Epoxy Flooring in Youngstown, OH

Epoxy flooring in Youngstown is our everyday work, and no two neighborhoods hand us the same slab. The city has close to 28,700 housing units spread over about 34 square miles, and Wikipedia lists more than forty named neighborhoods across the North, South, East and West Sides. A bungalow basement in Wick Park, a detached garage in Cornersburg and a corner storefront downtown all need a different plan. We start every job by walking the floor with you and writing down what the concrete is telling us.

Why so many floors here are old

Census survey data summarized by Point2Homes counts about 11,555 Youngstown homes built in 1939 or earlier. Only about 9.6% of the city's housing went up in 1980 or later. That is a lot of concrete that was poured before modern vapor barriers and before anyone expected a basement to be living space. Many of those floors have been painted, patched, tiled over or glued down at some point. Each layer has to come off before a new coating will hold.

The floors we get called about

• Basements in older houses: painted floors, old floor drains and patches where a furnace or tank once sat. We grind, repair and test for moisture.
• Detached garages: cracked aprons, settled slabs and salt damage at the door. Repair comes first, then a flake floor.
• Attached garages: usually younger concrete that needs a full grind and a topcoat that stands up to brine.
• Small garages on compact lots: a quick-cure coating keeps the car out for less time.
• Downtown and Smoky Hollow spaces: storefronts and small offices where a commercial-grade system has to handle foot traffic and rolling carts.

Cold snaps and freeze-thaw

Wikipedia records an all-time low of 22 degrees below zero in Youngstown on January 19, 1994, and a single month of 53.1 inches of snow in December 2010. Swings like that are hard on concrete. Water gets into cracks and pores, freezes, expands and breaks the surface a little more each cycle. On a garage floor that shows up as flaking near the door and pop-outs where the tires park. We cut out loose material, fill the damage with a repair compound that cures hard, and then seal the whole floor so less water gets in next winter.

Rentals and investment houses

About 43.8% of occupied Youngstown homes are rented, by the same census survey figures. Landlords and investors who are fixing up houses ask us for basement floors that are easy to clean between tenants and do not need repainting every turnover. A solid-color epoxy with a light anti-slip texture works well for laundry areas and storage basements. If the basement is being finished as living space, we can install a flake or metallic finish instead. Either way, we test the slab for moisture first and tell you what the reading means for the job.

Shops, warehouses and work bays

Youngstown still runs on work done on concrete. Wikipedia names Vallourec Star and Trivium Packaging as the largest industrial employers inside the city, and smaller fabrication shops, auto bays and storage buildings fill in around them. For those floors we use thicker 100% solids epoxy, chemical-resistant topcoats and marked safety lanes when you need them. We can also phase the job by section so part of the building stays open.

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What changes once the floor is sealed

Bare concrete is porous. It drinks up brine, oil and the musty smell that settles into basements. Once a coating seals the surface, the floor behaves differently day to day:

• Snowmelt sits on top and can be pushed out the door with a squeegee.
• Oil and antifreeze drips wipe up instead of staining.
• Concrete dust stops rising off the floor and settling on stored boxes.
• A light-colored floor reflects more light, which helps in dim basements and single-bulb garages.

How a city job runs

Most Youngstown garages and basements take one to three days, depending on the repair work and the system. Day one is usually grinding, crack filling and the base coat. Flake and topcoat follow once the base is ready. We keep dust down with vacuum-attached grinders, protect walls and doors with plastic, and haul away our waste. Before we leave, we walk the floor with you and go over cure times and winter care.

Older floors we tell you about up front

Some slabs in a city this old are past saving with a coating. Signs include pieces of concrete that rock underfoot, wide cracks with one side higher than the other, and floors that slope toward the house. If we see those, we say so at the estimate. Coating a broken slab only hides the problem for a season.

Which service fits which floor

• Concrete crack and floor repair comes first on most city jobs, because so many slabs here are decades old.
• Basement floor epoxy suits dry basements used for laundry, storage, gyms or family rooms.
• Epoxy flake floors are the go-to for garages that see salt and slush all winter.
• Polyaspartic floor coating fits when the garage is your only entry and you need it back fast.
• Commercial and industrial floor epoxy handles shops, warehouses and retail floors.