Epoxy Floor Repair And Recoating In Sudbury, Ontario

Why Coatings Fail

Four causes account for nearly everything we are called to.

Preparation. Acid etching instead of diamond grinding leaves the concrete closed, so the bond is shallow. This is what retail kits instruct you to do.

Moisture. A slab pushing water from below will lift any coating laid over it, regardless of the resin used, if nobody measured it first.

Thickness. Kit floors are a fraction of the build of a professional system, so grit in the tire path wears straight through.

Contamination. Coating over old paint, sealer or oil means the new floor is bonded to something that was already letting go.

What Failure Looks Like

Peeling at the door line, where brine and meltwater concentrate.

Circular patches lifting where you park, which is hot tire pickup pulling a weak coating off as the tires cool.

Bubbles and blisters across the field, usually moisture from below or resin applied over a damp slab.

Chalky, powdery wear in the traffic lanes, which is abrasion rather than bond failure and is often recoatable without stripping.

Yellowing of a clear coat near a window or door, which is UV damage to an epoxy that should have been polyaspartic.

Repair Or Full Strip

Not every tired floor needs taking back to concrete, and we will tell you which yours is.

If the existing coating is sound and only the top coat has worn, the floor can be scuffed, repaired locally and recoated. That is much cheaper and much faster.

If the bond has failed, the whole coating comes off by grinding. There is no partial answer, because new resin over a failing layer fails with it.

Mixed cases happen. Sometimes half a garage is sound and half has lifted. We grind what has to go, feather the transition and rebuild.

What The Rework Involves

Full mechanical removal of whatever is failing, by diamond grinding rather than chemical stripper.

Moisture testing of the exposed slab, because on a failed floor this is often the reason it failed.

Concrete repair: crack chasing and filling, patching of spalled and pitted areas, levelling.

Then the new system, specified against why the last one failed rather than repeating it.

What It Costs Against A New Floor

Rework costs more per square foot than a first-time installation on clean concrete, because removal is labour.

A recoat over a sound existing floor costs considerably less than a new installation.

Which of the two you are looking at is decided by the slab, and that is what the site visit determines. We will give you the honest answer even when it is the more expensive one.