What to expect during the concrete flooring process

What to expect during the concrete flooring process: a standard garage coating takes 8 to 14 hours on site, from arrival to the final walkthrough. Most of that time isn’t coating. Grinding and crack repair alone take 2 to 4 hours on a two-car garage. If you don’t know that, you’ll watch the crew grind for two hours with no color on the floor and start to worry. Once you know the math, those same two hours just mean the job is on schedule.

What is the process of coating a floor?

Every resinous floor coating we put down, epoxy or polyaspartic, goes on in six steps. We prep the slab, check it for moisture, and prime it. Then we lay the color coat, add the topcoat, and walk the finished floor with you. Each step waits on the one before it. There’s no coating before prep, no topcoat before the color coat is ready, and no cars before the cure. Skip a step to save an hour, and the floor pays for it later.

What happens before the crew pulls in?

The evening before your start date, the lead technician tries to call you. The call covers three things: when the crew will show up, any last prep items, and who to call if something comes up that morning.

The crew usually shows up between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m. The first 20 to 30 minutes on site aren’t spent coating. Before any equipment comes off the truck, the lead technician walks the whole floor with you. We note cracks, oil stains, drainage paths, and any soft or hollow-sounding spots in the slab. We also want to hear about anything odd you noticed while you got ready. Speak up, because what you point out here saves time later.

Don’t save scope changes for that morning. If you want to add a utility closet or more square feet, call the office before project day. Once the crew has loaded the truck for the job you booked, it’s too late.

Step 1: Surface prep (2 to 4 hours)

Prep takes the most time of any step in the concrete flooring process. It’s also where the crew either locks in a floor that lasts or sets up one that fails. Nobody notices good prep. Everybody notices bad prep, usually about eighteen months in, when the coating starts peeling up in sheets. A coating is only as strong as its bond to the concrete under it, and that bond is built before a drop of color goes down.

The crew uses one of two methods, based on the shape your slab is in:

• Diamond grinding: A large floor grinder with diamond heads roughs up the surface. On our RESA Flake floors, we grind to a CSP of 3 or rougher. CSP stands for concrete surface profile, the roughness grade you’ll see on bids. Grinding opens the pores of the concrete so the coating can grip it. On a standard garage, you’ll hear the grinder run for 1.5 to 2.5 hours.
• Shot blasting: On large commercial floors or badly stained ones, a shot blast machine fires steel shot at the surface. It strips old coatings, oils, and laitance, the weak, powdery top layer of the concrete. On a big floor, shot blasting goes faster than grinding.

After grinding, the crew fixes cracks and control joints. Narrow cracks, from hairline to 1/8 inch wide, get filled with an epoxy mortar and shaved flush. Wider cracks and chipped, broken spots (spalling) get the same mortar packed in all the way down. How much repair the slab needs sets the time. A slab in good shape adds 30 minutes, and a lot of cracking or spalling stretches this step to 60 minutes or more.

Step 2: Does the crew check for moisture before coating? (30 minutes)

Yes. Once the floor is ground and repaired, the crew checks the slab for signs of moisture before any coating touches it. Water vapor rising up through concrete is the top reason coatings fail, and it gives you no warning. The slab can look bone dry the morning we look at it.

We run a moisture test when the check turns up a warning sign. That means a slab poured before 1990, a house on low ground, water stains, or a slab nobody knows the age of. You can ask for a test on any slab, and we’ll gladly run one. A test does change the timeline, because it has to sit undisturbed in the right conditions for a set time. If you skip the test on a flagged slab, the coating can still lift off in a bubble a year later. The moisture was working its way up the whole time.

The standard test is ASTM F1869, the calcium chloride test. We weigh a dish of calcium chloride and seal it to the floor for a set time. Then we weigh it again to see how much water it pulled up. Most coating makers want that reading, the moisture vapor emission rate, under 3 pounds per 1,000 square feet per 24 hours for standard systems.

If your slab reads above that line, the crew puts down a moisture vapor barrier primer before the main coating. That adds 2 to 4 hours to the job, but it guards against a failure that would cost 10 times more to fix later. Oklahoma clay soil holds water, and slabs poured before 1990 often have no vapor barrier under them. If your house is older, plan on this step.

Step 3: Primer coat (45 to 90 minutes to apply, 2 to 3 hours to flash)

Once the slab passes its moisture check, the primer goes down. It soaks into the pores that grinding opened up, and it forms the bond between the bare concrete and the coating on top.

Most home garage jobs get a 100% solids epoxy primer, spread at 200 to 250 square feet per gallon. The crew rolls it on in two passes: one pass in one direction, then a cross-roll the other way for even coverage. On a standard garage, that takes 45 to 90 minutes.

Then the primer needs 2 to 3 hours of flash time before the color coat can go on. Flash time is how long the primer takes to go from wet to tacky, when it’s ready to bond with the next coat. Heat and humidity change it. In an Oklahoma summer, a closed-up garage can cut flash time to under 90 minutes. The crew watches the floor, not the clock.

This is a good time to leave. The crew keeps the space aired out and the primer undisturbed.

Step 4: What happens during the color coat? (1 to 2 hours)

The color coat, which bids call the body coat, gives the floor its look. What happens here depends on the system you picked:

• Flake floors (our RESA Flake floor): The crew rolls on a colored base coat of 100% solids epoxy or polyaspartic. Then they toss vinyl color flakes across the wet coat until it won’t hold any more. That’s called broadcast to rejection, and it’s the only way flake goes down on our floors. The flakes bury the base color across the whole floor.
• Metallic floors (RESA Metallic): An epoxy coat with metallic pigment goes down in one layer. Then the crew moves the metallic bits around with compressed air, rollers, and other tools to build the swirl and depth you want. This step runs longer because it’s hand work. Each blast of air shifts the pigment a little differently. The crew has to read the floor as they go and stop before they overwork any spot.
• Polished concrete: There’s no color coat at all. The crew works through a series of diamond grits, usually 30, 50, 100, and 200 grit. A densifier goes down at 400 grit to harden the surface. Polishing alone takes 4 to 6 hours on a standard garage.

On a flake floor, the crew knocks down the loose flake with a squeegee and vacuums it up. Then they check the floor for bare spots before the topcoat goes on.

Step 5: What topcoat goes on, and how long does it cure?

The topcoat is the layer that takes the wear. It handles tire hits, foot traffic, dropped tools, spills, and sunlight, starting with the first car back in the garage. On most home garage jobs, we use an aliphatic polyaspartic topcoat, the kind that won’t yellow in the sun. We put it on at 20 to 25 mils wet (a mil is a thousandth of an inch).

Why polyaspartic and not urethane for the topcoat? Sunlight. On a garage that faces south, a urethane topcoat often turns amber or yellow from sun through the windows in its first two summers. Polyaspartic also cures in cooler weather than most urethanes. That counts in an Oklahoma spring or fall. The morning can swing 20 degrees between the time the crew arrives and the time the topcoat goes on.

Putting it on takes 45 to 90 minutes. Then the crew packs up equipment, pulls the masking, and sweeps the edges. Nobody touches the floor while it cures.

When you can use the floor:

• Walk on it lightly: 4 to 6 hours after the topcoat goes on
• Drive on it: 24 to 48 hours
• Full chemical cure: 72 hours

Before they leave, the crew will tell you the exact time you can use the floor again for your system.

Step 6: Final walkthrough (20 to 30 minutes)

Before the crew loads the last piece of equipment, the lead technician walks the finished floor with you to check the coverage and any touch-up spots found during the cure. We go over floor care. Then we hand you the warranty on our workmanship.

Ask your questions now. Clean with pH-neutral cleaners, and stay away from acid-based degreasers. Wait 72 hours after the topcoat goes on before you put down rubber floor mats.

You walk away with a finished floor, the warranty on our workmanship in writing, and a direct number for the lead technician. That last part matters more than you’d think. Bare spots, lifting edges, or a thin spot along a wall don’t always show up the first day. They tend to show up once cars and feet start working the floor. Look under mats and along the edges, where the topcoat rolled on thinner than the middle. If that happens in the first 30 days, call that direct number, not a general customer service line.

How long does the whole day take?

Here’s how a standard home garage job breaks down:

Multi-coat systems spread over two or three days. Day 1 is prep and primer, and Day 2 is the color coat and topcoat. The crew doesn’t work through the night, and no deadline can rush how a coating cures. A full moisture test adds days, because it has to sit undisturbed. We run one when the check shows a warning sign or when you ask.

What’s your part of the day?

Most of the day is ours. Your part fits in a short list:

1. Call the office before project day with any scope change.
2. Be there at 7:30 to 8:00 a.m. for the walkthrough, and point out the cracks, stains, and hollow spots you know about.
3. Leave during grinding and primer flash time if you’d like. The crew will text you.
4. Keep cars off the floor until the time the crew gives you.
5. Save the lead technician’s number for the first 30 days.

Each step follows from the one before it, the same way on every garage floor coating job we do. See how we work on the process page, or get your scope and price in the quote tool.