HOW TO AVOID AN EPOXY FLOORING FAILURE

Why Most Epoxy Floors Fail

Epoxy floor failures are not random. They are almost always caused by one or more of four things: using a low-quality or thin-build epoxy, using a good quality epoxy in the wrong application, poor surface preparation, or defective concrete that was not addressed before coating. Any one of these — or any combination — results in a guaranteed floor failure.

Our epoxy coatings are engineered to be impervious to the conditions that destroyed the floor below — but only when the correct epoxy system with the right options is chosen and applied to a properly prepared concrete slab. For example, you can't put down a standard garage coating kit and then use your garage as a repair shop or park dual pickups, ATVs, and tractors on it without using a primer and the military topcoat. That's a misapplication of the product — not a product failure.

Epoxy Myths That Lead To Floor Failures

Choosing & Using The Right Epoxy Floor Coating

Choosing the right epoxy flooring system for your specific application is the first and most important step — and we've made it easy. Visit our Interactive Epoxy Floor Selector Tool to select a coating properly rated for your traffic level, vehicle type, and usage conditions.

Using a product that is not up to the task — in quality, thickness, or performance rating — is a guaranteed failure that often requires diamond grinding and a complete redo. Very costly in both money and the heartache of living with an ugly floor.

Proper Surface Preparation

Using the right epoxy on a properly prepared slab is 50% of the battle — applying the right product the right way is the other half. We provide full, detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to prep and coat your floor correctly so your epoxy bonds permanently instead of peeling prematurely on our How To Prep & Epoxy Paint Your Floor The Right Way page. Also see this very informative article written by one of our customers: ArmorGarage Epoxy Application Suggestions And Lessons Learned.

Here's what your floor should look like before coating it with any paint or epoxy.

Epoxy Quality Matters Just As Much As Proper Prep

With epoxy coatings, you truly get what you pay for. Most common garage floor "epoxies" are water-based products from big-box stores, high-solids epoxies incorrectly sold as base layers, "fake" 100% solids that aren't 100% by weight and volume, low-grade imported materials, or paints with additives to legally label them as epoxies. Most apply at 2–4 mils thick — essentially the same as wall paint. Paint belongs on walls, not floors.

A proper epoxy flooring system should be: 14–25 mils thick, a true high-grade 100% solids epoxy base coat, and finished with a high-performance polyurethane topcoat with abrasion resistance rated for the traffic on the floor.

The industry benchmark for durability is the Taber CS-17 abrasion loss test. It measures material loss in milligrams. Lower loss equals higher durability.

This is why ArmorGarage floors still look new after 15–20 years.

When Failures Aren't The Epoxy's Fault

Once a floor is properly prepped and a high-quality epoxy is used, the only remaining causes of failure are incorrect mixing ratios, moisture vapor issues, or weak, chalky, or compromised concrete.

We batch-test every epoxy for adhesion and hardness. In pull tests, our epoxy and primers remove the top layer of concrete — proving the bond exceeds the concrete's own strength. In moisture or soft-concrete scenarios, the concrete fails, not the epoxy. This is why we strongly recommend using a primer when the slab shows any signs of compromise. Notice in the images below that the concrete is stuck to the underside of the epoxy — this is a concrete failure, not an epoxy failure.

Here's another type of concrete to look out for — a pea gravel slab. See all those black spots? They're pea gravel or river stones, which are very smooth and nonporous, making them extremely difficult to get anything to adhere to. If you have a slab like this, you need to use the Bonding Primer first. These floors are not very common — they're the result of the contractor cutting corners when pouring the floor. As long as you know what to look for, it's not a problem.

Garage Floors Demand The Toughest Coatings

If you park large vehicles, do mechanical work, or use your garage as a workspace, we strongly recommend our Military Grade Topcoat and a primer. Garages may seem like low-traffic spaces, but in reality, they are some of the harshest environments for floor coatings. Even slight turns of the wheel pulling in and out mean your tires are constantly twisting — with the dead weight of your car on them — grinding wear spots into the coating. Not mention the fact that when you do all the above after driving around, your tires get as hot as 180 degrees!

This puts enormous stress on the coating and can actually reliquify weak thin coatings so that when your tires cool back down, your floor coating is glued to your tires, resulting in the epoxy being torn off the floor as you pull back out.

Without high epoxy adhesion strength and a topcoat with excellent abrasion resistance, an epoxy paint or coating will wear through, peel, or delaminate very quickly. For maximum durability, we also strongly recommend using our primer for added adhesion — even though our epoxies are self-priming. If the budget allows, using a primer is never a bad idea, especially in garages.

Check Your Concrete Before You Buy

Before selecting any epoxy system, evaluate the condition of your slab. Perform a simple scratch test: if you can easily remove concrete by lightly scratching the surface, the slab is weak or compromised.

Moisture Testing Is Critical

Moisture is one of the most common causes of garage floor coating failure. Do this test before coating:

Many garages built in the 1970s or earlier do not have a vapor barrier under the slab. Almost all newer homes have vapor barriers. If you live in a high water table area, moisture may be unavoidable — in those cases, you may be better off using garage floor tiles or a garage mat instead of an epoxy coating.

Coating Over An Existing Paint Or Epoxy

With our Bonding Primer you can lightly sand the previous coating and apply any of our epoxy kits over it. Critical things to do and know before doing so:

If the existing coating is a low-quality product and is peeling off the majority of the floor, we recommend a full removal. If the floor has peeled off or worn off in 10% or less of the floor, then it's OK to coat over it.