Bartlett Epoxy Flooring installs epoxy garage floor systems in Bartlett, IL, serving surrounding cities including Winfield, Warrenville, Wood Dale, Bensenville and Campton Hills. After more than 20 years on residential slabs, we build garage floors from the concrete up: ground to a real profile, tested for moisture, repaired where cracked, then coated in layers you can see itemized on the proposal.
A garage floor takes more abuse than any other room in a house. Tires carry brine and grit in all winter, warm rubber sits on the coating after every drive, and oil, antifreeze and lawn chemicals drip where nobody is looking. The coating has to handle all of it while bonded to a slab that was often poured with nothing between it and the soil.
This page explains how we build that floor, how the finish options differ in look and performance, and the questions worth asking any installer before you sign.
What Goes Into an Epoxy Garage Floor System
Grinding the Slab to a Real Profile
Coatings fail at the bond line far more often than they wear through. We grind the whole slab with diamond tooling, or shot blast it on larger floors, to an ICRI concrete surface profile that gives the base coat something to key into. Sealers, curing compounds and old paint come off in the same pass.
We do not acid-etch. Muriatic acid cleans the very top of the slab but leaves loose paste and residue behind, and it does nothing about a sealer a previous owner rolled on. Grinding dust goes straight into a vacuum at the machine, so nothing gets hosed out the door toward the storm inlet at the curb.
The Epoxy Base Coat and Flake Broadcast
Most of our garage floors start with a 100% solids epoxy base, which builds real film thickness in one coat and wets into the ground surface. While it is still wet, we broadcast vinyl flake to the coverage you chose, from a light scatter to a full broadcast that hides the base completely.
Once the base cures, loose flake is scraped and vacuumed off, leaving an even textured layer ready for the clear coat. This is where a rushed crew cuts corners, because skipping the scrape saves an hour and leaves a rough, chip-studded floor that holds dirt.
The Polyaspartic Topcoat
The topcoat is what tires, boots and a snow shovel actually touch. We usually finish garages with a polyaspartic, which cures quickly, stays clear in sunlight and holds up to salt brine better than an epoxy topcoat. The texture comes from the flake and the thickness of the clear coat, so slip resistance is chosen rather than left to chance.
Polyaspartic also resists the ambering that turns a clear epoxy topcoat yellow near an open garage door. On a floor that catches afternoon sun through the door for half the year, that difference shows within a season.
Flake Blends, Chip Size and Color
Flake comes in dozens of blends, from tight gray-and-black mixes that hide tire marks to lighter blends that brighten a dark garage. Larger chips read bold and busy, while smaller chips look finer and let the base color show between them. We bring physical samples to the walkthrough, because a blend on a screen rarely looks the same under garage lighting.
The base coat color is usually matched to the dominant chip, so any thin spot in the broadcast disappears. If you want a lighter scatter for a cleaner look, the base is tinted to suit and the coverage level is put in writing, so there is no surprise on install day.
Garage Problems the Coating Has to Solve
Road Salt, Brine and Snowmelt
Through a Bartlett winter, every car that pulls in sheds slush loaded with calcium chloride and rock salt. On bare concrete that brine soaks in and scales the surface over repeated freeze-thaw cycles; on a sealed floor it sits on top. A continuous film with a chemical-resistant topcoat lets you push the meltwater out with a squeegee.
Where the driveway pitch sends water toward the door, the front few feet of slab take the worst of it. We look closely at that apron zone for existing scaling and rebuild it before coating, since no coating can glue a flaking surface back onto sound concrete.
Warm Tires and Hot Tire Pickup
A tire fresh off the road is hot, and a soft or thin coating will grip it and peel away when the car backs out. That is hot tire pickup, and it shows up most on bargain floors laid over unground concrete. Proper profile, full-build epoxy and a hard topcoat are what stop it.
Oil, Fluids and Lawn Chemicals
Motor oil, brake fluid, gasoline and fertilizer all end up on a garage floor sooner or later. A cured epoxy and polyaspartic system resists them well enough that a spill wiped up the same day leaves no mark. Old oil stains already in the concrete are another matter: they are degreased and ground out first, because no coating bonds to oil-soaked concrete.
Moisture, Cracks and the Slab Underneath
Testing a Slab With No Vapor Retarder
The residential code exempts garage slabs from the under-slab vapor retarder required elsewhere in a house, under IRC R506.2.3. A garage slab may therefore have nothing between it and damp soil, and moisture moving up can push a coating off from below. We run a plastic sheet test or calcium chloride test before quoting and use relative humidity probes when a reading is borderline.
If the slab reads too wet, the choices are a moisture-mitigation primer within its rated limits or waiting for drier conditions, and the numbers decide which. Either way the reading and the plan are written into the proposal.
Cracks, Spalls and Control Joints
Every crack and spall is mapped during the walkthrough. Hairline shrinkage cracks are filled flush, wider cracks are routed and filled with a repair material, and spalled patches are rebuilt before coating. Control joints can be filled and coated over or left open and honored, and we explain how each choice looks and behaves.
When the slab has heaved, sunk or broken apart, a coating is not the fix. We say so and point you toward replacement, which in Bartlett means new concrete built to the village’s slab rules and inspected by its Building Division.
Cold Garages and Cure Timing
An unheated garage in January can sit near freezing, and most epoxies will not cure properly at that temperature. Condensation on a slab close to the dew point brings amine blush and weak adhesion. We read slab temperature and humidity on install day and reschedule rather than coat a cold floor.
Our Step-by-Step Epoxy Garage Floor Process
Step 1: Walkthrough and Written Scope
We measure, test moisture, map cracks and check for old coatings, then write a proposal naming the product line, the number of coats and the finished thickness. Home jobs over the Illinois threshold get a written contract and the state’s consumer-rights pamphlet before any work begins.
Step 2: Clear Out and Protect
You empty the garage; we seal the door into the house, mask the walls and set up dust collection. Water heaters, furnaces and anything else that stays in the room are protected and worked around.
Step 3: Grind, Repair and Vacuum
The slab is ground edge to edge, cracks and spalls are repaired, and the floor is vacuumed until it is free of dust. Any oil-stained areas are degreased and ground again until clean concrete shows.
Step 4: Base, Flake and Topcoat
The base coat goes down with its broadcast, cures, and is scraped and vacuumed before the topcoat is applied. Each coat goes on at the thickness written in the proposal, so the finished floor can be checked against the quote.
Step 5: Cure and Move Back In
You get the walk-on and drive-on times for the products used, in writing. Parking too early is the most common way a new floor gets marked, so we would rather you wait an extra day.
- 20+ Years on Concrete
- Moisture Tested First
- Written Scope and Pricing