Instructions & Tutorials Preparing Concrete For Epoxy. Acid Etching Hacks.

painter. In this video, we're going to show you how we go about prepping a garage floor to get it ready for epoxy. We're going to be putting on an industrial epoxy from Sher Williams. And the floor itself, we're going to be taking using moratic acid to etch the floor because the concrete, if the concrete's too smooth and it's not rough enough, the epoxy won't bond to the concrete. So, we're going to show you how we go about getting it ready. I've got moratic acid and this is what we're using to etch the floor. And I've got a a plastic pump sprayer and I actually add the moratic acid into the pump sprayer. And I typically don't use it 100%. I use about 75% acid to 25% water. And I'll show you. We're going to go ahead and mix our acid and water together. You want to make sure you don't use this acid anywhere on the concrete anywhere. You want to do it someplace where um it's not going to kill any plants or cause any problems. And just in case you spill it and I'm over here on the side of the yard that it doesn't matter if I get the acid on the ground. And the acid just for safety reasons too. Uh we've got a hose sitting here right here. And the hose just in case you spilled some acid or something the hose the water will dilute the acid. You want to use a sprayer that's all plastic. If you get a metal sprayer, the acid will uh ruin the metal. So, we use a sprayer that's all plastic with plastic tips. I'm going to be using rubber boots this whole time, too. If you just wear regular shoes, the acid could ruin your shoes. I've got water here running just in case I get any on my hands or anything. I've got a respirator that you definitely want to have filters that's um good enough for the acid because once you start working inside the garage, the acid's going to be pretty hard for you to breathe. I just filled my bucket up. I'm going want to wet this area around here just to dilute anything just in case you spilled anything. And then when I walk across the driveway, if anything any on the driveway. You'd be able to rinse it off with this hose. I go ahead and hit stop. Now I'm going to start adding pumping up my sprayer so this acid will start to come out. I'm going to start spraying it. I'm just going to work from one corner and work my way across the garage. And I'll show you how I go about doing that. When I'm spraying this acid, you want to spray it down. And you should see it. You'll start to see it turn yellow. And when it's yellow, it's actively etching and eating away the concrete. And you want to spray enough where it's actually etching it away. As it eats it away, I can rub my feet on it to make sure I can feel it rough enough. And I've been doing it enough years that I can tell when it gets rough enough. But you want it to be fairly rough. If you see any dirt spots, any oil spots, you can spray a little more acid on those oil spots. Once you get your acid all sprayed on the concrete floor, I immediately get a water hose and I'm going to start flushing the acid up and diluting it with water towards the front of the garage cuz I don't want it to run out onto this portion of the garage and and actually stain the concrete outside the garage. He happens to have drains inside this garage, so the water actually won't flow out here. If there's no drains in the garage, the water will start to flow out here. So, you want to get it pushed up so you don't see any yellow anymore. If you see it yellow, that means the acid is still active. I keep rinsing till I don't see any more yellow left. I want to see any more active acid. I'm going to walk out to the other part of the garage here. And you don't want to walk under the concrete outside the garage until you rinse off your shoes cuz if you have acid on your shoes, you'll leave footprints across the driveway. I think that's why they cut. And one way is I'll take and to make sure that my floor is rough enough. I just take my shoes and I want to rub on it or take your hand and it should feel about like 100 grit sandpaper. Not not too rough like 80, but about 100 grit would feel about good. And if it feels like it's 100 grit sandpaper, then it's rough enough that the epoxy will bond to it. I'm going to get my power washer ready. And you got to power wash this thing because you got to get all the the concrete dust that it actually creates. Get it up out of the pores of the concrete. And that'll even make it rougher. When I'm done with the muratic acid bottles, I'm going to take and rinse them out thoroughly before I dispose of them and make sure that you I'm going to rinse it out in a dirt area. That way, the acid will get diluted and not harm anything. Once I was done with my sprayer, I ran it all out of acid, set it out in the middle of the garage, and I grabbed my hose to rinse my sprayer off, fill it up full of water, and get it all clean, get all the acid diluted before power. Come back my second day, and I've checked my floor to make sure that it's got a nice profile to it, that it's rough enough to accept the epoxy. And there were some spots that were a little bit too smooth still over here. And so I actually went and sprayed some more muratic acid on those areas. And now I'm going to power wash it one more time.