LESLIE: David calling in from Long Island has a question about his garage. What can we do for you today?
DAVID: I have basically a 50-year-old house with a never-painted concrete garage floor.
TOM: OK.
DAVID: The floor is kind of sandy and dusty; it’s a little grainy on top, cracking. So, the recommendation from the paint company was to clean it, then – with a special, emulsifying cleaner – then acid-etch it, which I’ve actually started doing; and then wait til I get a low moisture level and then paint it. I’ve got Garage Guard to do that. So I just wanted to see if that’s the plan; from your point of view.
TOM: Well, the cleaning yes; the acid-etching – it’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone recommend that. What do they hope to achieve with that?
DAVID: What they claim is it’ll remove any latent (ph) sanding, open up the pores of the concrete and optimize the concrete’s ability for the Garage Guard to adhere to it.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) To adhere.
TOM: So is this the manufacturer that’s telling you to do this?
DAVID: Yes.
TOM: OK. Well, if the manufacturer is telling you to do it, then I think you’re OK. My concern would be that whatever latent (ph) acid-etching material that was left behind might react negatively with the epoxy paint, which is what this Garage Guard is. But if they’re recommending that be the procedure, then I would have no reason to doubt that.
You know, it’s obviously very, very important – and you’ve mentioned it already – that the floor be as dry as possible. And you know, doing the cleaning, of course, saturates it really good; so you have to let it really dry out there, really dehumidify. You may even want to put a dehumidifier in the garage while it’s drying so you get as much of that moisture out of it as possible because, you know, concrete holds a lot of water and if it’s soaked when you put that down, it’s going to cause the paint to delaminate and flake up. So, getting it dry is key.
The other thing I would tell you is that it’s an air-cure epoxy and no matter what they tell you in terms of drying time, you probably want to double it and try to stay out of there because it really takes a while for that stuff to really cure.
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