Garage floor coating takeoff

Epoxy fails at the bond or it does not fail at all, and the bond is decided before any product is opened. The concrete has to be clean, profiled and dry — genuinely dry, which on a slab with no vapour barrier under it may never be true. A film that lifts in sheets two winters later was almost always applied over moisture, and no quantity on this page can see that.

Two coating rows, and they answer the same question in different units: one gives kits at a standard coverage, the other gives volume at a rate you set. Use whichever matches how the product is sold. Neither includes the broadcast flake or the topcoat that most decorative systems add over the base.

The levelling row pours self-levelling compound over the whole floor, and a self-levelling compound finishes flat to the high spot — so on a floor laid to fall to the door or a drain, it takes the fall out. That makes it a row for a slab that has to be made flat, such as a garage becoming a workshop, and one most garage floors go without: they keep their fall so that water and melt run out, and the coating goes onto the prepared slab. So the row stays off until a levelling pour depth is entered. Flattening a falling floor is a deep pour: the average depth is the compound's minimum plus about half the fall, and the door end takes the minimum plus the whole fall — about 60 mm (2 1/2 in) on a 6 m (20 ft) floor at a common fall of 1:100 (1/8 in per foot). That is past most compounds' maximum lift, so the pour is split, extended with aggregate as the calculator's page says, or replaced by a bonded screed. The compound also has to be one its maker rates as a topping, or as a base for a resin coating under vehicle traffic: the epoxy over it is the wearing surface, and a floor-covering underlayment is not made to be driven on.

Chips, spalls and dips are patching, not levelling. Epoxy is a film rather than a filler — it follows every dip instead of hiding it — so each one is filled first, with a repair mortar that follows the fall, and that mortar is not counted on this page.