Almost every peeling, bubbling or chalking garage floor we get called to fix failed for one of six reasons, and none of them is bad luck. Here is what went wrong, how to tell, and what we do about it.
This is the big one. A coating does not stick to smooth, sealed or dusty concrete; it sticks to a ground profile with open pores. Acid etching, a rented buffer or a pressure washer does not create that profile. The coating sits on top like paint, and paint comes off. When a floor peels away in sheets with clean concrete underneath, the prep was skipped.
Concrete is a sponge. Water vapor moving up through the slab pushes on the coating from underneath and shows up as bubbles, blisters and soft spots, usually in basements and in garages built over wet ground. No coating survives it unless the slab is tested first and a moisture-mitigating base goes down where it is needed.
A box-store kit puts down a few thousandths of an inch. A professional system is a pigmented base coat, a full broadcast of flake and a clear topcoat, several times the thickness. Thin floors wear through in the traffic lanes, show every roller mark, and give up under the first hot tire.
A tire that has been on the interstate in July is hot and soft, and it grips the floor. On a thin, poorly bonded coating, the tire wins and pulls the coating up in a tire-shaped patch. On a ground, layered polyaspartic floor, the coating holds. If your floor peels only where the car parks, this is what happened.
Garage-grade epoxy is not UV-stable. Outdoors, or in a garage that gets afternoon sun through an open door, it yellows, chalks and gets brittle. Patios, pool decks, steps and sunny garages need a UV-stable polyaspartic topcoat, which is what we use on every floor.
Old paint, an old sealer, a curing compound on new concrete, or a failing previous coating: coat over any of them and the new floor is only as attached as the layer underneath. When that layer lets go, everything on top of it goes with it. The old layer has to be ground off first.
Every floor from Omaha Concrete Polishing & Coatings starts with diamond grinding on Husqvarna and Lavina planetary grinders, with dust extraction, edges done by hand. Cracks, pits and spalls are repaired and ground flush. A slab that looks suspect gets a moisture test before we quote it. The system is a pigmented polyaspartic base coat rolled wet into the profile, Torginol flake broadcast to refusal, and a clear UV-stable polyaspartic topcoat, with a polyurea or epoxy base coat only where a rough slab needs the extra build. That is why we can put a 10-year warranty on every coated floor and mean it. See the full system on the polyaspartic page and the garage floor page.
A failed coating is not a lost cause. We grind the old epoxy, paint or sealer off down to clean concrete, repair whatever was hiding underneath, and put the real system down. It costs more than coating a bare slab because of the removal time, and we will tell you the number before we start. Details on the grinding and coating removal page, and pricing on the cost guide.
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No, and neither should anyone else. A new coating is only as attached as the layer under it. We grind the failed coating off down to clean concrete, repair the slab and start over, with a warranty this time.
Almost always prep. A coating applied over etched, sealed or dusty concrete has nothing to hold on to, and the first freeze-thaw and road-salt season finds the weak bond. Grinding is the difference.
Not when the slab is ground and repaired first. Polyaspartic bonds to a ground profile, stays a little flexible so it moves with the slab, and does not yellow in the sun. Like any coating it will fail over bad prep or a wet slab, which is why we do the prep and test the slab.
Bubbles and blisters are moisture pushing up through the slab, or air released from a slab that was coated too fast in the heat. A moisture test before the job, and a base coat chosen for the slab, prevents it.
Peeling from no grinding, blistering from moisture, hot-tire pickup on thin coats, yellowing epoxy in sunlight, and coatings applied over old paint or sealer. Every one of them is a prep or product choice, not a concrete problem.
Call, text a couple of photos, or fill out the two-minute quote form. We reply fast and the quote is free.
(531) 239-7575Call or text. Serving Papillion, Omaha and the whole metro.