Floor coatings are an excellent way to improve upon the appearance and functionality of your floors – when properly installed. However, floor coatings involve quite a bit of prep work and expertise in order to ensure proper installation. DIYers and professionals alike can cut corners or simply lack the necessary skills, equipment, and time in order to ensure a job well done.

While some minor mistakes could potentially be fixed, in many cases, if your floor coating was poorly installed, you likely will need to have it removed and replaced. To avoid such expenses and stressors, it’s best to work with experienced professionals who know the common – and not so common! – mistakes that people can make and how to avoid them so that your floor coating comes out beautifully.

Here are some of the telltale signs that your floor coating was poorly installed. 

#1. Bubbling

A properly installed floor coating should be nice and smooth, or with a texture that you asked for. There should be no bubbling. If your coating is bubbling, there are several ways in which the installer could have gone wrong in order for this to occur.

• Incorrect mixing. If the coating products were not mixed together correctly, at the correct ratio, speed, and for the right amount of time, this can cause air bubbles to appear. 
• Concrete outgassing. This is talking about when concrete has more pockets of air that can be released after the floor prepper. If the installer does not account for this, this can lead to bubbles in your coating.
• Rushed application. In an effort to get the job done, some installers may try to rush through the application process. This can lead to bubbling due to the lack of care and time needed for coats to cure.

#2. Not Bonding With Your Concrete

This usually happens more with polyaspartic coatings, due to their quick-curing nature. Moisture can prevent coatings from bonding with your concrete. If there’s too much moisture in your concrete, this can prevent the coating from adhering as it should. This can cause your coating to be less durable and to not last as long as it would otherwise. It can also prevent the coating from curing correctly. Excessive humidity can also cause this problem to occur. 

Professional coating installers should check the condition of your concrete prior to the job. This includes checking for damages, as well as checking the moisture content of the concrete. 

#3. Tacky Or Gooey Coatings

If the allotted cure time has passed and your coating is still tacky or gooey to the touch, this can be a sign that your floor coating was poorly installed. By the time the floor coating is cured, it should be hard and solid. If it’s gummy or sticky, this can be because of a few different problems in the installation process that prevented it from curing.

• Incorrect mixing. If the coating is not mixed together properly or the installer forgot to add part of the product to the mix, this can cause the coating to not cure.
• Temperatures that are too cold. If the installer tries to install a coating when it’s too cold, this can impact the curing process, and lead to a gummy floor coating. 

#4. Hard Lumps

If your floor coating has hard lumps in it, this is usually from dirt and grime, either from a failure to clean the floor properly prior to application or from using dirty equipment. Professional coating installers are careful to keep their equipment clean and in good condition and to ensure that your floor is nice and clean and properly prepped prior to application in order to avoid this mistake.

#5. Peeling

Now, this depends on the type of coating that you had installed. For instance, if you used a garage floor paint, these will end up peeling over time due to wear and tear, even if you did everything right.

However, when it comes to professional floor coatings, peeling is a sign of poor installation. Peeling can result from a failure to properly prepare the floor. Floors should be ground or shot blasted and have all contaminants removed. If the installer is not careful to ensure that the floor is clean, your coating could end up peeling.

Get Your Floor Coating Done Right – The First Time!

Solid Custom Floor Coatings Utah takes pride in our detail-oriented work and close communication with our customers. All of our installers are properly trained in order to ensure that they know how to avoid mistakes such as those listed above. Contact us today to receive an estimate for your top-quality floor coating installed by experts who care.

Solid Custom Floor Coatings helps homes in Utah improve their concrete surfaces with quality concrete floor coatings. Our team focuses on polyaspartic coatings for your garage, basement, patio, and porch it help extend the life of your concrete while also helping your areas become more slip resistant and easier to clean. 

Before we apply any coating to your concrete, we work to prep the area for the best floor coating results. One option we use to prep your floor is the process of diamond grinding. Learn more about how diamond grinding works and how it can help your floor coating. 

What Is Diamond Grinding?

This method of grinding is used to restore the concrete in preparation for a new application of coating. We use a machine diamond grinder that has rotating discs to cover all the surfaces evenly. Diamond grinders use diamond-tipped blades to even out texture or flaws in your current floor. 

Using these machines comes with the benefit of an attached vacuum to collect dust that is created while we are in the grinding process. This helps to keep the area clean and helps us be able to apply your polyaspartic coating in just one day because the clean-up process after grinding is almost nonexistent. The process of diamond grinding removes uneven concrete, and unnecessary texture and addresses the issues of faulting and cracks, or wheel rutting.

Benefits Of Diamond Grinding Before A Floor Coating

Grindin helps address many issues that may occur in your concrete flooring. Uneven surfaces, faulting at joints or cracking in the concrete, worn spots, or highly stained surfaces can all be improved by grinding down the floor. Homeowners may think that applying a coating can help improve these issues on its own, but grinding before application helps the coating to stick properly and do its job of protecting your current concrete. 

How Grinding Helps Prep For Polyaspartic Coatings

When we apply a floor coating to an already damaged surface, the final product ends up being damaged as well. Polyaspartic coatings will only adhere to the surface that is there and stick to valleys and ridges. Solid Custom Floor Coatings works with diamond grinding to ensure that the finished coating is smooth. 

Besides grinding, filling in cracks and pits is also part of our restoration process to make the coating process easier. Grinding and cleaning up the dust properly is a sign of a professional garage flooring company that knows just how important restoring your floor is to keep your home safe and tidy. 

Surfaces That Can Withstand Diamond Grinding

Before our team suggests diamond grinding for your concrete surface, we will take a look at how the surface can handle the grinding process. Some concrete surfaces such as ones with weak supporting soil, or ones that need multiple repairs. The hard grinding process could cause more cracking and damage if the concrete is weak. 

Before our team at Solid starts your project, we analyze your garage or other concrete surfaces to help us know whether diamond grinding or shot blast is better for your surface. Making our polysapartic coatings look as beautiful as possible requires us to make your concrete as stable as possible.

Trust Solid Custom Floor Coatings

Utah Solid Custom Floor Coatings has worked on many homes across the state of varying sizes and ages. Concrete flooring can be uninviting, hard to clean and make areas of your home feel colder and darker. Our coatings not only can make an area in your home more usable, but they can improve the life of your concrete and thus the lifetime of your home. 

Polyaspartic floor coatings can add a level of protection for these areas for the floor and those who use them. They add slip resistance, scratch resistance, and comfort for areas like your basement, gym, porch, or pool deck. These benefits appeal to many homeowners who want to use their homes for multiple purposes both internally and externally. Our team has been in the industry for many years and our technicians are highly skilled and trained on how to best apply floor coatings. Fill out our contact forms and let us improve your concrete surfaces! 

Polyaspartic floor coatings are among the most durable and long-lasting floor coatings available on the current market. Known for their incredibly fast cure times, unmatched strength and durability, and easy maintenance, polyaspartic floor coatings are trusted not only by homeowners, but also by significant names such as: NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, Ford, TopGolf, and more. Given that epoxy floor coatings dominated the floor coatings industry for so long, you may be wondering where polyaspartics came from and what makes them so special compared to the competition.

Here’s a brief history of polyaspartic floor coatings and how they’ve been developed to become one of the leading types of floor coatings available on the current market. Let’s dive into it!

Polyaspartics: Origins

In the 1930s, German scientist Otto Bayer invented polyurethane, a type of plastic that was more flexible than other options at the current time. While his colleagues were initially skeptical of his line of research, after years of developmental work, he was able to successfully synthesize polyurethane foam. Throughout his life, he influenced the development of materials using this family of plastics.

While polyurethane became a very common type of floor coating, it still had a ways to go. It was not as moisture-resistant or durable as it could be. 

Enter in the Texaco Chemical Company at the beginning of the 1980s. Their mission was to further improve upon polyurethane to make it more moisture resistant and more durable. They messed with the ingredients, swapping out the hydroxyl group for an anime group, resulting in polyurea. Their development was a resounding success, as evidenced by the fact that polyurea floor coatings are still commonly used to this day. 

However, polyurea still had its drawbacks, and if you obtain a polyurea floor coating for your home or business, you’ll notice them sooner or later. For instance, when applying a polyurea floor coating, you’ll notice that you need to work quickly, as it cures very fast, which means that you can’t just have an open pot of it lying around and then expect to be able to still use it later. Polyurea also struggles with a factor that plagues epoxy floor coatings too: UV stability. Both polyurea and epoxy floor coatings turn yellow after extended periods of sun exposure. 

There was still work to be done in order to create the polyaspartic floor coatings we know and love today. This is where Bayer Material Science comes into the picture. 

The Rise Of Polyaspartic Floor Coatings

Polyurea floor coatings worked well enough, but Bayer Material Science saw room for improvement. In the 1990s, they developed polyaspartic floor coatings. Their goal was to improve on where polyurea floor coatings failed, and they succeeded. Polyaspartic floor coatings are UV stable, and while their fast cure time necessitates professional installation, they’re able to last longer in their pots. 

As the decades have passed, scientists have continued to improve upon polyaspartic floor coatings, and still search for ways to make them even better. For instance, they noticed the high VOCs of other floor coatings, and sought ways to make polyaspartic floor coatings safer to work with. How intense the VOCs of your polyaspartic floor coatings are and individual factors can vary depending on the manufacturer, but in general, they’re a longer-lasting, stronger, and more environmentally friendly option than other types of coatings on the current market. 

Strength, Durability, And Beauty To Last The Years

Solid Custom Floor Coatings Utah uses RESINWERKS polyaspartic floor coatings in all of our services. RESINWERKS strives for environmentally friendly coatings that are of the highest quality and the lowest VOCs. They cure very quickly, so that after a mere 24 hours, you can reclaim your garage. They can also last up to 30 years before you need to have them reapplied. Compared to other types of floor coatings that need to be reapplied every few years, this longevity is currently unmatched. 

Some types of floor coatings have hot-tire pickup and aren’t very resistant to moisture, chemicals, impact, and other causes of damages. Polyaspartic floor coatings are continually being improved upon to excel in all of these areas. You don’t need to worry about them sticking to your tires when it’s hot out, nor do you need to worry about spills staining them. Plus, with how many colors and blends they come in, not only can you rest assured that your floors are protected with polyaspartic floor coatings, but you can also ensure that they look just the way you want them to.

So, there you have it! A brief little overview of how these incredible floor coatings came to be. If you’re interested in obtaining polyaspartic floor coatings for your home or business, please don’t hesitate to contact Solid Custom Floor Coatings Utah for detail-oriented, customer-centered services. We’re here to help you achieve the floors of your dreams.