How to Bid Epoxy Garage Floors! A Detailed Guide to Everything you Need to Know to Win More Bids.

All right, here we are inside of a garage right here. This is a previous epoxy floor that I did about 12 years ago. I'm going to talk to you about how I wrote this estimate, how I write estimates now. If you don't have a great estimate package, it doesn't matter what number you're going to give pretty much. You're probably not going to win the bid. When you give an estimate to a client, they're going to set it down after you leave, have your estimate on the table, and they're going to probably have three or four other estimates on the table. If you don't have a professional looking bid packet that's going to convince them to choose you, you're probably not going to win that job, whether you're high or low. You can be the highest bid on the table. If you have an amazing looking bid packet, they might choose you because that bid packet is a representation of the work you're going to do. I do make my bid packets available on paintlifesupply.com. They're editable and not editable. If you want to check them out, interior estimate packages, exterior estimate packages, decks, fences, epoxy floors, go check them out at paintlifesupply.com after you watch this video. Now, I'm going to get on to this estimate, how I wrote this estimate and how I write estimates now and in the future. What I'm going to do is I'm going to walk into this garage right here and I'm just going to measure this thing out because I just have a very simple, basic way that I write estimates for epoxy floors and it's just a square foot price. But I do have additional charges that go on my base square foot price. My base square foot price is $4.25 a square foot. Now, I have a garage and I've got multiple squares in here. I'm going to measure this large square out. This square comes out to 20 by 21. I'm going to multiply those two numbers together and that's going to give me the square footage of this section of the garage. I have another section of the garage back here and this is three and a half feet by five feet. I'm going to measure, or I'm going to take those two measurements, multiply them together and then I'm going to add that to this number and that's going to give me my total square foot. I do have a smaller square back here and this is approximately a six by 14 and we're just going to call that one square foot. I'm going to add that to the total number, multiply it by 425 and that's going to give me my base price for my epoxy floor. Then I'm going to look and see, do I have any additional charges? I've got steps over there, high charge, $175 additional to do steps that go into a house or wherever, wherever those steps are leading to. It's $175 because that is additional work. It's additional epoxy. It's going to take more than just doing the flat surface of the garage. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time measuring it out. It's just $175. I also have an additional charge if this garage floor, the concrete, is really contaminated with oil contaminants and stuff that I got to do a lot of cleaning, a lot of etching to get those oils and contaminants off. I do charge an additional $200 to do any type of additional cleaning. Most about 90% of the garage floors I do are garage floors on new homes so they don't have any contaminants on them at all or they're usually really clean and maybe just a oil leak or two on them and the acid etching process which I'll talk about a little bit later gets that, but $200 for any additional cleaning that is just above normal, just cleaning the garage out. Another charge I do have is for race footings. This garage has some very low race footings right here and those do take work. I always my race footings or stem walls and stuff that are raised up the concrete. I always epoxy those race footings. I've got some really small ones here. I'm going to add just an additional $50 for those race footings. I got some, another job I just recently did that had some really tall ones will show you those. I'm going to add an additional $175 for really tall race footings. I really like to do my footings too so everything just has this seamless flow to it. The next additional charge I do have is for doing color flex. Now they're occasionally people want color flex thrown out on the epoxy floor and that's done on the second coat while it's still wet. You'll throw out your color flex. The color flex do need a clear coat that goes over the top of them to seal them down and to give a smooth feel to them so they're not rough. I charge $1.75 a square foot for throwing out color flex after my second coat and that includes the color coat. So you just take your square foot price that you're throwing the flex out onto or your square foot total times by a $1.75 and that will give you your flex price. When it comes to color flex, the color flex don't give that the epoxy floor this really, really smooth feel. I like to appear in Idaho because when the cars pull in in the wintertime you usually have snow built up under the cars which has road debris built in sands that come tracked in, they melt, fall on the floors, it gets and make your floors really dirty. It's really hard to squeeze you out or dust mop them out if you have a rough floor and the color flex, if you don't clear coat them, add a certain roughness to the floor and even if you do clear coat them, it does add some roughness to the floor that makes dust mopping and makes you know, mopping and cleaning the floor itself wet mopping a little bit more difficult. I just really like one colored floors that are smooth, easy to dust mop in the summertime and easy to wet mop in the wintertime when you got a lot of road debris. When it comes to the process that I go through of doing an epoxy floor, one of the first steps I do, I'm going to come out to the job site and I'm going to acid etch the floor and I use miradic acid undiluted and I'm going to spray the entire surface of the concrete with miradic acid and I'm going to etch that floor really, really good and if you don't understand the acid etching process or the epoxy process, I got multiple videos, multiple series of videos on epoxy and floor that you can go watch and the acid etching process. But I'm going to acid etch this floor, I'm going to rinse it all out and I'm going to let this floor dry for a day and I'm going to come back the next day and my bid includes caulking all the saw cuts in any minor cracks in the floor and I really like caulking the saw cuts and cracks because especially here in Idaho, once again water falls off your car from on the snow, it gets down in these cracks with road debris and these cracks fill up with all kinds of grime and dirty stuff. The cracks are also a hardening place for bugs, spiders, ants and stuff like that. Caulking the cracks may sit easier to mop, easier to clean your floors and you don't get any ants and bugs down in those cracks. If there's an excessive amount of cracks that I have to caulk, I'm going to charge an additional $75 for caulking an excessive amount of cracks. This grudge had just a few minor cracks in it and I do actually caulk the edges where the concrete makes the stem wall or your raised footings, I caulk that too, it are also at no additional charge. Some of you may ask, what caulking do I use? I use a product from tower and it's a your thing caulking. That's what I do all the caulking with and the epoxy that I use to epoxy my floors is a product it's called Tauclad 2 High Solids and it's an industrial two-part epoxy and it's a great product. I've been doing the method of acid etching using Tauclad for 22 years, never had one caul back in 22 years doing the process of the I do and I know to some it takes a little bit longer, there's a lot of products out there, there's water-based coatings, you could do multiple coatings in one day. I just been doing this process that works for me and I haven't got a caul back on it and it's just been, you know, a great system that I developed. So the epoxy itself, the coating my bid, I come in, I do the acid etching, let it dry, come back do the caulking, let it dry, I come back and do the epoxy, I do two coats of Tauclad 2, first coat is thinned down with reducer 54 to get myself a nice good bite on the floor and get a good coat that's going to hear really well. I like to thin it out and I also like to roll my epoxy. I know some of my friends that do epoxy floors, they spam, got some other friends that do them using squeegees, I like to use a roller and I use a mohair roller that way I can push it down into the concrete and get really good bites and I think it's part of why I've never had any good or any callbacks or any failures on my epoxy floors. So if you haven't subscribed to our channel, hit the subscribe button, hit the notification bell, that way you get notified every time I come out with these bidding videos or business videos on the business side of painting. You know, if you've enjoyed this video, give us a thumbs up, it keeps the videos coming all the time. The subscribing and hitting the notification bell, it's simple, free, easy to do, it's been free for 10 years, it's going to be free for another 10 years or 12 years, something like that. And it's just a simple way of helping support our channel and we appreciate it very much and you just get a simple email every time we come out with a new video. If you got any questions or comments, how I go about bidding epoxy floors, just leave it down in the comments section below. If you've got a different process you like to share with us, just let us know down below or if you want to share what you charge for doing epoxy floors, let us know in the comments section below. We'll see you next time on the business of painting out.