If you live in Nebraska, and you still drive, you can’t make it through the winter comfortably without an enclosed garage. Realtor sites like Redfin don’t even list Nebraska homes that don’t have at least one indoor parking space. And if you have a Nebraska home and a garage, your best choice for your floor is epoxy. In this article, we’ll tell you why.
Bare Concrete Doesn’t Just Get Cold
Just about every garage in Nebraska has a concrete floor. Concrete is certainly better than packed clay or dirt, but it doesn’t stand up to winter very well. Concrete is porous. It contains lots of tiny air bubbles that allow heat to flow in, but also to flow out.
A concrete slab in the sun can heat up 36° to 54° hotter than the surrounding air. But a concrete slab in your unheated garage can cool down to the same temperature as the air in your garage in just a few hours.
This creates a second problem. If your garage is unheated, the water from melting snow or rainwater rolling off your tires can soak into your concrete and freeze. Over time, the repeated cycle of freezing and thawing breaks up your garage floor. You could need to remove the concrete and replace the floor long before the rest of your house needs substantial renovation.
Latex Doesn’t Give Your Garage Floor Adequate Protection
Slapping on a coat of latex paint is a step up from leaving your concrete floor bare. You have to wait for dry, warm weather to apply latex pain, but once you get it, you can greatly improve the appearance of your bare concrete floor.
For a while, anyway.
Latex won’t stand up to gasoline, diesel, motor oil, or transmission fluids. It can flake and peel in as little as six months. Water getting beneath latex can also freeze and thaw, lifting the protective paint coating off the concrete, letting water seep into the concrete below.
Read also: Key Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Roofing Contractor
It only costs $0.80 to $3.25 a square foot to paint your garage floor with latex, but if you have to repaint your floor every year, it gets to be an expensive proposition.
Epoxy Is the Answer
Epoxy flooring in Nebraska is the treatment of choice for nearly all Nebraska homeowners.
- Epoxy garage floors shed water. If you bring in a lot of rainwater and slush, it only takes a quick mopping to get rid of it.
- Epoxy garage floors stand up to gasoline, diesel, motor oil, most solvents, and bleach. You won’t mar them if you have to use a degreaser. They keep their color over years of use.
- If your garage doubles as your gym, you won’t dent, scratch, or chip epoxy when you drop a free weight. If you do car repairs in your garage, you won’t damage an epoxy floor when you use a jack or drop a tool.
- Epoxy garage floors can be made slip-resistant. Slip resistance depends on the size of the epoxy flakes used in the treatment. They can’t be either too small or too large.
- There are far more design options with epoxy than with any other medium. You can get terrazzo, metallic, stone, granite, or quartz finishes in your choice of colors. You can create a garage floor that complements the colors of your woodwork or your drywall.
Ready to Google for an epoxy garage floor near me? Here’s one more suggestion.
Go with a pro. Some of the “epoxy” paints you can get in the big-box home improvement stores are really just latex with some epoxy chips mixed in. A professional epoxy garage installation expert can ensure you get the beauty, safety, and durability an epoxy floor offers.
