Do You Really Need to Grind Concrete Before Epoxy? | Garage Floor Prep Explained

Hey, this is Chris Idaho Painter. Thanks for watching this free lesson on how to epoxy a garage floor. If you want to see more of my comprehensive course, it's at paintlifeupply.com. It goes over estimating, it goes over marketing, it goes over all the steps to complete a professional garage epoxy floor. So, hopefully enjoy this lesson. Thank you for watching. All right, Tony, we're out here working on another epoxy floor, you know, today. And we just got done filling saw cuts. We got done filling cracks and we're going to begin starting our epoxy floor tomorrow and throwing some flakes and stuff. But one of the questions I get quite a bit about our system, the system that I use is um you know, I don't grind. And so I've never ground a floor before in I think 25 years applying uh floor coatings. I've used acid stains. Now I actually prime instead of you not acid stains but muratic acid. And now I actually just prime, you know, using a Rustoleum product. And you got some insight on that that might help, you know, my audience, you know, understand this process. So I typically only do residential garage floors. I'm not doing industrial floors. I'm not doing floors where heavy equipment is driving on. It's like this. This is a new construction house. This is just going to be, you know, um, automobile traffic in it. So, is it right or wrong to uh not, you know, grind a floor before you actually uh do your coatings? It's a absolutely a great question and the answer is yes and no. >> Okay. >> It really depends on the the job or the project. So, one of the toughest things that a floor can experience is the dry turning of vehicle tires, forklift traffic, um you know, dropping heavy items on there. That's not really a concern in the residential setting, >> right? >> We we haven't in this particular application, we have a brand new slab. We haven't had a bunch of abuse, chemical spills, oil spills. So, Rustoleum has formulated a product with almost a decade of efficacy that is a proven performer in these environments. We've used it from residential to projects uh that just can't have prep equipment, they can't have they can't have noise, they can't um have the extra time it takes. So there is a time and a place for everything. Being founded as a primer company particularly Rustoleum is always innovative and again this particular application close to a decade right now of proven performance. Right. So uh one of the products that I've used in the past epoxy shell 550. So that was a primer you know specifically designed you know for uh like applications like this. And can you talk about just what is epoxy shell 550 if you haven't heard about it? >> Yeah, so the epoxy shell 550 and the EP55 which we're using today are going to be very very similar. They're going to be a water-based technology that is an adhesion promoter. Meaning we can't do anything to alter the properties of that coating simply because it has extra additives for adhesion. like the 550, the EP55 will stick to uh tile, it'll stick to aluminum, it'll stick to burnished concrete. As long as we have clean surfaces, dry surfaces, it's a very uh formidable primer. In addition to it's breathable, >> breathable, so in certain situations um certain coatings uh may need a brea breathable uh system to it and it is breathable as well. >> Right. So, you know, you're um you know, a Rustoleum rep. You've worked with Rustoleum, you know, for a long time. So, you know, um to the audience out here that might be watching this, you know, if we don't acid etch this floor, if we don't grind this floor, uh but we clean this floor with um the proper cleaner and then we appro apply the EPL55. Did I say that right? >> The EP55. EP55 and or epoxy shell 550. You're pretty confident that that is going to hold up and not fail in this uh residential setting. Very very confident in it. Uh we have a proven track record of performance. We sell a lot of products that do require grinding, but there are situations where grinding isn't necessary. This is one of those situations, especially considering if we're painting the inside of this house as a uh interior house painter. we can add this to our portfolio without the investment in equipment. >> So, what would you say maybe like a basement would that be another, you know, scenario where um priming because you can't grind or maybe you can't, you know, uh use an acid and be shop vacuum wet stuff down in the basement. Is that another place where you could actually use it? A basement is really a perfect situation. I know we all want to be He-Man and carry that grinding machine down the stairs, but there's a lot of liability with that. uh not only for the homeowner but also for the applicator. And so situations where it's not easy to get that prep equipment absolutely makes sense and no odor as well. So we don't have those harmful chemicals and we're not kicking uh silica dust into the air if that extraction equipment isn't functioning 100%. So the last floor I did, you know, EP55 and epoxy shell 550, you know, the primer that you can use in this residential setting. This is a brand new new construction house. But you know what about you know a floor? We're actually working on another job right now where the house is quite a few years old. Uh vehicles have been coming in out of the garage for a long period of time and um say it's dripped um automotive oil or say transmission fluid. Can you just clean that and can you prime that and are you going to have success with this system that we're actually doing? Great question again and in most settings absolutely. Uh utilizing the Rustoleum industrial cleaners, the foaming aerosol, the concentrated mixes will take most of those household type staining out of the concrete uh and then clean it with that pH neutral concrete cleaner. Where that might not be the same situation uh is if we're doing say an old um mechanic shop with a lot of oil staining that is very difficult to get out of the ground. that will likely require mechanical uh abrasion to remove that from the concrete as good as possible. >> I think I think that you know the biggest thing is you know people that are viewing my content what I've been doing you know for the past 25 years is your standard residential uh garage floors. So I don't do industrial complexes. I don't do airport hangers. I don't I've never epoxied, you know, a floor where forklifts are driving around and stuff like that. It's always just light automotive traffic. And so I'm confident with the system that we've created. I used to use moratic acid. I did muratic acid for years and years. And now I've gone away from moratic acid to these primers from Rustoleum. Absolutely love them. It makes my process a little bit easier. I don't have to work with harsh chemicals and um so I think it's it's really you have to you know decide what you're doing. Now, if you are doing industrial, you know, floors and stuff like that, you might want to look at a different system. >> Yeah, it's really going to depend. Industrial floor that is going to get heavy forklift turning all the time, maybe drums of chemicals or or supplies will probably need to be uh prepped with surface preparation equipment. Uh but there's probably break rooms, hallways, offices, projects like that that might not necessarily need that because it is all foot traffic. And and really one of the things about EP-55's technology is it it's formulated for one thing to stick where a lot of other products we utilize, a lot of products you previously utilized are designed for a lot of different platforms, not necessarily primary goal adhesion. >> Right. So the EP 155, we're going to be applying that now here pretty soon. You're going to get to see that process, how simple and easy it is. Then we're going to begin, you know, after that doing an epoxy coating, throwing some flakes down. We're going to be doing two clear coats on top of that. Uh, one of them is going to be the top coats that wear coat. Once automotive, uh, traffic starts driving in here. It does get pretty hot in the summertime up here sometimes. I mean, we're starting to touch 110° up here. 109°. Uh, somebody driving their automobile around town. They're going to roll in here. It's going to be super dang hot. It's going to set in here for a day. They're going to back out. Uh, is Rustoleum. I'm pretty confident it's not going to pull up the coating. Very confident of that. To aid in that protection with this particular system, we are utilizing that highware urethane top coat of the Poly 1HD specifically designed to combat hot tire pickup. >> Awesome. So Tony, one of the reasons why, you know, I've adopted this system, I think, you know, early on in my career, you I started doing epoxy floors and once again, I've been doing them for over 25 years. I've never once had a call back on an epoxy floor with the system I've been using and I've never ground a floor. or I think, you know, uh the people that are watching my videos, you know, more than likely are not, you know, companies that that specialize in floor coatings, doing industrial floor coatings. These are painters like me. Maybe, you know, a one or two man paint crews or even a little bit larger companies. But, you know, typically like me, when I'm, you know, running my painting company, if I'm just one man, twoman, even 10-man crew, I really can't afford to go out and buy a grinder. And it's sometimes a little bit difficult to rent a grinder. And so there are floor systems that, you know, you don't have to have a lot of money to enter into epoxy floors. What I'm trying to show you is that, you know, if you're just one man out there doing residential repaints, you can actually add this to a service and you don't have to, you know, invest a lot of money into equipment. I have a trailer out here. I think it's a 6x8 trailer. I can't fit a grinder in there. I literally can't afford a grinder right now, you know, where I'm at. But this system, I think Rustoleum has come up with a great system where you don't even have to use um, you know, miratic acid, which um harsh chemicals. So the the the neutral cleaners that we're using from Rustoleum are great. They're awesome cleaners. They're not harsh chemicals. I I mean I remember you one time in my career, I was aceting a floor to do an epoxy floor. I dropped the pump sprayer, the lid actually popped off and the moratic acid splashed in my face, in my eyes, and I I I know you don't want that to happen with you. So, I think, you know, I'm like really happy with this system. It's made it easy for me. I think it's a great system for anybody wanting to enter into, you know, doing epoxy floors. And do you have any insight that you might want to touch on that also here? Yeah, it so prep surface prep equipment is always king because you're going to take everything off the top, but it's expensive and in most residential applications likely isn't needed. Now, when you're using a particular primer, you're not making probably as much money in your labor as you could be with the the uh surface preparation equipment, but you have the investment that you're going to have to pay down with that surface preparation equipment. So what we've formulated that has 10 years of efficacy behind it is an adhesion promoting primer designed to stick. That's all it's designed to do for this particular application. So if you are doing other projects on the on the job, say in this situation on a new build, you can tie in this floor because oftent times the painter gets asked, hey, do you do floors? You know, the the the barrier is right usually the surface prep equipment and we are confident in this solution for this application. >> Yeah. I mean, that's how this floor came about. You know, we're painting the interior. The builder didn't even know that I do um flooring and he had somebody, you know, another painter do his own personal floor and I said, "Hey, I do floors." And he's like, "Oh man, that's awesome." So, that's how I kind of stepped into doing this floor. So, once again, you don't have to have, you know, a lot of money into entering into this as a service. You can add epoxy floors as a service like you know I started doing you know quite a few years ago and it can be actually pretty profitable.