Using color chips to complement epoxy flooring
Once the color density and chip size have been established, it is best to mix up those proportions and size them before starting the flooring project. Now is a good time to check the floor for any imperfections. Because the floor is now one color after its primer coat, many more imperfections are often found. Using grout to bridge small cracks in pits followed by a quick once over with sanding screen and rotary scrubber is advisable. There will be some epoxy dust, grout particles, and other debris generated by screening. Note that you don’t have to wait for your grout to fully dry before doing the screening. Durall-supplied grout is designed to allow epoxy to penetrate and bond successfully, even when slightly damp. Once screening is complete, sweeping with a kitchen broom and dustpan is advisable. Push brooms often leave too much debris, while a kitchen broom is more apt to move dust and particles off the floor. Kitchen brooms not only sweep but also tend to blow dust off the floor with their sweeping motion.
Now you can start coating the floor. The key, of course, is to disperse the color chips into the wet finish evenly before the finish sets up. The goal is for all those color chips to be glued into place on the floor before curing. A good technique for achieving this is the roll from one side of the room to the other an area of about five or 6 feet deep. Then walk along the wet edge of that coated area and throw three finger pinches of your chip mix high into the air. If you can hit a ceiling light fixture or back wall with that pinch of color chips, it will burst into an even cloud and settle surprisingly uniformly on the wet floor below. Once you’ve completed throwing chips over the width of the floor, walking back along the trail and throwing two finger pinches out for less dense areas will complete the process. Note that as you get towards the wet edge density does not have to be uniform, as there will be some overlap on your next pass. Often some chips fall on non-coated floor areas. Normally, if rolled over with wet epoxy paint, those small chips disappear into the color and do not pose a problem.
A clear coat over your distributed chip areas will bind them in place more perfectly and durably. But normally, simply broadcasting chips to the topcoat will hold up quite well, although some expectation of chip size deterioration over the years along with density is to be expected when the chips are exposed to the surface. This is really a cost issue, deciding whether a third coat to bind them is more cost-efficient than to recoat a few years down the road.
For a detailed quote of materials needed to apply epoxy paint to your floor, please visit our free cost analysis page at http://concrete-floor-coatings.com/costanalysis/
For more information, contact Chris Biesanz at chris@durallmfg.com or phone 1-800-466-8910 or 952-888-1488 (24/7).
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