If you're considering epoxy floors, you may be curious about maintenance requirements. No one wants to ruin a valuable investment with ignorance or a mistake. Do epoxy floors require maintenance to prevent repairs? Is maintenance something you can handle, or should repairs be done by a professional?
Elite Floor Coatings has coated millions of square feet of concrete. When installed correctly, an indoor epoxy coating should not have any maintenance requirements. Incorrect installation can lead to repair needs.
When you've finished reading, you'll understand the circumstances that can lead to epoxy repairs.
Like all products, epoxy must be installed within certain parameters. There are some features and restrictions of epoxy that determine proper installation methods. Let's take a look at some of these aspects of epoxy.
Ultraviolet rays will deteriorate epoxy. The epoxy will become amber over time, but the sunlight literally burns the epoxy away, compromising the integrity of the coating system.
In outdoor applications, the outdoor epoxy coatings need to be totally covered to protect from this deterioration. Porches, sidewalks, and driveways can have an epoxy system, but the epoxy must be covered with sand or stone. Without this covering, the epoxy could be exposed to the sun and deteriorate over time.
In addition to covering the epoxy with quartz or a river rock epoxy mix, epoxy coating also needs a special top coat for ultraviolet protection. This top coat could be either a polyaspartic or a urethane coating. Neither option is affected by ultraviolet light. However, ultraviolet light does pass through these top coats, which is why sand or stone are necessary to protect the underlying epoxy.
If the coating system had an epoxy top coat, the system would not be stable in an outdoor environment.
DIY epoxy kits don't offer the necessary top coat to protect the floor from ultraviolet light. In a way, these floors don't really require maintenance. They just don't last very long. Instead of making repairs to extend the life of a DIY floor, you'll do the floor over again once the epoxy has been burned away.
If the DIY kit isn't installed somewhere sunlight can reach it, it may last longer. However, these coatings are still more likely to have repair issues and problem areas than a professional epoxy job.
As you can imagine, outdoor epoxy is more likely to require maintenance since the sun burns away epoxy. There will be a greater need for repairs for any outdoor coatings. These repairs aren't the responsibility of the homeowner. The epoxy installer can return to restore the coating.
For example, our outdoor epoxy product is river rock epoxy, also called riverstone epoxy. River rock is an incredible product for the outdoors, but it does need to be reglazed approximately every three to four years, depending on the amount of ultraviolet exposure. This reglazing process replaces any epoxy that has burned away over time due to sunlight exposure.
One way we avoid maintenance and repair issues is through termination cuts. Many epoxy installers will take a paint chip epoxy floor to the edge of a garage. Our team does not. We do not coat the garage apron with epoxy, for two reasons:
We prefer to install a coating that will last the lifetime of your garage. Without termination cuts, there is the risk of the epoxy failing, cracking, or yellowing in a particular section of the floor.
Another concern for epoxy floors and maintenance has nothing to do with sunlight. Instead, the concern is hydrostatic pressure.
In below-grade applications, like a basement floor, there is the risk of hydrostatic pressure from the concrete floor. If a basement floods with water coming up through the concrete slab, the water cannot pass the epoxy coating.
Epoxy can withstand a reasonable amount of hydrostatic pressure, usually between 15 and 21 psi. The coating will hold down the water. However, the floor can fail if the hydrostatic pressure exceeds the epoxy's threshold.
If you have your epoxy installed by a qualified professional, you shouldn't have to worry much about maintenance. A professional coatings installer knows what type of top coats are needed to protect epoxy from ultraviolet light, and whether paint chip epoxy coatings are appropriate for a basement with groundwater problems.
If you opt for DIY kits for your epoxy, you won't have maintenance issues. However, your epoxy won't last as long as a professional system.