bare cement or epoxy floor

[John Oothoudt]

I just built a new 36x40 shop to play with, can you guys tell be the benefits of epoxy floor over cement, it's winter here in MN so it will have to wait till summer if I decide to do it. I hope to have heat in it next week, the knipco heater is a pain.

[Jamie Buxton]

I don't think there's any functional benefit to painting a concrete floor. There is a little drawback, in that when the paint wears or gets scratched, it is obvious, whereas the concrete wouldn't show it. Of course, if you like the looks better, that's an esthetic decision.

[David Christopher]

John, there is function to sealing, painting, tiling a bare concrete floor. if you are doing woodwork you will be able to get rid of the dust that bare concrete will cling to. oil, paint, other chemicals will not be able to be removed. that beeing said I tried several different paints and none of them lasted very long so I put comerical tile down (about 58 cents S/F ) and been happy eversince


Dave

[David Giles]

It will help keep moisture out of the end grain of boards that are set on the concrete. It will look better. If you are ever going to do it, now is the time. Moving everything out later just won't happen!

[Doug Shepard]

Sweeping an epoxy painted floor is soooo much easier than bare concrete.

[Chris Kennedy]

I would recommend the epoxy as well. I have bare, rough concrete and it can be a pain to clean. If I had my druthers, I would put in a real floor -- easier on the feet. Of course, these were all thoughts I should have had before I moved the tools in. It isn't going to happen now.

Cheers,

Chris

[Chris True]

I just finished putting down epoxy in the past month, so much easier to clean up and it looks great. With bare concrete sweeping was fairly useless, you basically had to use the shop vac everywhere. With the epoxy you just run the broom around in a couple of minutes and vac up the resulting pile of dust...

[Von Bickley]

You really need to put something over bare concrete. If you don't use the epoxy, take a look at the Euco Diamond Hard concrete sealer.

[Lee Koepke]

I just used concrete stain and two coats of sealer. As others have said, its easier to sweep, and I find that it "looks" cleaner, so I have a tendency to keep it much cleaner than before.

The stain was easy to apply and less than the epoxy paint.

[Andy Casiello]

I used Rustoleum's garage floor epoxy, and I'm VERY glad I did. The floor cleans easily, sheds paint, glue and petroleum products for easy cleanup and looks great. It was also inexpensive and easy to apply. I have had it on the floor for a couple of years now, and have used scrapers on dried glue and paint spills. The glue and paint came up, and the epoxy stayed put and looks perfect. Great stuff.

Also, the "color chips" that come with the kit act as an anti-slip product. I'm very happy with it.

[John Bush]

I considered a sealer or epoxy finish, but I do some welding and other rough work that has nicked, dinged, and torched the bare concrete so I felt the finish would get trashed easily. The floor now looks well used with paint oversprays, chips, oils stains, maybe a drop of blood or two next to the Old Bushmills cap,etc. How you use your shop may make a difference in deciding how to finish your floor. The epoxy finishes look great but I wasn't sure how well it would hold up with my level of disrespect for the floor. Also, the cement finishing guys said the regular(clear) cement sealer surface can get slippery with fine sawdust sprinkled around. Has anyone had issues with that? I have in-floor hydronic heat and had wondered if there was any issue with that(I didn't think it would).

[Paul Kinneberg]

Another vote for epoxy I used epoxyshield on my last shop and my current one you would be surprised how well it holds up if you prep per the instructions.

[Ken Massingale]

Our new 24 by 36 shop was completed early November. I wanted and planned to epoxy the floor but couldn't make myself wait the 30 days for the concrete to cure.
After 2 months of use I wonder what I was thinking.
The floor is already buggered up with paint, stain, dye, etc. I'd feel ill if I had spent $$$$$ on the floor and it look like it does now, not to mention what the LOML would do to my noggin. ;-)
Soon it will have a nice mosaic look.

[Ed Hazel]

If you are not going to drive on it (hot tires) epoxy is over kill IMHO you can just use a good cement floor paint. I repainted my epoxy shop floor 2 yrs ago with an acrylic floor paint and it has held up well and is about 1/3 the cost of the epoxy. And it looks just like epoxy.

[Karl Brogger]

I fully plan on do an epoxy coating when I build a new shop. I did the garage this fall and really like it.

Saw dust comes off the floor super easy when it is painted. A dust mop works awesome.

I used the epoxy shield professional kits for the garage. My only recomendation would be to skip the acid etch step, and either rent a floor scrubber with a abrasive pad of some sort, or sand blast the floor. I got a couple of bubbles that will eventually fall off because it did not adhere properly. I was super anal about the instructions, but not enough apparently.

Having it done professionally is about $5 sq/ft for a garage. I don't know at what point there is a price break.

If you do it yourself, spring for the clear coat, it also looks awesome.