How to do Epoxy Floors - STEP BY STEP GUIDE - S3E3

Hello what's up? Erick Cortina Texas bar no means today we are going to do some

epoxy

floors

. I'll show you how to take your

floors

from this to this. Okay, let's get to work, so first thing you need to do. What I do is I clean the concrete, I mean, it has to be spotless, so the way I like to do it is first, we just go in with a leaf blower and blow it all out that way, you can remove the wood chips, the dirt, anything that is on the floor. surface, you can get rid of it, remember that when you are blowing the floors, make sure you blow all the walls too, there is a lot of trash on those walls and you need to make sure you remove it, if not it will fall off. your floors at the worst possible time, so clean the walls and floors and take them all out after you do that.

I like to go back and inspect the entire floor and make sure there's no paint, no drips, no anything, if there's any of that, scrape it off. I can use soy gel, which is a paint stripper that lifts the paint and that way you can get rid of it after that. In fact, I like sanding the floor. I understand we're going to acid etch this thing, whatever acid etching is. I'm only going to etch the concrete if the concrete is rough in any way, it won't take care of that, that's fine, if there's paint stuck or anything that's stuck to the concrete, the sanding screen will take care of that.

It kind of flattens the floors and then the etch will etch the floors we like to hit it with a 60 or 80 grit sanding screen, make two passes perpendicular to each other and that will create a lot more dust at that point. I like to apply water and then just vacuum it all up because if you try to blow it off with a leaf blower or even sweep it, all the dust will build up and what will happen is it will look clean and then everything. that dust is in the air again, it will stick to the walls, it will get everywhere and then it will settle back on the floor, that's why I like to vacuum it up, so after it's all clean, you can use water.

You can use moocher clean, you can go back and just rub it one more time, okay, again, if you have something that covers those pores, that acid will not etch the concrete, okay, it will act as a film that will prevent the acid from getting on the concrete, okay, so you want them if you want those concrete floors spotless before acid etching. Okay, at this point I like to mop with a broom and a clean otter and again you vacuum everything after cleaning the floor. they're spotless now you can acetate, okay, the way I like accidents is a one to one ratio of water and neurotic acid, you want to end up with about the equivalent of a 400 grit sandpaper, you want those floors to be recorded, so make your mix. one, two, one, the acid from your attic to the water and applies it with a sprayer in a circular motion.

The circular motion will prevent patterns from forming in the concrete and will also give you a better chance of getting really good coverage on that concrete. you want to make sure that all of this is coated well, so go ahead and cover the floors completely once you're done with that, now you have to neutralize that acid the way we do, we use a mixture of ammonia and water, so They usually recommend a twenty to a ratio of water to ammonia, however I liked a little stronger 1001 because I'm cheap anyway, the time it takes to get five gallons right and then we can just stick the hose in there and do the math sometimes you're awesome fifty-five seconds, so fifty-five seconds, that's about ten gallons and, well, I guess that's one gallon or ammonia, ten gallons of water.

We're actually using a commercial scrubber here, but you can actually literally just dump the ammonia and water mixture in with a cup and apply it with a stiff bristle broom and vacuum it up right when the acid etchs the concrete, there will be a film that will build up. on the surface again and you don't want to leave something undone you have to cover everything well because the point of failure will not be in the middle of the slab, it will be around the edges where maybe you didn't clean it as well, okay, fix it all again, so then you neutralize the acid with ammonia and water comes back once again and you give the concrete one more rinse with just clean water.

Well, now you're sort of cleaning up the ammonia, so you want to give it one pass, maybe two. Can't. Emphasize this enough, these concrete floors need to be super clean, okay, you scrub it again with just normal water and vacuum it all up, okay, vacuuming is very important because it's sucking the water out of those pores, okay, if you try to mop it. or anything that you're just sliding over the top of so it's very important to vacuum it up so do this a couple of times now that you're ready to apply your

epoxy

however now your moisture level is high on the concrete because You've been putting water all day on this, okay, so don't rush and try to apply your poxy right now because it will fail, so make sure your concrete dries overnight, at least okay, you want that humidity level to be below 50% when you apply your epoxy, don't rush it, it will kill you, so now the concrete is prepared, it's clean, it's etched, it's spotless.

Now we can apply the epoxy. However, you should make sure before doing that. tape off all your boundaries okay your doors anything you don't want to give to your poxy needs to be sealed so this particular slab that we just cleaned we actually sealed it okay I've shown you many times how. we sealed concrete so you can see some of those videos. I'm actually going to put a link here to the last one though, I want to show you how we make epoxy so I'm going to take you to my house now where I made my mancave, I did that about three years ago and we actually made a blue epoxy floor , so as you can see, Leroy is putting down painter's tape.

The reason painter's tape is used is because that's where we're going to stop sealing. buy so if you notice you put the tape right where the swing door goes down because there will be a little seam so every time the door is closed you won't be able to see that seam and we'll show you right now. The edge of the tape is where the sealant will stop and as you can see it's right in the middle of the door so you won't be able to see it when it's done. Up to this point, the process is identical, okay, let's change.

This is how you apply the sealant versus how you apply the epoxy, so let's do it, as you can see we have a mixing area ready to go and you can see we organized all the kits that we have a and B in each stack, that way when you're mixing you just grab a whole kit right there, you don't want to put them all in a pile and then when you try to mix you're trying to find where the A is and what the B is and all that crazy stuff, so organize your mixing area properly and as you can see, we're right next to the door, so this is the door we're going to exit through.

We've got the concrete edge, as you can see, it's equivalent to a 400 grit sandpaper and it's ready to go, okay, we're ready to put that epoxy down, so you want to make sure you mix the epoxy properly. Epoxy comes in two parts, part A and part B, so I like to add about 5% acetone for the kid, that will increase its shelf life and make your epoxy a little more runny which will allow you to lay it down smoothly. more uniform, so what I like to do is add acetone to the piece. A and mix it well, so pour part a into the bucket, add the acetone, mix those two together and make sure they are well mixed, don't do it too quickly or you will introduce air bubbles and the friction will start to heat up. your epoxy, that will shorten your lifespan, so don't get carried away with the mixing process, okay, now you have it mixed, now it's time to leave it, well, we like to do it, we actually like to leave it. the concrete as you have seen here just leave it and you will need a notched squeegee.

Well, that's the trick to this whole process that will allow you to put exactly the same amount of epoxy on the entire slab before. you roll it right, if you don't do this, if you try to dip and roll that epoxy, you're going to have a color variation all over the slab, because it's going to be thicker and spotty and thin or something else, so make sure you get a squeegee, it's okay that's it again I'll say it again that's the key to all of this okay now that you've laid down the epoxy with your squeegee go ahead and roll it back you can use a 1/2 inch nap without shed solvent resistant roller don't skimp on these rollers it's okay because if any lint comes off of this stuff it will ruin your floor so get high quality rollers or roller covers do that first coat you'll need two coats Alright?

Finished with the first coat, let it sit overnight. The box will take a while, don't worry you will get some bubbles so what happens is you have air in the pores and in the concrete. When you pour that epoxy, it's fine. the epoxy goes down into those pores and evacuates the air, so it creates bubbles, but because it dissolves it is 100 percent solid, many times those bubbles don't escape, so they just stay on the surface, don't worry again. You're going to get bubbles, that's normal, so go ahead and close everything up, make sure the wind doesn't hit it and go home, okay, come back tomorrow the next day, when you come back you'll notice that you'll have bubbles on the surface. grab your hundred grit sandpaper or the sanding screen on your polishing machine and polish it all up, this is like painting a car, okay this is the equivalent of wet sanding between coats, go ahead and sand everything as you can see here all those little bubbles. and the stuff that was on the surface we sent it all down, okay, it's going to look like you're really ruining the floors, but don't worry, it's okay, it's fine, sand everything, clean it all again. at this point you can take a leaf blower and blow it all out or you can take a mop or anything just make sure they're really clean so now that we have the first layer done we sand the epoxy and clean up. above it's time to apply the second coat, the second coat is applied exactly the same way as the first, okay, mix your epoxy the same way.

One thing I forgot to mention is that you want to mix one kit at a time and that's it, don't do it. make more than one, the more kits you mix at a time, the shorter the pot life of the mixture, so don't do it, well, mix one at a time, it's best to have two people apply the epoxy and you have a extra guy mixing as you the epoxy goes down, make sure the next guy mixes so you don't have cold joints, so after you finish rolling, this is what it looks like, this is the second coat.

Now, at this point, you're done, you can leave. You'll just be happy, however I like to add another coat of polyurethane on top to protect the epoxy. I like to use polyurethane 100 which is a very good top coat at this point if you have any imperfections in your epoxy like bubbles or something like that. you can go ahead and send them down and then you can put your polyurethane on, although you shouldn't have any problems so anyway go ahead and roll your polyurethane in here like I said you have a 24 hour window or you can apply it.

If it's more than 24 hours, you'll have to scrape off the epoxy, so keep that in mind. This is what it takes to do a very good job with epoxy. If you do it this way, it should last a lifetime, so I hope you do. I enjoyed this, see you next time we are Texas barn Armenians.