Epoxy Flooring in Chicago, IL

Epoxy flooring in Chicago, IL has two jobs most floors never face at once: it has to shed months of salty slush in winter and stay bonded through a humid summer on concrete that is often decades old. Chicago Epoxy Floor Pros installs epoxy floor coating, polyaspartic, vinyl chip and metallic systems on garages, basements, shops and commercial floors across the city and its suburbs. Every job starts with a moisture reading and a close look at the slab, because the right system depends on the concrete you have and how you use the room.

Winter is the real test for a Chicago floor

Wikipedia gives average yearly snowfall of 38.4 inches at O'Hare and 38.8 inches at Midway, and measurable snow can show up into early April. All of that comes home on your tires. Salt brine drips off the car, pools under it and soaks into bare concrete, where repeated freezing and thawing can flake off the top layer. That is the pitting and scaling you see near so many garage doors.

A sealed resin floor holds brine on top, so a squeegee and a hose can push it out the door. For most garages we pair a full vinyl chip broadcast with a polyaspartic or urethane topcoat. The chips hide the dried salt rings between washdowns, and a fine grit in the topcoat keeps wet boots from sliding. Drainage gets a look as well. A floor that tilts back toward the house or dips under the car will hold brine whatever coating is on it, and we flag that on the estimate.

Summer humidity and cool slabs

Wikipedia lists average relative humidity at O'Hare at 69.6% and an average July dew point of 61.7 F. Basement floors and shaded garage slabs stay cool through July, so damp air can condense on them. That causes two different problems. On install day, a slab sitting near the dew point can keep a coating from bonding. After the floor cures, a glossy surface can feel slick on a sticky afternoon.

For the first, we take readings of air and slab temperature plus the dew point before a single kit is opened, and we move the date if conditions are off. For the second, the answer is texture: chips, grit or both.

Old concrete needs real prep

Census figures summarized by Point2Homes show that about 38.8% of Chicago housing units were built in 1939 or earlier, and Wikipedia notes that brick bungalows from the early 1900s through World War II cover large parts of the city away from the lake. Slabs that old tend to carry oil stains, two or three layers of floor paint, patch jobs and sealers nobody remembers putting down. A coating will only hold as well as the surface under it, so we diamond grind every floor down to sound concrete, fill cracks and pits, and tell you on the quote how much prep your floor needs. When a garage coating peels within a year or two, skipped prep is the usual culprit.

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Two-flats, alley garages and shared basements

Two-unit buildings hold about 13% of Chicago housing units and three- and four-unit buildings about 14.4%, according to the same ACS summary. Many of those lots have a detached garage on the alley and a basement that several households use for laundry and storage. For building owners, we can coat a basement in sections so tenants keep a path to the washer, and we can recommend a mid-gray chip blend that hides scuffs between turnovers. For detached garages that are not heated, we plan the install for a stretch of weather the coating can cure in, rather than forcing it in the cold.

Working floors in a food and rail city

Chicago is home to the headquarters of food companies such as Conagra, Kraft Heinz, Mondelez and Quaker Oats, per Wikipedia, and the region is the largest railroad hub in North America. Around that economy sit thousands of smaller floors: commissary kitchens, bakeries, auto shops, small warehouses and loading areas. Those floors need thicker coatings, slip texture where things get wet, chemical resistance and sometimes a cove base where the floor meets the wall. Our commercial epoxy flooring page covers how we schedule that work around your hours.

What epoxy flooring cost looks like

Installed epoxy averages $4 to $10 per square foot nationally according to HomeGuide, which works out to roughly $1,600 to $5,800 in a two-car garage. For polyaspartic, the same source lists about $5 to $12 per square foot. Grinding off old paint, repairing spalled concrete near the door and adding chips or a metallic finish all move the number. We price each floor after we have seen and tested it, and the written estimate we hand you is the price.

Questions for epoxy flooring contractors before you sign

Whoever you hire, ask a few plain questions. Will you test the slab for moisture first? Will the floor be diamond ground, or only acid etched? What is in each coat, and how thick is it? What topcoat goes on a floor that sees road salt? How soon can I walk on it, and how soon can the car come back in? Good epoxy flooring companies and epoxy floor installers answer those questions in writing. We put the answers on the quote so you can compare us with anyone else on equal terms.

Picking a system for the room

Most of our work falls into six systems. A garage that sees daily winter parking usually gets a full chip floor with a polyaspartic topcoat. A heated, shaded garage with no rush can do well with a straight epoxy system. Basements get a moisture test first, then a chip, solid or metallic finish depending on how finished the room is. Bars, studios and finished rec rooms are where metallic floors shine. Kitchens, auto bays and small warehouses get thicker commercial coatings with texture. We explain the choice on your quote, along with what the alternative would cost, so you can decide.

How long the job takes

A typical two-car garage takes one to two working days, depending on how much grinding and repair the slab needs. HomeGuide advises waiting about 2 to 7 days before driving onto epoxy, while polyaspartic can usually carry heavy vehicle traffic after 24 to 48 hours. Basements and commercial spaces vary more with size and phasing. Before work begins, you get the walk-on time, the park-on time and the full schedule on paper, which makes it easier to decide where the cars and laundry will live in the meantime.

We work across Chicago, from bungalow blocks and two-flat streets to newer townhome rows, and in the suburbs around it: Evanston, Skokie, Lincolnwood, Wilmette and Winnetka to the north; Oak Park, Berwyn, Cicero, Elmhurst and Lombard to the west; La Grange, Western Springs, Hinsdale, Downers Grove, Wheaton and Naperville farther out; Oak Lawn, Evergreen Park, Palos Heights, Orland Park and Tinley Park to the southwest; and Bolingbrook and Joliet to the south.

The concrete changes as you move outward. Closer in, we see prewar basements, alley garages and floors with years of paint on them. In the newer suburbs, garages are wider and attached, and the usual problems are control-joint cracks and salt scaling near the door. Each town page explains what we look for there.