How To Do an Epoxy Floor! Everything You Need to Know to Be a Pro!

this paint life tv i'm chris idaho painter in this video i'm going to give you a whole long video on how to epoxy a garage floor so if you want to know all the steps the tips and tricks to epoxy in your garage floor from the cleaning process the acid etching process the caulking of the cracks process the applying the epoxy throwing some flex down clear coating it i've got it all right here for you in this video so sit back relax grab yourself a soda a bag of popcorn or a beer and let's epoxy your floor here we are inside of a garage right here this is a previous epoxy floor that he did about 12 years ago i'm going to talk to you talk to you about how i write uh wrote this estimate how i write to 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 and 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 and 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 edible if you want to check them out i have interior estimate packages extra estimate packages decks fences epoxy floors go check them out at paint life supply co after you watch this video but now i'm gonna get on to this estimate how i wrote this estimate and how i write estimates you know uh now and in the future so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna walk into this uh this garage right here and i'm just gonna measure this thing out because i just have a very simple basic way that i write uh 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 basic square foot price is dollars and 25 cents 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 6 by 14 and we're just going to call that one square foot i'm going to add that to the um 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 i charge 175 additional to do steps that go into a house or whether 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 so i'm not going to just i'm not going to spend a whole lot of time measuring it out it's just 175 dollars i also have an additional charge if this 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 percent of the 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 the acid etching process which i'll talk about a little bit later you know gets that uh but 200 for any additional cleaning that is just above normal uh just cleaning the garage out another charge i do have is for raised footings this garage has some very low raised footings right here and those do take work i always my raised footings or stem walls and stuff that are raised up the concrete i always epoxy those raised footings i've got some really small ones here i'm going to add just an additional 50 for those raised footings i got some another job i just recently did that had some really tall ones we'll show you those i'm going to add an additional 175 dollars for really tall raised 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 there are 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 feelum feel to them so they're not rough i charge a dollar 75 a square foot for throwing out color flex um after my second coat and that includes the color coat so you just take your square foot price that you're throwing the the flex out onto um or your square foot total times by a dollar 75 and that will give you your fleck price when it comes to color flex the color flex don't give that the epoxy floor this really really smooth feel i like the up here in idaho because when the cars pull in uh in the wintertime you usually have snow built up under the cars which has um road debris built that and sands that you know come tracked in they melt fall on the floors it gets and make your floors really dirty it's really hard to squeegee them out or um dust mop them out if you have a rough floor and the color flax 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 you know some roughness to the floor that makes dust mopping and makes um 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 winter time when you got a lot of road debris when it comes to the 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 muriatic acid undiluted i'm going to spray the entire surface of the concrete with muriatic 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 uh multiple series of videos on epoxying flooring that you can go watch in the acid etching process but i'm gonna 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 the 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 uh the cracks are also a harboring place for bugs um spiders ants and stuff like that caulking the cracks makes it easier to mop easier to clean your floors and you don't get any um 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 um an additional 75 dollars for caulking uh an excessive amount of cracks this garage had a just a few minor cracks in it and i do actually caulk the edges where the concrete meets the stem wall or your raised footings i caulk that too it also at no additional charge some of you may ask you know what caulking do i use i use a product from tower and it's a urethane caulking that's what i do all the caulking with and the the epoxy that i use to epoxy my floors is a product that's called tile clad two high solids and it's an industrial uh two-part epoxy and it's a great product i've been doing the method of acid etching using tile clad for 22 years never had one call back in 22 years doing the process that 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 can do multiple coatings in one day i just been doing this process that works for me and i haven't got a call back on it and um 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 tile clad two first coat is thin down with um reducer 54 to get myself a nice good bite on the floor and get a good coat that's gonna adhere really well i like to thin it out and um i also like to roll my epoxies i know some of my friends that do um epoxy floors they spray them got some other friends that do them using squeegees i like to use a roller um and i use a mohair roller that way i can push it down into the concrete and get a really good bite and i think it's part of why i've never had any good um or any call backs or any fails your failures on my epoxy floors it's the idaho painter in this video i'm going to be applying an epoxy to a concrete floor in a garage and we're going to show you the steps that it takes to actually apply your own epoxy in your own garage floor so stay tuned to this multi-step process so the first step of this process is actually going to be using a muratic acid to actually etch this floor to get it rough enough so your epoxy when it's applied and dried and cured it won't actually peel up off the floor and we're using a muratic acid a pump sprayer and some other tools to actually go through this process there's a multiple different ways you could actually prepare your concrete to actually accept the epoxy including sanding but i use a muratic acid i've been doing it for about 15 years and i've never had a call back on one of my floors actually peeling or pulling up so the process works for me and i'm going to show you this process right now there's a few tools that you're going to need and one of them some of the most important things are safety equipment i use a pair of clear goggles so i don't get any more moratic acid my eyes i use a safety mask which a chemical filter uh is on it i got a two gallon pump sprayer and then i got my muratic acid and then i got my hose set up out here with my power washer outside the garage ready to go okay i've got all my safety equipment with me got my power washer set up out here i got a hose i'm going to pre-wet all this concrete first before i start working in the garage in case there's any spills or anything that goes wrong so i want to have all this concrete wet out here and then i'm going to apply my acid in there i'm going to dilute it in the garage and then flush it out here and it'll all be completely diluted we'll just flush it right into the grass and we're getting ready to i started wetting this concrete down i'm going to continue wetting it down once i get this all wet i'm going to get my muratic acid loaded up my pump sprayer i'm gonna have this hose sitting right here in case anything goes wrong i have access to the hose so i'm gonna begin this process i'm gonna start adding some water to my pump sprayer getting that all ready and i'm gonna test my pump spreader out first before i actually start adding the muriatic acid into the spreader once i know my sprayer is functioning properly i'll be begin adding the acid i got my acid here all ready to go got my safety glove these are solvent rubber gloves right here definitely want to have some gloves on your eye protection on i've gotten muriatic acid in my eyes before and it hurts pretty bad so you don't want to get it in your eyes you want to wear protection and i'm just i got just a little bit of water i probably got about two quarts of water in this two gallon sprayer now begin adding my acid in here it's got a little plastic seal that you're going to want to break on here and be really careful pouring it in you don't want it to splatter on your if you get it on your clothes it'll eat your clothes up too what i've done with these containers i'm going to rinse these containers out really good and then i'll dispose of i'm just going to add a little bit more water here once i start applying the acid if it's not eating the concrete enough then i'll pour more acid in here so it won't be so diluted now i'm going to begin the process of spraying the acid i want to have a hose at my ready inside this garage in case anything goes wrong or i need to rinse any of the acid away and get it you know out of here quickly and if i if i'm spraying the acid in here and i walk out on the driveway for some reason i got to go to my vehicle or something to get something and you have acid on your feet it'll leave footprints out there where it etches the concrete so you want to you know rinse a path where you're actually going never start applying my acid i'm gonna start in the back of the garage i'm just gonna be working my way to the front once i get the acid all on the whole floor then i'm going to rinse it out okay here i'm going i'm ready to go got my mask on safety glasses rubber gloves got my boots on and we're going to start this acidic when applying this acid wow wherever the tire tracks are when they come in the garage that's where you really want to etch it the most if there's any contaminants also spray a lot right there to really get those contaminants lifted up and etched out but pay really good attention to where the tires come in that's where you really want it the roughest also make sure you have it well ventilated i got both garage doors open and the other garage if you've got windows and stuff like that make sure it's open too because you need a lot of ventilation because there's a lot of this chemical and you don't want to breed this stuff it's pretty nasty now i'm done spraying the acid with my weed sprayer and now i'm going to begin diluting this acid with my hose that i got set in here right at my disposal right up front here so now i'm going to actually start working and diluting this acid i'm going to start at the very front of the garage i'm going to work my way back and get a lot of water in here to dilute that acid then i'm going to turn around and start flushing it out now i've rinsed it enough start flushing it up and you want to rinse it to the point you don't see any that yellow color anymore in that bubbling that means the acid is still active and it's etching the floor you want to get it flushed up you don't see any yellow anymore then start flushing it back out you want to make sure you clean all of your equipment really well now rinse this all your boots off your gloves off rinse your sprayer off your empty bucket some radical acid just clean those things out so there's no more acid in them this sprayer has a little pressure relief valve to lift that up so i can open the spray wrap so it won't splatter acid up in my face now i got my acid tools all too cleaned up now i'm going to begin the power washing process using a turbo nozzle cleaning this thing out really good and that's also going to help the etching process so i'm done now i'm done with this rubber hose here i'm just going to hook this hose of water up to my power washer and begin the power washing process so this power got my nozzle here this is a turbo nozzle right here that's a rotating nozzle and these nozzles are really good for really etching the concrete and stripping stuff off this concrete and cleaning it there's going to be a lot of concrete dust and stuff created uh and silt created by the muratic acid so you really got to get that out of the pores of the concrete and the only way to do that is a turbo nozzle and then a pressure washer that has at least 3000 psi got my pressure set up pressure washer set up out here so here i go i'm going to get ready one more thing don't forget to check out my clothing line paint life paintwork where you can purchase my t-shirts and hats to help support the making of new videos and thank you for watching my videos so when you're actually doing this power washing make sure you're really paying attention to where the tires actually come in and really etch those with the power washer really good anywhere where there's any oil spills or anything like that really clean and etch that really good too and just work all this debris out also the cracks all the saw cuts we want to power wash those out really well too because we actually caulk those cracks before the actual epoxy process so there you have it there's the first step of this process of epoxy this floor i've got it all acid etched you want to make sure it's acid etched and really rough if you don't get that floor rough enough you are going to have a problem with your epoxy peeling up and then i got it all power washed now i'm going to let it dry we're going to come back and do the caulking and then start the epoxy this process of caulking this floor and i like using a product from sherwin's called sure max we're going to be caulking the saw cuts and the cracks and those saw cuts are deep cuts and and they actually collect a lot of dirt and debris a lot of ants and stuff like that will come up from them if you caulk them it'll keep uh dirt and debris from falling into it it'll keep the bugs out of it and it'll actually make your floor look a lot nicer so here we go we're gonna start caulking it just using a regular caulking gun and this suremax caulking that has worked really well for us in the epoxy that we use so now we're starting this process of caulking the cracks and when we apply our epoxy to our garage floor the epoxy doesn't want to be anywhere outside of the garage and so you don't want your caulking to extend from the saw cut outside the garage either so i'm going to mark exactly where i want my caulking to end and i can see where the garage the garage door comes down and our epoxy is going to end on the inside edge of the garage door so my caulking is going to end right about there i'm going to mark that just so we don't accidentally extend the caulking beyond that mark we're just going to begin you know caulking our cracks and making a nice clean smooth caulking fill down inside the crack so we're working right along just filling these cracks of the axle the saw cuts in this concrete i'm just just going along squeezing my caulking gun caulking trigger just filling it up and then just going over it with my finger wiping it smooth and you don't want to have anything any excess all over the concrete because you have any excess on the sides and ridges and sloppiness it's not gonna show through in your epoxy so you want to wipe it smooth and clean and actually keep a wet rag with me and it actually helps blame it and smoothing it out [Music] one of the tricks you're actually getting a nice fill in your saw cut or traps cracks is actually cutting the tip of your caulking tube just right and you want to cut it i like to cut it at a 45 degree angle and you want to cut it big enough so it's actually pumping out enough coffee to actually fill that whole gap because if you don't fill it up then it's going to create bubbles and it's not going to expand and contract with the concrete properly it'll actually separate and break if there's any expansion contraction in the concrete so get a 45 degree cut and a large enough hole in your caulking tube that you can easily fill that crap or soft fast [Music] and then i like to take my wet rag keep a nice clean finger just rub it over there the wet rag your wet finger will actually smooth out the caulking a lot easier and make a nice smooth bead…