Anything wrong with just a concrete floor?

[Stuart Welsh]

I'm in the final stages of getting my (new construction) workshop in minimum condition to function. After some long overdue projects are underway I may get to items like exterior paint, front deck, landscaping but now its time to move the equipment in and get to making sawdust. The last big thing I want to decide on before I do that is the floor.

I've been reading discussions here about paint, epoxy, wood, rubber, and vinyl for floor coverings. I originally was going to go with white paint or epoxy to add to the brightness in the room but the weather here in north Texas has not cooperated. Combine that with not having a garage door until last Monday and I have one very cold slab. Since I'll have no heat this season it'll be days if not weeks before it will warm up enough for a coating. Even if that were not a factor some options are too expensive and others might further delay my "grand opening" too much.

The slab was poured about 20 months ago and while the building was not framed and dried in until November the concrete is in like new shape. Though it would not take much to prep for a coating I'm beginning to wonder "What's wrong with just a concrete floor?"

Thoughts?

[David C. Roseman]

Without at least sealing the bare concrete in some way, even if it's just a clear coat, I think you'd be fighting fine concrete dust forever.

David

[Rich Enders]

Stuart,

My last two shops had plain concrete. Our factory shop has plain concrete. My current shop came with epoxy. My next one will be plain concrete.

The epoxy is too slippery by itself so they add some gritty stuff to it. Now you have a gritty floor that will scratch anything that contacts it. If saw dust, chips or shavings are on the floor that area becomes slippery. This is especially annoying when you are planing or carving and you need some traction.

My 10 year old floor is developing the measles. Several dozen 1/4 to 1/2 inch blisters have appeared over the last year. Underneath is a 1/16 to 1/1/8 inch pocket. In plain concrete it would be an easy patch. I am not sure what is involved to repair epoxy.

I know the wives like the look of epoxy because it makes a shop look less like a shop. Probably epoxy helps keep the floor dryer in a humid area. Probably there are lots more reasons, and hopefully you will hear them here.

Years ago there was a thread on epoxy or no epoxy it became something of a war of words that reminded me of Washington DC. Remember to be civil gentlemen.

[Larry Browning]

Concrete is very porous and will soak up stain and oil that pretty much cannot be cleaned. Plus, it will allow moisture to wick up and into your shop. But for me the most important thing will be how much easier the floor is to sweep up saw dust and dirt when it has a nice sealed coat of paint or epoxy. Putting finish on that new floor will solve all these problems, along with all the ones you have mentioned yourself.
You are the one to make the decision about this, but you will have to live with it from now on. A year from now, will you be saying to yourself "I wish I had painted the floor when I had the chance"?
Of course, you can always move everything back out when it warms up and paint it then.

[glenn bradley]

My shop is in a suburban garage and I have done nothing to the floor except put work mats in the areas where I stand for period of time; workbench (also saves dropped chisels), tablesaw, bandsaw and one by the outfeed which doubles as a work area. I use the 1/2" thick stuff from Sam's club (http://www.samsclub.com/sams/util-a-mat-commercial-grade-reversible-floor-mats-24-x-24-8-tiles/107930.ip?navAction=). I have been tromping on it for 8 years without failure. The thinner stuff from Sears and Rockler. that was more expensive, eventually failed and started coming apart(?).

[Larry Browning]

The epoxy is too slippery by itself so they add some gritty stuff to it. Now you have a gritty floor that will scratch anything that contacts it. If saw dust, chips or shavings are on the floor that area becomes slippery. This is especially annoying when you are planing or carving and you need some traction.

My experience has been that proper shoes will solve most of the slipperyness. Notice I said "most". A water or oil spill will still cause problems no matter what shoes you are wearing, even on bare concrete.

[paul cottingham]

Something between the floor and your feet will definitely make standing for a long time (or even a short one for that matter) much easier on your feet and knees. Easier on dropped tools, too.

[Stephen Musial]

I sealed mine with a clear acrylic sealer that soaked into the concrete. It's been 12 years and still no stains. My wife parks on her half and if I want to clean it, just a broom will get all of the road grime, etc. off in the spring. I pour gas and oil into various tools and it inevitably spills. Not sure where it goes but it doesn't go into the concrete. I've spilled my share of BLO, shellac, etc. and no stains.

[Rick Potter]

Concrete here. I have a couple of mats where I stand a lot, but the dog finds them tasty. I do have some stains, like the trash can sized purple stain from when I dropped a can of PVC primer off a ladder, or when I dropped a can of wood stain (I sense a pattern here). I (have to) consider them conversation pieces, besides it's proof to the wife that I actually do something in the shop, other than rearrange the tools.

Rick Potter

[Jim Andrew]

Maybe you are a young guy and your joints do not pain you. I added a storage room, which I built with a wood floor, and now wish I had done the whole shop with sleepers and flooring. It just feels better to stand on wood. Have foam pads around my assembly table, but you have to move them to clean up. Think before you get your machinery moved in and dust system connected, I personally would add wood flooring over the slab either with the foam underlay or with sleepers, insulation and flooring. I would not nail it to the slab, as you might move and someone else might not want a wood shop.

[Dennis McDonaugh]

I have a concrete floor in my new shop and it's okay as it is--I haven't had issues with concrete dust or moisture since there is a vapor barrier under the foundation. It is porous and impossible to clean once you spill something on it and I plan to put something down over it sometime in the future. My first thought is vinyl flooring since I can simply replace the squares if they are damaged. I've also considered floating hardwood for the same reason.

[Brian Tax]

I have had two shops with epoxy coating, the first one was way to slippery, so the next one I added the grit to the epoxy and the concrete has a broom finish, have not had any slipping. Also I have a bunch of HF mats.

[Michael Mahan]

I'm a just leave it as concrete kinda guy , to me it's a safety thing , the only time I've ever slipped & fallen in any shop (i've worked in many)has been on painted &/or epoxied floors
(once I dislocated my shoulder in my 20's in the late 1970's still bothers me to this day)
If your OCD & a neat nick then paint , you'll never get over a stain if you don't

[Jim Laumann]

Plain concrete here. Mine has 1" of high density foam under it - prevents water from condensing on the surface when it is still cold while the air is warm w/ high humidity. The masons who poured it troweled it smooth.

Mine has stains - some paint, some oil, gas, etc aquired when we used the building (8 years worth) before there was money to insulate and finish the interior. My walls and ceiling are white pole shed steel, so it's plenty bright it there - no need to paint it.

[Phil Thien]

I painted my basement floor (after remove tile and mastic and diamond grinding).

If I had a brand-new slab for my shop floor, I'd investigate the clear sealers that soak into the concrete a bit. That should keep the slab from shedding dust, make sweeping easier, and prevent things that drip onto the slab from staining it.

[Scott T Smith]

Years ago I had a machine shop with a painted floor. My current shop has a smooth finish concrete floor with radiant heat and insulation / vapor barrier underneath it. Although a wood floor would be nice, I have had zero issues with the concrete floor (including no moisture problems). We poured a low slump 5000 psi mix with a very smooth power trowel finish.

I slipped more than once on the painted floor; have not had that problem with my current one.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I've never seen a big farm shop that is anything but natural concrete, and I have never seen one with concrete dust. I think that may be a sealer salesman's gimmick. If it hasn't been power troweled, it is harder to sweep clean. Other than that, they are just fine. BTW, concrete is not as temperamental as people make it sound. Look at a well maintained car garage for example. You can clean practically anything off of it, if you use the right approach. If it's treated on the other hand, the coating will eventually wear out in places and look like crud until it's redone. If something gets under the sealer, it looks like crud. Just leave it natural and forget about it. The worst thing that I have found to remove from concrete is liquid fertilizer, but even it will come off. TSP (tri sodium phosphate) works wonders for cleaning concrete BTW. Woodshop use is like babying it.

[Rod Sheridan]

My basement shop is plain concrete, although it's a strange formulation as it's magnetic.

That's the only plausible explanation as to how it attracts a freshly honed chisel, as it couldn't be because I'm getting older

Regards, Rod.

[Steve Jenkins]

I have concrete with clear sealer. It still stains but it is shop floor so I really don't care. I use horse-stall mats where I stand a lot. I get them from Tractor Supply. They are 1" thick and 4'x6' (I think) and cost about 40 something. Really heavy duty rubber.
Where In North Tx are you?

[David Hostetler]

My garage workshop is old (1984 construction, slab poured in late 1983), and is on just plain poured and smoothed concrete. I believe it was originally sealed, but over the decades, it has decided to absorb a myriad of stains, paints, and other abnormalities...

IF I had nothing but buckets of cash and could afford to pull everything out while I redid the flooring I would...

#1. Prep the floor, acid etching, grinding whatever it takes to prep the surface for a good finish.
#2. Level the floor. Or at the very least, radically reduce the slope of this floor. It is a garage, but if I park a car out of gear and no parking brake in there, it WILL roll back into the garage door!
#3. Epoxy coat it with some anti slip grit added to keep my butt from meeting the floor...
#4. Add more anti fatigue mats. I have one for by my lathe, I want more through the shop...

[David Helm]

My shop floor (concrete) was poured in 1926. It works quite well; doesn't throw off concrete dust; doesn't bring in excess moisture to the shop. I have 1/2 inch pads around all the machines and workbench. I'm with those who think bare concrete is just fine.

[george newbury]

I'm going with a concrete floor with a thin coating of sawdust over most of it.

But then I've got about 5,500 sq ft of shop floor and tend to clean it it with a leaf blower.

[Mike Cutler]

Nothing wrong with bare concrete floors. That's all I've ever had.
I'm not going to lie, a prepared final surface is much nicer than bare concrete, but bare concrete works just fine.
Get some mats for fatigue. Tractor supply has some lighter weight horse stall mats that are pretty nice and breathe well.
Use urethane wheels instead of hard plastic casters and you can move machines a little easier.

PS.
Don't ever wax a concrete floor. It's ridiculously dangerous given the right conditions.
As a young sailor they made us wax the concrete floors in the barracks at Dam Neck Virginia. The CDO made his rounds that nite and slipped on that newly waxed floor. Damn near killed him. He was seriously injured :(
Next day we were stripping all the wax off those concrete floors.

[Justin Ludwig]

Go concrete and cover it where needed with pads. If you have a rock quarry, concrete plant, plant nursery, etc near you; call the plant manager and ask if they have any 4' used conveyor belting they'd like to get rid of. A lot of times they'll give it for free to get it out of their yard. It will be dirty and have a tear here and there, but it's cheaper than dirt and saves the knees. Also, you can cut it to length with a box knife (it's steel belted like an old car tire).

I put cushy mats from Sam's Club in front of the TS, SCMS, and shaper for added cushion.

[Brian Holcombe]

I'd probably leave it alone, but the ideal floor for a shop in my opinion is wood. it's much more forgiving on tools if you drop them and much more comfortable to work on.

[Michael N Taylor]

All you need to do to concrete is to apply 2 coast of a silicon base concrete sealer to keep moisture from wicking up and to stop stuff from staining. This type sealer does not make the floor slick because it soaks into the concrete but does an excellent job. The only draw back to concrete is it is hard on the feet if you stand all day long and depending on where you live it can be very cold. I use some rubber flooring that a carpet supplier had left over from a job to make mats at each tool station where you stand, it gives some cushion and stops transfer of the concrete temperature to you shoes. I would also fill any control joints in the slab with a good butyl caulk prior to sealing, you can tape the crack edges to make a good straight edge or simple take a razor blade and cut the caulk flush with the concrete after it is fully cured.

[robert morrison]

I've got a concrete floor with radiant heat tubing installed. Because it is in the basement where the boiler is, the tubing only heats the floor when we get a real cold snap. I used concrete stain on what was a nicely smoothed floor. I used a machine grey color in my shop, and an ocean blue on the storage side of the basement.

Positives:
The stain makes sweeping up of sawdust really easy.
You can have any color you want.
The stain is thin and covers alot of square footage per gallon. The can said 450 square feet of coverage. I did 2 coats which covered more than 450 square feet.
It is easy to apply with a roller on a long handel.
It was inexpensive at about $15 a gallon ten years ago, from a local manufacturer. It is about $26 today from a borg.
Fumes aren't bad and not hazardous the way epoxy is.
Wear is pretty good. At a door entrance there is a little wear. My brothers epoxy floor has about twice the usage and alot more is worn off.
Traction is good, as long as you are not standing on a bunch of sawdust. Dust from particle board is especially bad.

Negatives
When wet the stained floor is very slippery. No, I didn't add any sand to it for grip. Dry traction isn't an issue
The floor is hard and not fun to stand on for long periods of time. You really need some foam mats for places you stand for long periods of time.

Foam matts

The foam mats from harbor fright add plenty of cushion. These foam mats slide WAY to easy on the stained floor, unless you have a machine sitting on them. These style of mats don't sweep well, but can be vacuumed. The HF matts are available for less than 50 cents per square foot with coupon. Because they interlock it is a pain to move them.

The 2'x5' floor mats from woodcraft don't slide on the stain floor, like the HF ones do. The woodcraft mats are more conducive to sweeping than the HF ones. These matts are easy to pick up and move around. I've bought these matts only when they go on sale for about $15. IMHO they are a good value at $1.50 per square foot but not at the regular price of $3.65 per square foot.

[Michael Kuzian]

^this^ A proper smooth finish with the right tool, a power finisher yields a surface that is tough to beat. My concrete finisher I use on all my new construction jobs who is now 70+ years old and has been smooth finishing over 40 years says these young kids wait too long to start working the mud and let it set too much before smoothing. By doing this they are only smoothing the top layer, if you start working the concrete right away you pull the "cream" from the bottom also which homogenizes the concrete and fills in a majority of the pores instead of the moisture going down to the dirt. He did my garage floor and I gotta say, you can sweep water into a dust pan off that floor. It will take many hours for water to absorb into my floor which is nice I must say.

[Len Henkel]

Maybe you are a young guy and your joints do not pain you. I added a storage room, which I built with a wood floor, and now wish I had done the whole shop with sleepers and flooring. It just feels better to stand on wood. Have foam pads around my assembly table, but you have to move them to clean up. Think before you get your machinery moved in and dust system connected, I personally would add wood flooring over the slab either with the foam underlay or with sleepers, insulation and flooring. I would not nail it to the slab, as you might move and someone else might not want a wood shop.

+1 on what Jim says. Plus, a wood floor just makes it feel more like a woodworking workshop.

[Bill ThompsonNM]

In my last workshop I installed Industrial Vinyl flooring. At that time it was 68 cents a square foot. Installs really fast even though you are troweling mastic. I'm planning on the same for my current workshop when I'm done remodeling.

It's easy on the feet and dropped tools but very durable for moving machinery on.

[jim dudley]

I converted a 2-car garage detached into a devoted shop. The garage floor was poured 40 years ago (time flies). In the conversion project, I elected to use Valspar epoxy from Lowe's and added double sprinkles. I totally love it and do not have even one of the issues that others have dealt with for epoxy floors. I fully expect it to get some chips, but in fat it hasn't shown any. Mine is in Houston, so it see super high humidity conditions and extreme external heat - although i did fully insulate everything and added A/C. I am so much happier with this floor, and the cost of it was minimal in relation to converting the whole garage to a great shop.
.

[Tim McCarthy]

I had a concrete floor. It is cold; sucks the heat right out of your butt or knees or what ever touches it. It is hard; punishes your joints (which is accumulative) and very unforgiving on dropped tools. The final straw for me was an E.A. Berg chisel that hit the concrete on one corner of the edge, bounced up and hit the other corner. I probably had to grid 10 years of use off it to square it up again.

I now have an OSB floor. I put 6 mil plastic over the floor; 1/4" carpet pad over that and 7/16" OSB on top. I fastened it down with those .22 cal. fasteners averaging about 6 per 4'X8' sheet. Painted it with three coats of SW floor paint (white to reflect light). It is warmer, more comfortable to walk/stand on AND does not automatically destroy dropped tools. It is also very cheap as floors go and very easy to do. Hardest part was moving all the stuff while I did one half of the shop then the other.

My 2c worth.

Regards,

TM

[Bob Faris]

This website is a good source for information.

http://www.concretenetwork.com/search.html?q=sealing+concrete+floors

[Tim McCarthy]

I would consider covering the concrete to keep it warmer, more comfortable to walk on and less potentially disastrous for dropped tools. I have 1200 sq. ft. and covered it half at a time with; heavy plastic sheet, 1/4 carpet pad and 7/16 OSB. I used those percussion caps with .22 shells to drive an average of 6 fasteners in each 4 X 8 sheet. I finished it with two coats of SW white floor paint. It has held up just great over the first 9 years . It was pretty cheap and I even did it when OSB was going crazy. The installation goes very quickly, especially if there's nothing in the shop yet. You don't notice the cushioning effect until you step off it! It's not like walking around on a sponge. I really felt the difference when only half the shop was done.

For what it's worth---

enjoy!

[Andy Pratt]

Somewhat rough concrete floor here, had some problems with moisture seeping through until sealing it with epoxy. Used a kit that was on the cheap side ($250 for 400 sf). It solved the moisture issues very nicely but the floor still has the feel of rough-ish concrete (like a sidewalk not like the glossy floor in hd/lowes). So, if you are wanting to address moisture without losing the texture of a normal concrete floor, just do an inexpensive epoxy job as opposed to a $2000 epoxy job.

I wish I could have made my floor wood somehow, but I occasionally have water run back when the snow is thawing so that wasn't feasible. I'm not looking forward to the first time i drop a chisel on it, but it hasn't happened yet.

[Shawn Neal]

I started with a bare concrete floor and cleaned, acid washed, paint stripped and basically got it looking a close to new as a 45 year old concrete floor can look, had intended clear coating it and leaving it. That lasted about 3 weeks, last weekend I cleared out the entire garage and prepped and coated the floor in ucoatit epoxy floor covering....kind of pricey $250 for 400 sq feet but it looks fantastic, albeit it's no easier on the feet than standard concrete.

[Gilbert Vega]

We're planning on having a new 30'x31' workshop built while they're building our new home. The thinking at this point is to install a PVC flooring that looks just like laminate. It is 4 mils thick and is VERY dense, the best part is that it doesn't require a moisture barrier or padding thus saving that cost. We found this at Lumber liquidators for $1.69/sqft. The product has "wood" grain and the appearance of being hand scraped. See the 2 difference samples below.

[Chris Fairbanks]

For more flooring information than you care to ready check out the garage journal forum. They have a sub forum dedicated to all things flooring that has a ton of traffic. Every type of flooring you can think of has been discussed there and compared to others. I am going with rack deck myself in a few months. Looking for something easier on my poor back and that is easy to install. Good luck.

[paul cottingham]

I just put a platform in front of my bench made of 2x4's flat side down and 3/4" plywood. It added about 2 inches or so.

Holy cow, what a difference from concrete. Now my legs and back don't hurt after only a short time standing at my bench, and as a side benefit, my bench is at the proper height (it was too high before.) My floor isnt slippery any more either. I am now planning on building more of these little platforms, as redoing my whole shop is out of the question.

[Matt Day]

Yes concrete is the easiest way to go, but it will take a toll on you. I would much prefer a wood floor, whether hardwood or the OSB type Tim M mentions above.

I think you would regret not taking the time to do the wood floor a couple years down the road.

[Jon Grider]

I sealed mine with a clear acrylic sealer that soaked into the concrete. It's been 12 years and still no stains. My wife parks on her half and if I want to clean it, just a broom will get all of the road grime, etc. off in the spring. I pour gas and oil into various tools and it inevitably spills. Not sure where it goes but it doesn't go into the concrete. I've spilled my share of BLO, shellac, etc. and no stains.
Please regard this as totally off topic and unrelated to the post but as a life long Redbirds fan and you being from MO, are you related to Stan the man?