Marion Epoxy Flooring installs epoxy garage floor systems for homeowners in Marion, IA, serving surrounding cities including Hiawatha, Cedar Rapids, Mount Vernon, Stone City and Anamosa. With 20+ years of coating concrete, we build every garage floor on a diamond-ground slab, test the concrete for moisture before we price it, and spell out the product, the coat count and the finished thickness in writing.
A garage floor in eastern Iowa takes more abuse than most rooms in a house. Snowmelt full of deicer drips off every car from late fall to early spring, tires come in hot off the highway in summer, and the slab itself often sits on grade without the vapor protection a basement floor gets. A coating that ignores any one of those conditions tends to peel, stain or blister within a few seasons.
This page covers how we build a garage floor that holds up to all of it: what we check before we quote, how we prepare the concrete, which coating layers go down and why, and what you can expect on install day. If your garage already has a peeling kit coating, we cover that too.
Before We Quote: Reading the Garage Slab
Crack and Spall Mapping
We start every garage estimate by walking the slab and marking cracks, spalled edges, pitted areas, old patches and any coating already on the floor. Each defect is written into the scope with how we intend to repair it, so the price reflects the slab you actually have rather than an idealized one.
Some slabs are past coating. A floor that has heaved at the apron, settled away from the foundation or scaled across most of its surface needs concrete work before it needs a coating, and we will tell you that plainly rather than selling a finish that cannot last.
Garage Slab Moisture Testing
Under IRC R506.2.3, a garage floor does not need the under-slab vapor retarder a living space gets, so many garage slabs sit directly on the base with nothing stopping ground moisture. We screen with the ASTM D4263 plastic sheet test and move to ASTM F1869 calcium chloride kits or ASTM F2170 relative humidity probes when the first read raises questions.
The result goes into the written scope before the price is final. If the slab reads high, we add a moisture-mitigation primer to the system rather than hoping the coating will hold against vapor pressure from below.
Old Coatings and Retail Kits
A garage that has already been rolled with a store-bought kit is one of the most common jobs we see. Those thin coatings are usually applied over an acid-etched floor and start lifting at the tire lanes first, which is where heat and shear concentrate.
We grind the old coating off completely, along with the top skin of weak concrete beneath it. Coating over a failing layer only glues the new floor to something that is already letting go.
Preparing the Concrete
Diamond Grinding, Not Acid Etching
We open every garage slab with a diamond grinder or, on larger floors, a shot blaster. That removes laitance, sealers and contamination and leaves a measured ICRI concrete surface profile the primer can bite into, which an acid wash simply cannot match.
The grinder runs with a vacuum attached, so dust is captured at the machine instead of drifting into the house or being hosed down the driveway toward a storm inlet. In an attached garage we also seal the door to the living space before grinding starts.
Crack, Joint and Spall Repair
After grinding, cracks are chased open and filled, spalls are rebuilt with a fast-setting repair material, and pitted areas are skimmed. Each repair is ground flush with the surrounding slab so it does not show through the finished coating.
Control joints get their own decision. We either fill them with a flexible material or carry them through the coating, depending on whether the slab is still moving, so the floor does not crack somewhere unexpected later.
The Garage Floor Coating System
100% Solids Epoxy Base Coat
The base of most of our garage floors is a 100% solids epoxy, which builds real thickness in each coat because nothing evaporates out of it as it cures. That thickness is what resists impact from dropped tools and the abrasion of grit carried in on tires.
Where the slab moisture reading calls for it, a moisture-mitigation primer goes down first. The proposal tells you whether your floor gets one and why.
Vinyl Flake Broadcast and Color
While the base coat is still wet, we broadcast vinyl flake across the floor, usually to full refusal so no base coat shows through. The flake hides minor slab imperfections, adds texture underfoot and gives the floor its color, from tight gray blends to bold multicolor chips.
Once cured, the excess flake is scraped and vacuumed off, leaving a uniform surface ready for the topcoat.
Polyaspartic or Polyurea Topcoat
The topcoat is the layer that faces tires, salt and sunlight. We usually finish garage floors with a polyaspartic or polyurea topcoat, because it resists ultraviolet ambering when the door is open and holds up well to hot tire pickup and chemical spills.
Topcoat texture is specified to the garage: more grip where people walk in from snowy driveways, a smoother finish where a workshop corner needs to sweep clean.
Install Days and Return to Service
A typical two-car garage runs one to three working days. The first day is grinding, vacuuming and repairs; the coating layers follow as each one reaches the right cure, which depends on the product and the slab temperature that week rather than a fixed calendar.
You can usually walk on the floor within a day of the topcoat, but cars wait longer because a turning tire puts heat and twisting force on fresh film. We write both times into the proposal, and we would rather hold the garage an extra day than let a car mark a topcoat that is not ready.
Living With the Floor Through an Iowa Winter
Road Salt and Brine
From November through March, rock salt and calcium chloride brine ride into the garage on every vehicle. On bare concrete that salty meltwater soaks in and, through repeated freeze-thaw cycles, scales and pits the surface.
A fully sealed coating keeps those chlorides on top of the floor where they can be squeegeed out the door. We recommend rinsing the floor occasionally through the winter so salt residue does not dull the topcoat.
Cold Weather Installs
Coatings cure slowly on a cold slab, and moisture can condense on the surface when the slab temperature sits too close to the dew point, causing amine blush and poor bonding between coats. We measure slab temperature and dew point spread before every coat goes down.
Heated garages can be coated year round. An unheated garage in a Linn County winter is told to wait, because a floor that never fully cures will not reach the hardness the system was designed for.
Cleaning and Care
A coated garage floor cleans with a soft broom, a squeegee and mild soap. Harsh solvents and abrasive pads are not needed and can dull the finish over time.
Placing a mat under a parked car’s drip points and wiping up oil or battery acid promptly keeps the floor looking new for longer, even though the topcoat is built to resist both.
Floor Drains and Slab Slope
Many garages here have a floor drain or a slope toward the overhead door so meltwater can leave. We keep that fall intact through grinding and coating and finish the coating neatly into the drain body, never over the grate.
Where a slab has settled and water now ponds in one corner, we point it out at the estimate. A coating will not change the slope of the concrete, so standing water is a drainage question to settle before the floor is coated.
- 20+ Years on Concrete
- Moisture Tested Before Pricing
- Free Written Estimates