Anyone painted their garage floor?

[Beautiful freak]

Random question. I live in a new build house with a bare concrete floor that I want to seal/ paint before my R8 arrives in the next few weeks. Has anyone done this and can share any tips on how to get the best result/ which products work best? I have used a basic 'garage floor paint' from B&Q previsouly but found it didn't adhere to the concrete particularly well so when I drove a car in the paint came off on the tyres. I suspect the concrete needs to be sealed first somehow (even though the manufacturer of the pain claims otherwise).

Thanks in advance for any experience you can share!

[wedouglas]

You want to use an epoxy product.

[BlueMax]

Depending on what your budget stands at, garage floor tiles seem to be the best bet.

I've repeatedly tried painting my garage floor with various "epoxy" type of coatings and pretty much all of them have flaked off over the years on the car's tires.

A friend of mine has had his floor painted professionally with a 2-part mix epoxy system and has had fewer problems. Surface preparation is very important as his painter used an acid to cleanse the surface 24 hours prior to painting.

If tiles tickle your fancy, here's a link to Swisstrax.

http://swisstrax.com/

[MikeB]

I have to say that even the 2 part epoxy paints can suffer under a wet environment. I think the crucial thing is to get a decent quality paint and rigidly follow manufacturer instructions. I recently used a one part paint on our slightly coarse screeded floor which has worked well, but if your floor has been float polished after being laid then you would probably have to acid etch as BM says above.

[Beautiful freak]

Thanks for the help! The floor hasn't been float polished so I'm going to give a two part epoxy a go after a thorough clean. Will let you know how it goes

Thanks again....

[Mainy]

Interesting thread, I'm just in the process of building our new house. The garage will have underfloor heating in it for the winter (sad I know ) but I'm undecided on a floor finish.

Does anyone know if paint will be much use on a heated floor or would I be better going with tile ???

[Conker]

I gave up with useless floor paint (supposedly specially developed for garage floors) and a few years ago paid peanuts to a local carpet warehouse for an enormous stack of old throwaway carpet retrieved from their skip - enough to cover the whole surface of my 4 car garage.

Looks nice and just needs a vacuum clean once a month

[Tritone]

SWISSTRAX all the way!

We did our 3-car garage in four hours including 3 different color tiles. Had a friends 9-yr old leading the way - he would have done it quicker but for the **** adults supervising - LOL!

Pix to come.....

Tritone

[MikeB]

Interesting thread, I'm just in the process of building our new house. The garage will have underfloor heating in it for the winter (sad I know ) but I'm undecided on a floor finish.

Does anyone know if paint will be much use on a heated floor or would I be better going with tile ???

I don't think I would trust paint on the floor even though the heating runs at such a low temperature. Most u/f heating suppliers are quite specific about the floorcoverings - you should check maybe with them. The Swisstrax tile looks good.

[desperado]

Putting HOT tires on any painted surface can allow the paint to adhere to the rubber, pulling it up when the car is moved. So you might want to let the vehicle cool a little while before pulling it into the garage. The better the prep and the epoxy, the more resistant to this problem.

There are professional floor painters in most areas, they typically do factories, warehouses and aircraft hangars. I highly recommend the aircraft hangar specialists as they understand your needs the best. Besides the standard acid wash, some use bead blasters to put a more aggressive "tooth" on the concrete to better adhere the paint. Also, there are multi-layer finishes that combine mechanical durability and adhesion in the lower layer with superior chemical resistance in the upper layers. You really get what you pay for...

Besides the heat from hot tires, one of the main things that can cause paint (or even tile) to lift on concrete floors is moisture coming up from the earth. If you are building new, make sure the builders put a moisture barrier (plastic sheeting, usually under a layer of sand) down as part of the prep for the concrete floor in the garage.