Polyurea and polyaspartic flake floors, ground properly and installed in a single day.
A garage floor coating is one of the few improvements where the difference between a job that lasts fifteen years and a job that peels in eighteen months has almost nothing to do with the product in the bucket. It comes down to what happens in the first two hours, before any resin is opened. This page explains exactly what we do, why each step exists, and what it costs, so you can compare quotes on something other than the number at the bottom.
Most people call every resin floor epoxy. It is a useful shorthand and it is what almost everyone searches for, but it is not what we install. Our system has three layers.
The base coat is a two-component polyurea. It penetrates into the open pores of ground concrete and cures fast enough that the flake can be broadcast into it while it is still wet. The decorative layer is vinyl flake, thrown by hand across the entire wet base until the floor rejects any more. The top coat is a polyaspartic, which is UV stable, so it does not amber the way epoxy does when sunlight comes through an open garage door every afternoon.
The reason this matters in South Florida is cure speed and heat tolerance. Epoxy needs long open times and turns a garage into a two-day job with your cars in the driveway overnight. Polyurea and polyaspartic let us grind, patch, coat, flake, scrape and seal between morning and evening. You walk on it the same night and park on it the next day.
Any competent installer can lay a coating that looks perfect on day one. Almost every floor that fails in this region fails for one of two reasons: the slab was never opened up, or nobody tested it for moisture. Both happen before the first coat.
Concrete comes out of the finishing process with a dense, closed surface. Coating over it is like painting over glass. The bond is mechanical, not chemical, so the slab has to be opened up with diamond tooling until the surface has a measurable profile for the resin to grip.
We grind with a walk-behind machine running diamond segments, paired with a HEPA dust extractor. The extractor is not a convenience item. Grinding concrete releases respirable crystalline silica, which is a serious occupational hazard, and dust control is how it is managed properly. It also means your garage, your cars and your driveway do not end up under a layer of gray film.
Acid etching is the cheap alternative. It costs an installer almost nothing and it is the single most common corner cut in this trade. An etched floor can look identical on the day of install and delaminate in sheets two years later.
This is the step that separates South Florida from almost everywhere else. A great deal of the housing stock across Broward and Palm Beach sits on sandy subgrade with a high water table, and plenty of it was poured before under-slab vapor barriers were standard practice. Water vapor moves up through that slab continuously. When it reaches a sealed coating with nowhere to go, it builds pressure underneath and lifts the floor off in blisters.
We test before we coat. If the reading is high, the fix is a moisture-mitigating primer, which adds cost but is far cheaper than installing a floor twice. If the reading is fine, we say so and move on. Either way you get told the number.
Cracks, spalled areas and pitting get ground out and filled during this stage. A flake finish hides minor imperfection better than any solid color, but structural cracking gets addressed rather than buried.
The polyurea goes down at a controlled thickness and the flake is broadcast into it immediately, thrown out across the wet resin until the floor will not take any more. Broadcasting to rejection is what gives the finished floor its depth and what makes the color part of the floor rather than a layer printed on top of it.
Excess flake that never made contact with the base gets blown back and reclaimed. The bonded flake is then scraped flat, which knocks down the sharp edges standing proud of the surface and gives the top coat a clean plane to level across.
The clear polyaspartic goes over the scraped flake and self-levels into a single continuous surface with no grout lines, no seams and nowhere for oil, brake dust or spilled chemicals to soak in. It is UV stable, so a garage that gets direct afternoon sun through the opening will not yellow along the front edge the way an epoxy topcoat does.
Foot traffic that evening. Vehicles at twenty four hours. Rolling toolboxes and heavy static loads we ask you to hold off on for seventy two hours, which lets the coating reach full hardness before you drop a jack stand on it.
Eight dollars a square foot, with a minimum job of $2,400. A typical two car garage in this area runs 400 to 600 square feet, so most land between $3,200 and $4,800. Three car garages generally fall between $4,800 and $6,400.
The minimum exists because a crew, a grinder, a dust extractor and a truck full of material cost the same to bring out whether your garage is 240 square feet or 900. We would rather post that plainly than quote a small garage low and find a reason to raise it later.
Things that move the number toward the top of the range: heavy spalling that needs extensive fill, coating the stem walls and steps in addition to the slab, a failed moisture test requiring a mitigating primer, and removal of an old coating that has already let go.
There are hundreds of flake blends available and in practice almost everyone picks from a handful. Domino, a black white and gray blend, is the most requested. Coyote runs warmer, with tan and brown through the same black and white base. Lighter blends brighten a garage noticeably, which matters more than people expect in a room with one small window and a single opening.
Flake size is also a choice. Quarter inch is the standard residential chip and reads as a fine, even texture from standing height. Larger chip gives a bolder, more visible pattern.
If you are getting several prices, four questions will tell you more than the totals will.
A partial broadcast uses meaningfully less material and looks thinner over time as the top coat wears. It is a legitimate way to hit a lower price. It is only a problem when nobody tells you that is what you are buying.
No, though most people search for it that way. We use a polyurea base coat with a polyaspartic top coat. Epoxy cures slower, which makes it a two-day job, and it ambers under UV over time. Polyurea and polyaspartic let us finish in one day and the clear coat stays clear.
Walk on it the same evening. Park on it twenty four hours after we finish. Give it seventy two hours before rolling a heavy toolbox onto it or setting jack stands.
Almost never. Cracks and spalled areas get ground out and filled during prep, and flake hides minor imperfection well. We will tell you honestly on site if a slab genuinely needs more than a coating.
Two causes, nearly always. The slab was etched instead of ground, so the coating never bonded, or moisture is moving up through the concrete with nowhere to escape. We grind every floor and test every slab.
Tell us your garage size and we will call back the same day. Ten percent books your install date.
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