Now that the shell permit is done, the next step is to do the floors. Im still not putting anything inside besides large tools (ladders, scaffold, etc) and the GTO. Dont want to put a bunch in there as its all got to come back out.

First stage of this process is crack repair. Not sure of the cause, but I ended up with a good number of shrinkage cracks that happened very early after the pour. No structural concerns once the concrete cured as there's so much metal holding things together, but I do worry about spall chunks ruining the finish or hairline cracks translating through the epoxy - especially since I plan to do a solid color/ zero flake.



(the smear mark was the concrete places attempt to patch it when they were here doing the driveway a few months later. The problem is the cracks are so fine, there's no way to really get anything into them.)


Went through and chased the cracks with a 1/4" crack chaser wheel in the angle grinder to open the tops up a bit. You can see how much more exaggerated they look in this picture.



The crack chaser is V shaped, so I also flared the top of the saw joints to force any loose bits to spall now so I can fill them. That sharp 90 degree corner made for a bit of a weak spot as we rolled stuff across them.



Filled all of the joints/cracks with fine sand per the instructions of the fill compound:



And filled the joints with the industrial liquid filling compound (Legacy xtreme set 100). Im about halfway filled on them now - had to buy more 2 part filler.

Supposed to be pretty good stuff - higher bond strength to concrete than the strength of the concrete itself, and significantly more flexible in case the joints move at all.



(the different colors are different stages of cure - the stuff kicks quickly, so I apply it in 12 oz ketchup bottles). The natural color is that creme color when cured.


Next up will be renting a walk behind grinder to smooth these all out and rough up the whole surface of the floor.

 

Back in the 70's when I worked with concrete we put control joints on the floors and they were usually in 4 x 8 or 4x4 sections.
This gave the crack a place to go to.
Many times we just cut them with a diamond bladed wet saw.
. The boss would do that and he would screw up the blade if he itched his nose or passed G The local Lumber Yard stocked them because I got sent to get one every time we would to a big pour.
He usually cut in the afternoon and them we would cover it with Burlap and wet it down.

 

Wow, 4x4 sections sounds really small, I dont think Ive ever seen them that tight out around me. These are about 12x13-ish. In hindsight, I probably should've specified something smaller - maybe a 10x10 or 8x8 even.

I guess in the end it doesnt really matter much on this project as I wanted to fill them all flush anyways once things fully cured as nothing is going to move anymore at this point. Id just be trading filling more straight lines for less curvy ones.

That's how these were done too. Supposedly it was some brand new style blade to allow you to cut it much more green than normal - literally as soon as it could bear foot weight.

Ultimately Im not a huge fan of it. A normal diamond blade on truly set concrete comes out almost laser clean. This blade clearly did small amounts of damage to the top surface - I had quite a few spall out chunks (all quarter size or less) of the top surface on either side of the cut as shown in one of the pics.

That's why Id run the crack chaser grinder all the way down every one. I didnt really want to open up those cuts at all, but at least adding that light chamfer forced any other weak spots to chip off now so I can fill them as part of this patch / prep process. Certainly better than them chipping later after the epoxy is on.

I also suspect those short cracks radiating straight off the cut joints were caused by that blade type / too green of cutting also, but of course there's nothing I cam really change at this point anyways.

Fortunately Ive got a curb around most of the perimeter so I didnt have to mess with burlap, although I do see that done quite often on big shop pours out here in the summer.

Id made some temporary sand bags to plug the door openings as soon as they were done cutting, and then filled it with a few inches of water like a big bathtub for about a week (kept topped off with a sprinkler on a timer).

Certainly the curb tops dried out almost immediately baking in the direct sun, but the bulk of the slab stayed moist for quite a while into the cure. I still had a couple small puddles even out to 9 days out as the concrete just couldnt hold anymore water (the bottom has 100% vapor barrier so it cant pass through).

 

A bit delayed. I had to order some additional crack fill and FedEx destroyed the package in process (apparently pretty severely as they reached out to the shipper and sent it back mid stream - I bet they broke a can open). So my replacement crack fill just arrived / hoping to finish joint and crack fill this weekend.

I also got the epoxy on order:
-8 gallons of epoxy primer
-18 gallons of primary epoxy coating
-10 gallons of polyaspartic top coat (primarily for UV resistance)

along with all of the other goodies of course. Should be here in a couple weeks.

Ended up going medium gray on color / no flake. Really wanted to do something more bold, but after tons of research hours, I struggled to find a non tan/gray color that looked ok drenched across a whole floor.

Blue is my favorite color, but a solid blue floor looks like a swimming pool. Red/yellow/orange all seem to be eye searing bright (not to mention Floor Is Lava vibes). So on and so on.

I do really love the 'metallic' look (where they swirl colors together during application), but watching how to videos look scary for a beginner. Id be super nervous to screw it up and be stuck with a nasty looking floor.

 

Finished the rest of the crack fill today



Just waiting on supplies to arrive, then we'll clear the garage out and rent a grinder.

 

Looks good and I know some of the fun that can be lol!
I read and saw some videos of people who used crack filler on the relief cuts and others who did not. I did not. I am not sure how much it does or does not matter in the grand scheme.

Looking forward to progress pics! Do you have a strategy for laying it down? Such as are you going to do sections or try "all at once"? Also, I did not buy the spiked shoes when I did mine (I just did not step into the product when it was on the floor). Did you get the shoes?

 

I personally can't stand them. Im admittedly a very clumsy worker, so Im always spilling fluids/ dropping small hardware into them. These are a lot smaller than the tooled in joints at my previous house, but they'd still get filled with oil / coolant / etc if I left them open.

I also dont really have a need for the joints at this point. Im well past the shrinkage crack stage (as there's so much metal in there that nothing is moving again). We also dont have any ground freezing / the footers are 2 foot below grade anyways, so the cracking should be behind me at this point.

I think doing it all in one pour is impossible here between the volume to mix, the short pot life, and only having 2 people. However I am going to try to do a wet edge to blend things out (do one strip, then immediately start the next strip, etc etc so it's always painting wet to wet). Im planning on working left to right doing strips in the short direction. Mixing out the back door as that's always shaded this time of year.

I'm thinking to dump each batch roughly around that section, then have 1 person with the notched squeegee dragging it all the way edge to edge with the other person following behind to backroll.

I think Im going to do the batches around 4 gallons at a time (enough to cleanly mix in a 5 gal bucket, still easy to carry/pour though). To ensure even coverage, my thought is to divide each material evenly to get the closest to 4 gallons per batch and see how many batches I need to divide the garage into. Ill put a piece of tape on the walls about where the stop/start points need to be. Unfortunately all 3 have very different coverage amounts, so we'll have to mark it unique to each one, but that's no big deal.

The cadence for the 3 materials is pretty well set by the manufacturer - theyve all got a minimum cure time before top coating, and a max time to get a top coat on them (to avoid having to do more prep work). It works out so that we can do the primer in the mid AM, the epoxy in the early afternoon, then the poly the following morning.

For prep, Ill clear things out the week before - rent the diamond grind machine, vac / rinse it out, then let it dry for the week. We'll cut in the paint for the whole perimeter curb before we start rolling floors for each material.

Yeah, but just because they came with the kit. This place's big thing is 'job on a pallet' where you get all materials and all specialty tools at a discounted rate (over buying separate) shipped on one pallet so you they send a standard set of stuff with each.

TBH Im not sure we'll really need them. As the whole front wall is doors, we can easily get in and out all the way to the last strip without having to walk on it at all by coating it left to right. I could see them being helpful for wet setting flake, but Im not doing any flake at all, so Ive really got no reason to intentionally be walking on any coated areas.

I also dont have work shoes (I do everything in flip flops besides my dress shoes for actual work), so I think theyd be uncomfortable strapped onto mostly bare feet.

 

And the pallet arrived. Broke out the liquids to store them in the house until we're ready.

 

HOLY HECK! That looks like a ton of product! Based on the calculations from the company, will you be using all of that or is there actually extra product?
I am anxious to hear how this works out for you!

 

It'll all get used. The calcs were rounded to the nearest gallon in total for each layer - but none were rounded by more than a couple tenths from reccomended coverage (which spread across the whole garage is negligible).

In wet film thickness, it works out to 6 mil of primer, 14 mil of 100% solids epoxy, and 16 mil of poly clear. Granted the primer is about 50% solvent for better penetration and the poly is about 20% solvent by chemical nature so it wont be near that thick in terms of finished dry film thickness. The notched squeegees arrived tonight calibrated to those coverage rates to keep it consistent as we spread it.

It does look a little deceiving - in both the main epoxy and the poly, both part A and B are separately canned in the big container - so those arent totally full 5 gal buckets of liquid. Plus the primer is like half solvent, so that's basically a whole gallon of each pair flashing completely to atmosphere in the end.


Got things all lined up for grinding next weekend. Picked up a concrete vac from home depot last night (same price to rent for a week as it would be Sat+Sun), and I scheduled delivery through Sunbelt of a dual disk gas powered diamond grinder for Friday - Mon.

I will say I assumed they came with some kind of tool installed (just like the concrete wet saw did, or the jackhammer / tile removers do). But apparently you have to buy your own / they come bare. They take 3 inserts per disk, so 6 in total for the dual disk - at $40 a pop. Oof...

I thought about swapping to a single disk grinder to save half of that cost, but they dont have a gas powered single disk - and I dont have the amperage or voltage to run a big grinder that far from the house / power source. Really hate to take all weekend screwing with a little mini 110 grinder; its barely bigger than my angle grinder.

Oh well, Ive got plenty of other spots to grind if Ive still got bit life left after doing the garage.