Hi all,
For those of you fortunate enough to own a garage - how have you finished the flooring?
I've recently purchased a property with a garage that has bare concrete (not 100% smooth) that has carpet bits/scraps placed over it as the previous owners had not used it to house their car, but more storage. I'm looking at options and some are frighteningly expensive.
Some go for paint? But I'd really hate for the tyres to squeak when turned!
The driveway is pebble/shingle so I'm guessing the stones will also be dragged into the garage over time which isn't ideal.
This isn't a "post a picture of your garage" thread but I suppose it would help...
cheers!
There's special 'two pack' flooring paint you can use. The first layer is paint and the second is a hardener. This stuff is fairly toxic so make sure you leave the door open. Re the squeak the only way to eliminate that would be to put down something with a course top coat which would be expensive.
I've used the two pack garage floor paint but over time the top coat does lift where the tyres rest. If I was doing it again I would go with garage floor tiles or the rolls of flooring that you can buy in places like Costco.
Believe it or not, my garage floor is carpeted! I had an old bedroom carpet which I was going to take to the tip but my towcar was out of use. As I had nowhere else to store the carpet, I just unrolled it on the garage floor. It's been there ever since. It is great for doing all the bits and bobs of maintenance on the motor and I have an old vacuum cleaner, which I use when it gets grubby (which is surprisingly infrequently!). Cost £0.00!
Mike
Our floor has carpet tiles on it and it's brilliant, no dust from concrete and just hoover it every week.
I also carpeted my garage with industrial type carpet tiles (stolen from my mother's shop when they changed the flooring).
However, someone suggested to me recently that if your garage is carpeted it can invalidate your house insurance so they will be coming out in the next few weeks... worth thinking about.
Grey garage floor paint - seals the concrete and oil, etc comes off easily when I can be bothered to clean it.
Another vote for proper floor paint.
Another carpet-in-the-garage fan here.
In my previous house we had a triple garage built and I had the concrete floor painted. Nothing particularly wrong with it, but I found I was using off-cuts of carpet around it to stand/kneel on and for the bikes to park on. Then by pure chance, I arrived at a friends house when they were having their (very large) lounge re-carpeted and the carpet-layers were carrying out the old one. Having found out they were taking it to the tip (and would be having to pay to deposit it there) a few notes changed hands and it was diverted to my garage.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
First brush any loose dust away.
Then seal using PVA diluted with water (can't remember proportions I think it was something like 25% PVA).
Then a non-slip floor paint (I got it from Screwfix). Worth shopping around because it's quite expensive, and I found it needed more paint than the suggested coverage).
Looks good when done, and with the matt, non slip finish your tyres will not squeal.
I really don't see what's wrong with concrete? I've never considered doing anything to my garages. After all, I only use it for the car and storage, I don't live in it. Maybe it's just me being a tight-a$$ Scotsman.
I sealed and painted a garage floor once. It was the worst thing I ever did.
Rather than the odd spill of water or oil just soaking in they just sit on the surface. I the winter the floor can be wet and slippery for days at a time. (God help you if you put the car away wet!)
My garage now has cushion workmats in the standing areas and 2 "bays" where the cars sit which ate just plain concrete. I got the workmats from Machine Mart if I remember right. They are made to interlock together.
It still needs a good sweep out after every month or DIY job that's done.
IF you can afford the time & loss of space it entails, paint, and take the time it requires to be done properly.
1) Seal the substrate, don't mess trying to guess on what proportions of PVA you have to mix, you'll get it wrong one way or another, buy some concrete sealer. You brush first, clean anything heavy (oil etc), then just paint this stuff on. About £12 for 2.5l from B&Q IIRC, which is enough to voer a single garage floor, every hardware store happens to have their own of a costly branded version. To be honest if you do this & keep the carpet scraps, it will stop dust rising, keeps oil etc on top (if ever a risk) and is better than nothing.
2) Buy proper paint, in the right amount you'll need, mixing cans if necessary (to ensure there it no join/ colour difference).
The problem is the 2-pack sealer can take up to a month to dry properly if you have put it on thick, the top coat touch dries in hours, so plenty of people will drive on to it next day, then whinge when they pull out and there are tyre tracks in it- it hasn't dried. The longer you leave it without weight on the better. The downside being that means getting everything out, or doing it "half half" and risking a join/ discolouration between cans/ drying times.
I painted it with decent floor paint - not the 2-pack stuff but it still did a good job. Until I did that there would continually be a layer of dust on anything I kept in the garage. The when my brother was throwing some carpet out I put that down and it's worked a treat. I do a lot of jobs on my motorbike in the garage so having carpet to kneel on and soak up the odd oil leak works well.
I went for this in the end http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rolson-Tools.../dp/B001AXWTTG
nice and soft and perfect if you actually have to spend a bit of time doing DIY in the garage.
+1Originally Posted by GraniteQuarry
I put some down when I was expecting some decent Stuttgart metal in there.
Now those plans have disappeared and we simply have two workhorses (there is no chance of anything that needs pampering) but it still looks the part.
I'd recommend it - it's thick enough to smooth out less than perfect surfaces (ours is concrete).
Same here - Previously i'd painted the floor but it had slowly lifted over the years plus it always felt a bit dirty. The above only took a weekend to fit (double garage) and was really easy to do. Would recommend. So easy to keep clean now....
Interesting - it see its pitched as 'soft' - is it still okay to drive/park a car over it? Or do you think it would 'sag'?
Also thinking whether its viable to cover the whole floor apart from two 'tracks' where the car tyres would go. I suppose this would depend on how thick these are.
Did you have any sort of underlay or did you place these directly on concrete? My concrete isn't quite flat or smooth...
Some pics of yours would be great
Last edited by cman; 15th March 2013 at 17:56.
Converted my garage to a sort of office/workroom 10 years ago. After laying down polythene sheeting as a damp course, I overlaid insulating underlay tiles (about 10mm thick) followed by ordinary carpet tiles. All very snug and no oil stains coming through from the concrete underneath. The floor was not very even to start with but the tiling and underlay disguised all the bumps.
G-floor!
Get it from costco in a roll, no messing with paint or carpet(which is a no no for cars, holds moisture then in turn will rust your car from underneath) will hide your oil stains and uneven floor etc. last i saw it was about £120 for a single garage size.
http://www.bltllc.com/tread_pattern.htm
Used this during major garage renovation 6 months ago. Very glad I did. Excellent.
http://www.kingfisheruk.com/shop_epoxy_products
Google jhs flexi tiles, these are interlocking tiles .we fitted these in a very busy mot station and they worked a treat.plenty options on colours and you can uplift them and take them away if you move. I think these tiles are also used in the formula one garages as they can laid uplifted and relaid as many time as they want ,handy when you are moving all over the world every 2 weeks.
I had mine sealed and then painted. Much easier an d you don't lose screws etc when dropped so easily.
It's just a matter of time...
First I've ever heard of this. Why would carpet in the garage invalidate your house insurance?
I've also never heard of it. I guess oil soaked carpet burns quite well though, and in an integral garage that might also house the central heating boiler, I can see some cause for concern.
Stick with concrete and put the money towards a watch.
Concrete is easy, painless and it doesn't matter if you get the odd spill. It'll just need a sweep now and again to keep the dust levels low.
I'm not sure why there is an aversion to painted concrete. It's not like you even paint it so much as squeegee it on. Easy peasy squeaky tyres pleasy.
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
- Bender Bending Rodríguez
+1, sounds like you've run out of jobs to do...
This was the reasoning I was given.
My gf works in the car industry and after a discussion about carpeted garages one of the editors of a leading classic car mag told her to check our house insurance because it often invalidates house insurance to have a carpeted garage because of fire hazards.
I've not checked my own policy although it does raise some questions and I suggest it is worth checking your own policies as the insurance guys do everything they can to not pay out on a claim.
This site has a good range too, either acrylic or epoxy: www.zenrite.co.uk/products/paints-1/garage-floor-paint.html
same here as some above
etched it, painted it .... over time the paint lifted where the tyres rested
It did keep the dust down and was well worth doing for that
+1
I havent read all the replies in this thread yet, but I do exactly this, and it's been like this for some 25 years with no problems!
The only issue is when I put the car in full of snow - it melts onto the carpet and for 2-3 days it smells a bit damp. Otherwise, it's great.
my neighbour tiled his with ceramic tiles, but he was, (he is dead now), a bit of a "nutter"
It was bigger than a triple garage, i.e. you could get 4 cars into it
I noticed this last time I was in Costco, how durable is it?
I used these
Very easy to fit and probably the most cost effective way to tile a garage floor. The cheapest supplier I found was on ebay http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Interlocki...item1c32d4e463
As per the other replies, the 2-stage paint treatment is pretty easy and cheap. Our house is relatively new, and the garage had bare concrete - it was a bugger for creating a lot of dust. It may have settled down with time, but it's much better now it's painted. I too have found that it can be brought up by tyres, but it's easy just to patch it up.
I do like the idea of the proper flooring though!
Topps tiles have some 600mm square polished porcelain tiles almost permanently on offer. Couple that to an electric underfloor heating mat (pretty economical to run) and you've got the perfect garage floor.
The new kitchen can wait!!
Use a concrete sealer, then apply garage floor paint. It isn`t perfect, and it can stick to the tyres if a car is parked for a few months in one spot, but it's relatively cheap and it can be wiped clean. The interlocking tiles are OK till you spill oil on them and it gets into the joints.....you'll never get rid of it.
I used light grey paint as it's a bit lighter than the traditional dark red; this helps a little when working under a car.
Paul
We lived in a house in Belgium when I was young where the garage was build into the house, nice teracotta tiles, painted brick walls and radiators! Door straight into the utility room, and wide enough for two cars with room to open the doors. Now that was civilised.
-- Tim
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