Epoxy flooring | 100% solids pro systems

Epoxy flooring: the store kit and the pro system share a name

Epoxy flooring from our crews runs $6.08 to $10.17 a square foot installed, before the drive cost (our trip out to your site). A cheap kit from the hardware store uses the same name, but it’s a different product. We put down 100% solids epoxy that builds to 20-plus mils (thousandths of an inch), with a polyaspartic or urethane topcoat. It lasts 15 to 20 years. The kit dries to 3 to 5 mils and peels in 2 to 3 seasons.

The kit is 40 to 50% solids, which makes it closer to a thick paint than a floor. We install three named systems instead.

Bel Covo has installed more than 3 million square feet since 2004, in home garages, commercial buildings, and Fortune 500 industrial floors. Our shop is in Prague, Oklahoma, and our own crews do the work. That keeps the same hands on the job from the first grind to the last topcoat. We’ve seen what a rushed prep job does to a floor two winters later. Usually it shows up as a repair call on a slab someone else coated first.

What is epoxy flooring, and how does it work?

Epoxy starts as two liquids, a resin and a hardener. We mix them, pour them out on the slab, and spread them with a squeegee and roller. That’s why people call it pourable flooring. It cures into a hard plastic that grabs concrete tight. Plants and warehouses have used it on their floors for decades for that reason, and because each coat goes on thick.

True 100% solids epoxy has no solvent in it, so every drop that goes down stays on the floor. One coat builds 10 to 15 mils, per the Penntek technical data sheet. That thickness is what takes the hits and makes the floor last.

The “garage floor epoxy kit” at a big-box store is usually water-based and 40 to 50% solids. The rest is water. It dries out and takes your thickness with it. A kit that looks thick in the bucket dries down to almost nothing on the slab. Hot tires, freeze and thaw, and normal garage traffic punch through it in a couple of seasons.

Why do pro systems put polyaspartic on top of the epoxy?

A pro floor coating is a stack of layers. Each layer uses the chemistry that does its job best. That’s why the coating trade moved away from one-product, epoxy-only floors for most rooms.

The epoxy base coat. Epoxy grabs concrete hard and builds thickness fast. On a flake floor, we spread the chips into the wet base coat so they lock in for good.

The topcoat. The finish coat is polyaspartic or aliphatic urethane, a type of urethane made to hold its color in the sun. Polyaspartic cures faster than epoxy, doesn’t yellow in sunlight, and stands up better to scuffing. Pick gloss or matte at this layer. A matte topcoat hides the wear paths a gloss floor shows at the garage door and down the middle where you drive. It adds chemical and scuff resistance too, though it gives up a little surface texture. Gloss looks brighter on day one. Matte looks cleaner in year three.

Most people who search “epoxy floor” end up with this exact build, epoxy at the bottom and polyaspartic on top, and it’s what we install. For more on polyaspartic floors, see our polyaspartic floor coatings page.

How does Bel Covo install epoxy flooring?

Every epoxy floor we do follows the same four steps. It doesn’t matter what system it is, how big it is, or what slab we walk into. The materials change, but the steps don’t. Skip one to save an afternoon and the floor tells on you, usually in year two, not week two. The steps are the same for a 400-square-foot one-car garage in Shawnee and a 40,000-square-foot warehouse in Fort Smith.

1. Check the slab. We check every slab before we pick a product. We look at its age, how porous (thirsty) it is, old coatings, cracks, and signs of moisture coming up from below. If we see a warning sign, or you ask, we run a moisture test. The common one is ASTM F1869, a standard test for how much water vapor a slab gives off. If it’s over 3 pounds per 1,000 square feet in 24 hours, the slab needs a vapor-barrier primer first. Skip that and the coating lets go of the slab (the trade calls it delamination), no matter how good the topcoat is.
2. Plan every coat. We pick the full stack before the crew shows up: a primer if it’s needed, the base coat and how thick it goes on, the color layer (RESA Flake, RESA Quartz, or RESA Metallic), and the topcoat. Home garages start with RESA Flake and a matte polyaspartic topcoat. Commercial floors get a system matched to the chemicals they’ll see and how slip-resistant they need to be.
3. Grind, fill, and time the coats. We diamond-grind or shot-blast to CSP 3 per ICRI Technical Guideline 310.2R. CSP 3 is a rating for how rough the grind leaves the concrete. But the rough surface isn’t the whole point. The grind opens the pores so the primer soaks in. So the crew puts drops of water on the freshly ground concrete at three spots per 1,000 square feet. Each drop has to darken the concrete and soak in within 60 seconds. If a drop beads up, the surface is still closed, whatever the rating says, and we keep grinding. Cracks and chipped spots get filled with a moisture-barrier epoxy mortar. Then we follow the maker’s recoat window exactly. Too soon and the coats don’t bond. Too late and the coat has to be roughed up again. Our systems allow a second coat the same day, which is why most home garages finish in one day.
4. Coat and cure. We check thickness with a wet film gauge on every coat. For flake, we throw chips onto the wet base coat until it won’t hold any more (the trade calls it “broadcast to rejection”). Then we vacuum off the loose chips and topcoat the floor. The finish coat gets a last pass with a roller (back-rolling) so no roller marks show. You can walk on it in 24 hours. Cars wait 72 hours.

What is epoxy flooring best for?

Pro epoxy flooring fits a lot of rooms. Here are the ones we see most.

Home garages. This is the most common job. A flake system with a polyaspartic topcoat handles hot tire pickup, road salt, oil drips, and the 90-plus degree swings between summer and winter that test any garage floor. Two- and three-car garages are the jobs we do most. Basement slabs use the same chemistry. When a basement slab gives off too much moisture, it needs a barrier primer before any topcoat will hold. Our Oklahoma basement floor coating guide covers those systems.

Shop floors and pole buildings. RESA Flake and RESA Quartz both brighten the room and clean up with a mop instead of a scrub brush. If the building does real work, take the quartz. Colored quartz is a hard mineral grit, and it’s much stronger than vinyl flake, which is there for looks and nothing more. Quartz handles steel wheels, forklifts, and a dropped tool or part. Flake belongs in the garage bay where the cars park. Quartz belongs where the pallet jack runs.

Commercial and light industrial. Warehouses, showrooms, dealerships, and medical offices each want something different. One has to handle chemicals. One has to keep people from slipping. One has to look sharp. So the build shifts to thicker epoxy, a gritty non-slip layer, and topcoats that stand up to chemicals. The garage floor coatings page covers more of those commercial options.

Epoxy vs. polished concrete. Epoxy and polyaspartic coatings sit on top of the concrete. Polished concrete is the concrete itself, ground and refined by machine. A coated floor forgives a rough slab and comes in more colors. A polished floor has no coating to peel. For prices, our epoxy floor cost study found a median of $8.82^[1] a square foot across 82 Oklahoma quotes, with cuts by job size and OKC detail.

What buyers ask for. We looked at 245 Oklahoma quote records in our garage floor coating buyer behavior study. Epoxy and resinous coatings made up about 33% of finish requests. Only polished concrete, at about 38%, came up more often. That split follows the shop-plus-garage builds common outside the big metros.

The heavy-duty commercial kitchen build

A working restaurant kitchen is the hardest floor we coat. It takes boiling water, grease, dropped pans, and a harsh cleaner every night after close. A garage flake system has no business in that room. The build that belongs there has four layers:

1. A colored urethane cement base (urethane-modified cement underlayment).
2. Colored quartz, spread until the layer won’t take any more.
3. A colored Novolac epoxy coat that seals the quartz in.
4. A colored urethane topcoat, which is optional, depending on the room and the cleaning chemicals.

That stack handles thermal shock up to around 750 degrees Fahrenheit. Thermal shock is a sudden blast of heat, like a fryer basket or a stock pot going over onto a cold floor. In a kitchen, that’s the number that matters. The quartz does the heavy work. The Novolac coat locks it in and brings the acid resistance a kitchen needs.

We’ve put this build in the kitchens of a barbecue restaurant chain in Edmond, Oklahoma. It’s also down at the Midwest City Police Department, where the quartz is blue. Those floors are past a year of that abuse with no issues so far.

Which facility types does Bel Covo coat in Oklahoma?

Each kind of building asks something different of a floor. Chemicals, how often it gets hosed down, how heavy the traffic is, and who inspects it all change the system. These guides cover the Oklahoma buildings we coat most often:

• Warehouse and industrial floor coatings for distribution and factory slabs under forklifts and racks
• Auto dealership and showroom flooring for service bays and high-gloss display floors
• Aviation and aerospace flooring for hangars and maintenance bays, like the hangar floors around Tinker Air Force Base
• Restaurant and commercial kitchen flooring for wash-down areas and slip safety
• Brewery and taproom flooring for wet, acidic brewing areas
• Dispensary and cannabis facility flooring for grow and processing rooms
• Veterinary clinic flooring for easy cleaning and chemical resistance
• Church and worship space flooring for sanctuaries, fellowship halls, and busy gathering spaces

What should you expect on install day?

Most home garages are done in one day. Prep takes 2 to 4 hours. The base coat, the flake, and the topcoat take another 2 to 4 hours. You can walk on the floor in 24 hours and park on it in 72.

Clear the floor before we come. Park your cars outside 48 hours ahead. That lets the slab settle to the air temperature, and it lets any fuel, oil, or cleaner on it air out before our crew starts prep. Don’t patch cracks yourself. A caulk-gun fix is one more thing our crew has to grind back out before the real filler goes in. We fill cracks ourselves during prep with the right moisture-barrier epoxy mortar.

Upkeep takes a broom and a mop. Sweep or dry-mop often, and damp-mop with a pH-neutral cleaner when you need to. Skip bleach, citrus degreasers, and harsh solvents. They won’t peel the floor, but over time they can dull the polyaspartic finish. A polyaspartic topcoat doesn’t need regular resealing, unlike waxed concrete or older urethane finishes that need care every year.

A home system lasts 15 to 20 years with normal use. Busy commercial floors usually need a fresh topcoat in 10 to 15 years. Under heavy wear, the base coats outlast the topcoat.

Which epoxy systems does Bel Covo install?

Three, and the quote calculator prices all three by name. All three are RESA systems. RESA stands for Resin-Encapsulated Seamless Aggregate. In plain words, it’s a resinous floor coating: flake, quartz, or metallic color spread across the whole floor into wet resin, then sealed in. The surface you walk on has no seams.

First, the one we don’t install. A water-based DIY epoxy kit is 40 to 50% solids and dries to 3 to 5 mils. It lasts 2 to 3 years with normal use. It costs far less up front, because you buy only the materials and do the work yourself. It’s fine for short-term cover on a floor that barely gets used. Most people have priced one before they land here, so it’s worth knowing what it is.

1. RESA Metallic, from $5.96/SF. Layers of resin with metallic color in them, over a textured prep coat, finished with a clear urethane topcoat. It shines with depth and movement. No two floors look the same, because the installer’s hand makes the pattern. Best for showrooms, dealerships, lobbies, and high-end homes. Price a metallic floor.
2. RESA Quartz, from $8.17/SF. Colored quartz spread in two rounds (double-cast), each until the resin won’t take any more, then sealed in epoxy under a clear topcoat. It’s seamless, it doesn’t soak anything up, and it stands up to chemicals. Best for commercial kitchens, factories, healthcare, and any floor a forklift or pallet jack runs on. Price a quartz floor.
3. RESA Flake, from $8.46/SF. Vinyl flake spread into wet resin until it won’t hold any more, sealed in, then topcoated. It has a slip-resistant texture and hides small flaws. It’s the finish most people picture when they say “epoxy garage floor.” Best for two- and three-car garages and shop floors. We price it under garage floor coatings rather than epoxy coatings, because that’s where nearly all of it goes. Price a flake floor.

You can add crack repair, a moisture barrier, joint fill, line striping, or a cove base to any system. A cove base runs the coating up the bottom of the wall. The calculator shows what each add-on costs. It doesn’t hide them in one rate.

How much does epoxy flooring cost?

Pro epoxy flooring runs $6.08 to $10.17 a square foot installed. Where you land depends on which system fits the room and how much prep the slab needs. The table shows the rate the quote calculator opens on for each system. The range runs a little higher because it counts setup on a typical job, so a single system’s starting rate can sit below it. Enter your square footage and address, and the calculator gives you a project total with the drive built in.

Bigger floors cost less per square foot than small ones. The setup, the drive, and the leftover material spread across more floor. A 200 SF laundry room and a 5,000 SF warehouse don’t price the same way, even on the same system.

Prep costs more when the slab has big cracks, chipped spots, old coatings, or a lot of moisture coming up. Those can’t be ignored. They decide whether the coating lasts 2 years or 20, and skipping them is the surest way to get a failed floor. For the full breakdown by system and job size, see the epoxy flooring cost guide.

Portfolio

See finished jobs in the Bel Covo epoxy gallery. It has flake floors in homes, solid-color floors in shops and stores, and thick builds in plants from all over the area we work in.

Where do we install epoxy flooring?

We install epoxy flooring in six states. Crews go out from the closest dispatch point:

• Epoxy flooring in Oklahoma (our home state, with our shop in Prague and the metros around it).
• Epoxy flooring in Arkansas (Fort Smith and Northwest Arkansas, mostly flake floors for home garages).
• Epoxy flooring in Missouri (Springfield through Joplin along I-44).
• Epoxy flooring in Tennessee (Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga, with showroom and light commercial floors).
• Epoxy flooring in Mississippi (Jackson and the Gulf Coast, where humidity and shop-floor wear drive what we put down).
• Epoxy flooring in Texas (Texarkana and the Dallas area, where strong sun makes a UV-stable polyaspartic topcoat matter).

If your project is outside our area, call and we’ll take a look. Every quote shows the drive on its own line. It’s not hidden in the per-foot rate.

Whatever you coat that floor with, get the mil thickness in writing before the crew shows up. Thin dries fast and fails faster.

Call us at (888) 852-3528, or use the quote tool below to see if we cover your area.