Epoxy Flooring in St. Louis, MO

Epoxy flooring in St. Louis starts from the concrete the city already has, and most of it is old. Point2Homes' summary of ACS data shows 58.4% of city housing units dating from 1939 or before, with 1938 as the median year built. Garages behind those houses, basements under them and the warehouse floors that became lofts all carry decades of oil, paint and patching. We plan every epoxy floor coating around that history instead of pretending the slab is new.

What an older slab asks for

Concrete poured before the Second World War was rarely placed over a vapor barrier. Moisture can rise through it from below, and a coating that traps that moisture will lift. So the first visit always includes a moisture test. After that we look for:

• Old sealers and paint that must be ground off, not covered.
• Spalled or pitted areas that need filling before any primer.
• Settled sections where a crack has opened and shifted.
• Floor drains in alley garages that set the slope we have to respect.

Humidity is the other half of the job

St. Louis averages 69.7% relative humidity across the year, and the July dew point averages 66.6 F, per climate data on Wikipedia. Warm, wet air settling on a cool basement or garage floor can leave a film of condensation. Coatings applied over that film do not bond well. On muggy days we watch the gap between surface temperature and dew point and reschedule rather than force a pour.

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Freeze, snow and road salt

The January mean low is 23.8 F and the city averages 16.6 inches of snow a year. Cars bring slush and de-icing salt into the garage all winter. A broadcast flake floor with a polyaspartic topcoat holds up to that salt and is easy to squeegee out. A thin roll-on paint, by contrast, tends to peel where tires sit.

Lofts, shops and the karst underneath

The Washington Avenue loft district grew out of factory and warehouse buildings converted starting in the late 1990s. Those floors are often thick and sound but stained and uneven. A ground and polished base with a clear or metallic epoxy can turn them into a finished surface. Parts of the city south of downtown also sit on karst, with sinkholes and caves, so we look closely at cracks there before we promise a smooth result.

Choosing among epoxy flooring companies

When you talk with epoxy flooring contractors in the city, ask each one how they will test for moisture, how deep they will grind, and what they will do about the cracks you already see. Those answers say more about how a floor will age than the color chart does. We put ours in writing.