H&C Shield-Crete or SW Tile-Clad or Other? HELP PLEASE!

Hi,

I am new to the forum and to garage epoxy. I appreciate any advice that you can give. Here is my situation: I am working with my painter to cover my 2 car garage. We only plan to be in the house less than 5 years so I only want to spend about $1k on the garage flooring. There is an epoxy on the floor now that has to come up/be prepped.

My painter said that he would etch, scrape, and power-wash the garage for prep. He then recommended H&C Shield-Crete with a polyurethane top-coat. This combo will be about $1k but he said I could also go with a 100% solids for about $300.00 more. I have read that Shield-Crete isn't that durable and many people don't like it. My question is do you think that this combo would be OK or should I go with SW Tile-Clad etc? Are they the same TYPE of epoxy (water-based)? Also, the Shield-Crete only comes in 5 colors and I don't particularly like them. I know that there are over 50 colors with Tile-Clad. Any comments, opinions, or advice welcome. Thanks in advance!

I'm sure Alpha-Garage (Fred) will be checking in, but, you should be able to use a 100% solids epoxy system from Wolverine for a two-car garage and hit your budget (depending on whether or not you intend to do any of the prep or application work yourself)

Since there is already an epoxy coating on the floor, it is a waste of time & money to powerwash/acid etch it. I think you need to get the old coating up -- and to do so you'll need to either have it ground or shot blasted. Then, it doesn't need the acid etch. Just the epoxy.

Doesn't make a lot of sense to acid etch then scrape. The acid will have very little effect on the existing coating, I'd scrape then etch.

But more importantly, is he planning on removing all the coating? That really is the way you should go.

I can't keep up on all the coatings out there, but if you're hearing from actual users that a product isn't that durable - is it even worth considering?

A 100% solids epoxy is not like a water based epoxy, different animals.

Tile Clad and Shield Crete are certainly much different epoxies. Tile Clad is a Polyamide epoxy but take note that it is not made for hot tire pickup

Shield Crete is a waterbased garage floor coating which will have much less abrasion resistance than a urethane or polyamide.

Tile Clad would probably work for a garage floor but maybe you should consider Armorseal 1000 which is made from the same resin as Tileclad but made for vehicular traffic.

I agree with Alpha that acid etching will have no effect on an existing coating. If you are going to have this proffesionally done I suggest grinding or blasting this coating down to bare concrete.

If you want to go 100% solids, an option to research would be Armorseal 33 100% solids primer followed by Armorseal 650 100% solids topcoat.

I was not impressed with the Shield-Crete. Seemed to be more of a paint than epoxy. Wasn't happy with the finished product and didn't hold up well. I was very complete with my prep work. Just covered it all with Racedeck.