Garage Floor Coatings in San Francisco, CA - a coating laid on a slab that's ready

Most garages I walk into have an old coating that's lifting, oil soaked in where the car sits, or a few cracks, and sometimes all three. The price moves with the size of the floor, how much old coating has to come off, how many cracks need patching and the system you pick, and when the old layer has to go, that's concrete floor stripping and removal folded into the job. The schedule turns on the slab itself, because it has to be dry before anything goes down, and a damp or brand new slab means waiting. When I come out, I check the floor and walk you through your options and what each one means for your schedule.

First I figure out what has to come off and what needs patching, because most garages we see have an old coating, oil spots or cracks, and a coating only holds as well as the concrete under it. Our crew takes off what has to go and patches the cracks before anything else, since one coating maker's guide says cracks should be repaired before a resin floor goes down. Grinding concrete with diamond tools throws a lot of dust, so the prep guides call for a proper dust collector, and it's fair to ask any crew how they'll handle that in a garage full of your things. Then we clean the floor and put down the system we agreed on. If there's a water heater or furnace with a pilot light out there, we plan for it when we choose the product, because the coating makers say pilot lights and electrical switches in an enclosed space have to be off before and during the application of solvent-based coatings.

Some people want more than a plain sealed floor. If you've been reading about a polyaspartic floor coating or you like the glossy, swirled look of metallic epoxy flooring, bring it up when I'm out there and I'll tell you how your slab fits with it.

Coatings used around here have to meet the Bay Area air district's limits on volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, the solvents that evaporate as a coating dries and help form smog. The district's rule also caps how much thinner can be added, and in California it's the local air districts that set and enforce these rules, with support from the state Air Resources Board. So we pick products made to meet those limits and mix them as labeled, without thinning them past what's allowed.

A lot of the garages we coat sit under the house on older slabs that have taken years of oil, water and patching, and the ones closer to the ocean tend to stay cool and damp. We see the same kinds of slabs on jobs in Daly City and Pacifica, so the moisture check and the prep plan look about the same there as they do in the city.