Pacific Northwest Garage Floors are unique! In the previous article, https://sfgaragefloors.com/pacific-northwest-garage-floors-are-different-prt-1/ , I wrote about PNW Garage Floor concrete being different than in other parts of the country. In this article I’m writing about how we coat it differently.
Here’s what this means to us concrete coatings professionals in the PNW. You can’t use a penetrating primer like a polyaspartic. Polyaspaspartics aren’t sticky they work by penetrating the concrete and then hardening. They are also hydrophobic (doesn’t like water). Because our concrete is hard, dense and moist these just don’t work very well from an adhesion standpoint.
We use a Water Vapor Barrier Epoxy Primer to adhere to the concrete. Epoxies in general do not penetrate the concrete, they stick to the outside. They make world class glues out of Epoxy for very a good reason they are sticky. These are also 100% solids epoxy which are formulated to work in the presence of moisture vapor. No matter who coats your garage floor make sure they use a 100% solids Water Vapor Barrier Epoxy as a primer. In the PNW this is what you need to go down and stay down.
One this primer is down it is time to look towards the top coat. There are a couple of different top coats that we use. These are similar to what we use in the rest of the country. Most of our floors get a polyaspartic or a urethane top coat. Both of these coatings come from Aliphatic chemistry. And, they both come from the Polyurea resin group which means they are a polymer composed of organic units joined by carbamate (urethane) links. The Aliphatic means to us that they are very stable under UV light. Epoxies in general are not very UV stable.
Your PNW garage floors are unique! What this all means to you the garage floor owner in the PNW is that you need to treat your garage floor with a primer that will go down and stay down. That is a 100% Solids Epoxy Water Vapor Barrier. Then you need a top coat that is tough and UV resistant. Typically, that means a Polyaspartic or a Urthane. Pacific Northwest Garage Floors https://sfgaragefloors.com
