Epoxy Flooring in Bloomington, IN

Epoxy flooring in Bloomington has to handle a climate that is hard on concrete in two directions. Wikipedia's climate table for Bloomington puts the January daily mean at 28.8°F and the July daily mean at 75.0°F, with about 49 inches of precipitation spread over roughly 123 wet days a year. That means a garage slab freezes and thaws many times each winter, and a basement slab sits in damp ground for much of the summer. A coating can protect concrete from both, as long as it is bonded to a properly prepared surface and matched to the slab.

Winter at the garage door

Bloomington averages about 17.5 inches of snow a year. The amount matters less than the swings: with the January mean just under freezing, slabs freeze and thaw again and again through the winter. Each thaw puts water into the surface pores of bare concrete, and each freeze expands it. When roads are treated for ice, the brine rides in on your tires and sits under the car. Over a few seasons that shows up as flaking and pitting in the first few feet inside the door. A sealed coating keeps that water and brine on top of the floor, where a squeegee can push it out.

Limestone country and cracked slabs

Bloomington sits in karst terrain. Wikipedia describes the area as irregular limestone with sinkholes, ravines, sinking streams, springs and caves, where the Norman Upland meets the Mitchell Plain. A 1984 Purdue report for the Indiana Department of Highways on the karst region of southern Indiana described soil above limestone eroding into underground channels, which leads to subsidence and sinkholes. On a home slab, ground movement shows up as cracks, uneven joints and low spots. We look at every crack before we quote. Hairline shrinkage cracks get filled and coated over. Cracks that are still moving or one side higher than the other get flagged, because a coating cannot hold a slab together.

Basements in a wet climate

Monroe County's monthly rainfall runs from about 2.7 inches in January to about 5.1 inches in May, according to Wikipedia. Spring is when basement slabs take on the most moisture. Water vapor coming up through concrete is the leading reason basement coatings bubble and peel. We test before we recommend anything. If the reading is modest, we use a primer made for damp slabs. If water is coming in through a crack or the floor-wall joint, that has to be fixed first, and we say so. The American Lung Association notes that every Indiana county is in EPA radon Zone 1 or Zone 2. A floor coating does not stop radon, so we suggest testing before you finish a basement.

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Which system fits which floor

• Garage floor epoxy: a thick base coat bonded to ground concrete, with a durable clear topcoat for tires, brine and dropped tools.
• Flake floors: colored chips broadcast into the base coat. They hide dirt and add grip when the floor is wet.
• Polyaspartic coatings: fast-curing and UV-stable. A good choice when you need the garage back quickly or the coating runs out past the door into sunlight.
• Basement epoxy: solid color, flake or metallic over a moisture-checked slab, for gyms, laundry rooms and finished spaces.
• Metallic epoxy: a poured, swirled finish for basements, bars, studios and storefronts.
• Shop and commercial floors: heavier 100% solids systems for rolling carts, lifts, forklifts and chemical spills.

Owned homes, rentals and outbuildings

Census QuickFacts lists about 34.7% of housing units in the city of Bloomington as owner-occupied, so many of our city customers are homeowners in established neighborhoods, landlords maintaining rental houses and small-business owners. Outside town, in places like Ellettsville, Spencer and Nashville, more of our calls involve detached garages, pole barns and workshops. Those floors often have never been sealed and may hold decades of oil and dust. The process is the same: test, grind, repair, coat.

What happens on install day

• Everything comes off the floor. We can help you plan what goes where.
• The full slab is ground with diamond tooling, edges included, and the dust is vacuumed up as we go.
• Cracks, chipped control joints and pitted spots are filled and ground flush.
• Oil-soaked areas are cleaned out or treated so they do not lift the coating.
• The base coat, flake or color layer and topcoat go down in the order the system calls for.
• You get written times for walking on the floor, putting items back and parking.

Bloomington is home base. We also coat floors across Monroe County and the counties around it: Ellettsville, Smithville-Sanders, Harrodsburg, Stinesville and Unionville nearby; Bedford, Oolitic, Mitchell and Heltonville to the south in Lawrence County; Spencer and Gosport in Owen County; Martinsville, Paragon and Morgantown to the north; Nashville and Helmsburg in Brown County; Bloomfield, Worthington and Linton in Greene County; and Columbus to the east. Conditions shift as you move. The limestone belt between Bloomington and Bedford has karst ground that can crack slabs. Brown County is hilly and nearly 90% forested, so homes there sit on slopes under heavy shade. Linton's old coal mines still cause sinkholes on private property. Each town page covers what we know about floors there.