Preserving a Garage Floor

Most garage floors are concrete that cracks and chips from repeated heavy use. The concrete is porous and will allow moisture and chemicals to penetrate it. Spills stain the floor and are hard to wipe up because of the rough surface of the concrete. If you do not have any heat in the garage, repeated freezing and thawing in cold climates will cause the floor to crack In order to preserve the floor, most people use a clear concrete sealer that keeps water and other liquids from penetrating into the concrete. These are easy to apply but you do need to read the instructions about any care you need to take about the process and how to dispose of the containers when you finish.

You don’t need to have any special skills to apply a sealer to the garage floor. You can use the same materials you use to paint a room in your house – a paint roller for the main part of the floor and a paintbrush for around the edges. If you have already finished the walls and want to use a paint sprayer, you will have to cover the walls with plastic or sheeting. Spraying on the paint is very easy to do if you don’t have the inside of the garage finished. Just make sure you have plenty of ventilation for whichever application method you choose.

Before you start the sealing process, clean the floor of all dirt and debris. If there are any stains on the floor, try to get off as much of the stain as possible, using a scrub brush and a concrete cleaning solution. Then you need to smooth out the rough or uneven spots in the floor with a scraping tool that has steel edges. After you have done this you need to clean away all the small pieces of concrete in the cracks because this could interfere with the sealant sticking to the floor. Try patching any cracks with cement and a trowel to smooth it into place. Then you are ready to start applying the sealer to the floor.