Epoxy Flooring in Ann Arbor, MI

Epoxy flooring in Ann Arbor has to deal with two kinds of weather on the same slab. The University of Michigan's 1991 to 2020 climate normals, listed on Wikipedia, show about 61 inches of snow a year and more than 38 inches of total precipitation spread over roughly 166 days. In winter, your car drags salted slush into the garage. The rest of the year, ground moisture works on the basement floor from below. A coating here has to handle both, and how well it does depends on the concrete under it more than the product on top.

Salt season starts in November

The Washtenaw County Road Commission told WEMU it had spread more than 25,000 tons of salt in the 2017 to 2018 winter, a season it called historic. That salt does its job on the road and then drips off your wheel wells onto the garage floor. Brine soaks into bare concrete, and each freeze and thaw near the overhead door loosens the surface a little more. After a few winters you see a rough, flaking band across the front of the slab, chalky tire tracks and white rings where puddles dried. A sealed coating keeps that brine on the surface, where a squeegee can push it back out the door.

A city of 1960s and 1970s houses

American Community Survey figures for 2019 to 2023, summarized by Point2Homes, put the median Ann Arbor home at 1971. About a third of all housing units went up in the 1960s and 1970s, and nearly 15% were built before 1940. That mix shows up on the floors we see. There are ranch and split-level homes with attached garages poured half a century ago, older houses near downtown and the Old West Side with small detached garages, and newer townhomes toward the edges of town. A 50-year-old slab can carry old paint, a previous owner's sealer, settled sections and cracks that have been patched more than once. We check for all of it before we price the job.

Basements, sump pumps and wet soil

Plenty of Ann Arbor basements have a history with water. In 2001 the city began a footing drain disconnection program after drains tied into the sanitary sewer were linked to sewage backing up into basements in heavy rain. The Ann Arbor Chronicle reported that homes in the program had sump pumps installed in the basement. If your basement has a sump pit, an old water line on the wall or a damp corner, the slab needs a moisture test before any coating goes down.

Soil plays a part too. The USDA rates the Conover series, a loamy till soil mapped across southern Michigan, as somewhat poorly drained, with a perched seasonal water table that can sit about 6 to 18 inches below the surface. Moisture moving up through a slab is the most common reason basement coatings blister and peel.

Test for radon before you finish the basement

The Washtenaw County Health Department estimates that more than 40% of homes in the county are above the EPA's radon action level of 4.0 pCi/L, and it recommends testing every home. A coating seals the surface of a slab. It is not a radon mitigation system. If you are finishing a basement, test first. If a mitigation system goes in, we plan the floor around the suction point.

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Systems we install

• Garage floor epoxy: a 100% solids base coat bonded to ground concrete, with a clear topcoat that stands up to brine and hot tires.
• Flake floors: vinyl chips broadcast into the base coat for grip underfoot and a speckled finish that hides grit between cleanings.
• Polyaspartic coatings: fast-curing coats with a wide temperature window, handy when a job falls in a cold month.
• Basement floor epoxy: moisture-tested systems with a vapor-tolerant primer when the slab needs one.
• Metallic epoxy: a poured, marbled finish for finished basements, home bars and studios.
• Shop and commercial floors: thicker builds for workshops, service bays and small business floors.

What a typical garage job includes

• Measuring the floor and checking moisture, cracks, scaling and any old coating
• Grinding the full slab with diamond tooling, edges included, and vacuuming the dust
• Filling cracks, chips and pitted areas so the finished surface is continuous
• Base coat, flake or color layer, and a clear topcoat
• A written schedule for walking on the floor, moving things back and parking

Prices in writing

We do not quote floors over the phone. Two garages of the same size can need very different prep. After the estimate visit you get a written quote listing the square footage, the prep work, each coat and the total. If something turns up once work starts, such as a hidden crack or an old coating that will not grind off cleanly, we write it up and wait for your approval.

Ann Arbor is home base. We also coat floors across Washtenaw County and into Livingston and Monroe counties: Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township, Pittsfield, Scio, Superior and Ann Arbor townships, Saline, Dexter, Chelsea, Manchester, Milan, Whitmore Lake, Brighton, Howell, Pinckney, Hamburg, Genoa, Green Oak and Hartland townships, Monroe and Dundee. Homes vary a lot across that ground. Ypsilanti has the second-largest contiguous historic district in Michigan, with older houses and garages to match. Pittsfield and Genoa townships grew fast in the last two decades and have newer subdivisions with larger attached garages. Hamburg Township alone has 32 named lakes, and river towns along the Huron and the River Raisin sit low near the water. Each area page covers what we know about homes there.