Garage floors peeling at the tire tracks, basement slabs that need a real system before they become living space, shop floors that have taken more than paint can handle. We match Wasatch Front homeowners with a contractor who preps the concrete properly first — that's the part the big-box kit skipped.
The coating is the easy part. Getting the concrete ready for it is the part that decides whether it lasts.
Five kinds of work that make up most coating calls — from a first-time garage floor to a DIY job that's already peeling.
A garage floor fails almost always at the tire tracks, because hot tire pickup finds the weakest bond on the whole slab. Mechanical prep and the right system for a garage's load are what keep that from happening.
Learn more →A basement slab without a vapor barrier can push moisture up through the concrete long after it looks and feels dry, and that moisture will delaminate a coating from underneath regardless of how well the top side was done. A moisture test settles the question before the coating goes down, not after it fails.
Learn more →Flake and metallic finishes are the visible layer of the system, and they only look as good as the prep underneath allows. A decorative finish over a poorly ground slab shows every flaw the coating was supposed to hide.
Learn more →Prep is the entire job, even though it's the part nobody notices once the floor is finished. Mechanical grinding opens the concrete so a coating actually bonds; an acid etch or a quick roll-on kit does not do the same thing, which is the single biggest reason DIY floors fail.
Learn more →A failed coating almost always has to come off, not get covered by another layer, because whatever caused the first failure — no prep, moisture, hot tire pickup — is still there underneath. Diagnosing why it failed matters as much as removing it.
Learn more →Three steps, starting with what condition the concrete is actually in, not what color flake you want.
Garage, basement or shop — new coating or an existing one that's failing. Tell us the space and roughly the square footage.
Someone who inspects the slab, tests for moisture where it matters, and tells you what prep the floor actually needs.
The concrete gets opened up mechanically, cracks and pitting get repaired first, and the system goes on a surface built to hold it.
A Utah garage floor deals with more than most people give it credit for — a car pulling in with tires heated from a summer freeway drive, then the same floor sitting through a winter where it's tracked with salt, sand and melting snow. Hot tire pickup is what lifts a cheap or under-prepared coating right off the slab: the tire's heat softens the coating just enough that the rubber grabs it and pulls it up when the car moves, and it's the single most common failure point in a garage.
It's also why the coating a floor can hold depends so much on how it was applied rather than which product went on. A properly ground and prepped surface with a coating suited to the load gives hot tire pickup nothing to grab onto. A quick roll-on over an acid-etched slab gives it plenty. The homeowners who call us with a peeling floor are almost always describing a prep problem that happened to show up as a coating problem.
Epoxy 801 covers resinous floor coatings: garage, basement and shop floors, polyaspartic and epoxy systems, decorative flake and metallic finishes, concrete grinding and surface prep, and repair or recoating of failed coatings. We don't pour or replace concrete and flatwork — that's a concrete contractor's job, and if a slab needs to be poured before it can be coated, you'll be pointed to that trade rather than having someone try to coat a slab that isn't ready for it.
We also don't do garage doors, interior flooring like carpet, LVP or hardwood, or tile — those are separate specialties with their own sites on the same phone system. If what you actually need is a new slab, a new door, or a different flooring material entirely, that's a quick redirect rather than the wrong crew showing up with the wrong material.
Salt Lake, Utah, Davis and Weber counties.
You can, and it's the most common reason people end up calling us — a DIY kit applied after an acid etch instead of a mechanical grind usually starts peeling at the tire tracks within a season or two. The kit itself isn't necessarily the problem; skipping proper mechanical prep is. If you want a coating that actually lasts, the prep step is not optional.
It's when a coating lifts off the floor where a vehicle's tires sit, caused by heat from the tires softening the coating enough that the rubber grabs and peels it as the car moves. It's the most common failure point on a garage floor and it exposes weak bonding specifically, which is why properly prepped, vehicle-rated systems hold up and under-prepped ones don't.
If the slab doesn't have a known vapor barrier underneath it, yes — moisture can migrate up through concrete continuously even when the surface feels completely dry, and it will delaminate a coating from underneath regardless of how well the top was applied. A moisture test tells a contractor whether a standard system is fine or whether a moisture-mitigating approach is needed first.
It depends on the floor. Polyaspartic cures fast enough for a one-day install and handles UV and temperature swings better, which matters for a floor that sees direct sun or needs to be back in use quickly. Epoxy is thicker and generally less expensive, and works well for a floor that can be shaded and out of service a bit longer. Neither is the automatically correct choice — the floor and how it's used should decide.
No. Epoxy 801 covers floor coatings only — we don't pour or replace concrete and flatwork, we don't work on garage doors, and we don't do carpet, LVP, hardwood or tile. Those are separate specialties with their own sites on the same phone system, and we'll point you there if that's what your project actually needs.
Describe the space and its condition, and we'll match you with a contractor who grinds and tests before coating.
Get a Floor Contractor OutA short description is enough — we'll follow up to confirm details and get someone out to look at the slab.