I'm going to, you know, make a couple marks and rechalk that line. It's setting. It's interesting. It's setting a lot farther in on this side than the other side. >> [snorts] >> So mark that. And then it rides in quite a bit. So I think right there is going to be good. So we are getting ready to do our primer. I could do this, you know, when I get ready to do my primer. I can just do it, you know, right now. So I'm just going to go ahead and do it right now. I'm just going to take put my masking just on the other side of the red line so the red line gets covered. So my filler is going to come right here. to the edge of this tape. I'm going mask off the inside edge. So, I don't want epoxy coming. I want a nice line up to there. [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] >> All right. Now I've got my pressure washing, cleaning, degreasing all done. came out here, used the pressure washer, uh the all surface cleaner, and the rotating nozzle to thoroughly clean this. It's absolutely spotless now. So, now, you know, we've waited 2 days. Typically, you're going to want to wait 2 days before you do uh any work on the garage floor. It's been 2 days and now we're going to begin the filling of our saw cuts, filling of cracks, um, and the joints around where the footings are. And then we're going to begin the priming process. So, before I begin, you know, working here, I'm going to blow this out just, you know, as the garage doors have been open. When it was drying out, it was windy. It's blown in some tree seeds and stuff. Our feet have tracked in a little bit of dirt. I'm going to blow this out. Now, we're going to uh fill uh shave our uh filler, get it all level, and then I'll blow it out one more time. So, I typically just have a battery operated blower that I blow everything out with and uh get this all um all the debris out of here cuz we don't want any debris getting mixed in with our uh with our primer. So, just a simple little process. I'm going to begin blowing it out. All >> [music] >> right. Now, I'm getting ready to uh do our filler for our saw joints and our footing joints. So, I'm going to be using, you know, two different products. I'm using a Rustoleum product, uh Concrete Saver Pro. This is a non-sag sealant. So, I can if there's any like cracks in the corners or cracks on your footings or stem walls. This is a non-sag product that you can fill those cracks with right here. And so, this is a one part product. Just going to put it into a standard caulking tube. We've got a two-part product. So, this is Polylex 93 and this is a um high strength poly ura elastimemer that's going to go in our saw cuts. So, it's a two-part product, 100% solids. It's a self-leveling product and a fast cure product. So, we're going to fill you'll overfill your saw cuts. And then you go back, it dries about 45 minutes to an hour. You go back, scrape it [snorts] flat. That way, you'll end up having a seamless floor. I like my floors, you know, being seamless. I don't like to see saw cuts. Um, I don't like to see products, you know, that shrink and like like kind of like leave an indentation, you know, where the saw cut is. We like to have a seamless floor. So, that's this product. Uh, eventually when you set it up and begin gunning it, uh, the first uh, tube of the stuff, you're just going to eject it and get rid of it. But then as after that, you're going to begin filling your cracks with it. the one part product. Uh you you can just go put it in the cracks. We're just trying to get the fine crack along the footing where the uh seam board is. I'm just going to fill that crack. When we go back and prime the primer is going to cover over the top of that board and then our coating, you know, our layers of our coating will end up filling that in. So, this is a toolable product that I'm actually going to be applying and tooling. This is a non-toolable self-leveling product that you just uh scrape off. And you'll see what that looks like, you know, as we go. So, I'm going to begin the process doing our saw cuts and um joints. Once again, this is Polylex 93. Kind of just sets in the gun just like a typical cocking gun. Snaps in place. So, I just pulled off the cap. There's a little cap right here. Just going to discard that. Typically, keep, you know, just like a five gallallon bucket. You know, keep some rags available. Keep some latex gloves available. This stuff, you know, is kind of nasty. You don't want to get it, you know, on yourself. So, guns all ready to go. Start gunning it. I'm You start gunning. You'll see it start to just fill the tube and it's swirling itself through the tube and it's mixing it now. Just like that, you have your two-part filler mixing it. So, the first bit, the first tube I inject it into, you can inject into a glove or you can inject it [snorts] into a bucket just like that. Just like that. It's ready to go. Now I can begin filling. So I'm going to begin filling my crack. And you want to make sure you're overfilling it because you got to have something to scrape. Sets up once it mixes through this tube. It sets up in 45 [music] minutes…