What floor to choose for a car repair shop?
What floor to choose for a car repair shop?
Often, when installing new services for cars or other vehicles, owners consider what flooring would be most appropriate and practical. As stationary service equipment, such as wheel balancing equipment, tire fitting machines, hoists, or the like, will be attached to the floor, tools or parts will fall on such floor coverings, and grease may spill. Therefore, the choice of the right floor covering is really one of the most important issues when starting to install the premises, as all this must meet ergonomic or environmental requirements and practical solutions.
Of course, it is also important to pay attention to whether the premises are being rebuilt or rented. Because the owner of the leased premises may not even want you to do some construction work on his own premises. So, if the premises are rented - first of all, talk about your wishes and plans with the owner of the premises.
It should be remembered that it will depend on the floor covering of the car service whether it will be a pleasure to work indoors, or whether customers will feel pleasant, do not forget - it will become your workplace! Therefore, the car floor floor should be resistant to moisture and so that water does not penetrate it.
The variety of floor coverings is the widest, but you need to look at what will be practical. The following types of floor coverings are most often used in car repair shops: ceramic or stone tiles, epoxy paints, mineral sprinkles, "adhesive + floor paint", the simplest concrete.
If the base of the car service floor is already made of poor quality, even the most expensive and high-quality floor covering will not be able to maintain its positive advantages. The surface of such a floor covering is porous, absorbs grease and stains remain over time. So a simple pour of concrete would be the cheapest alternative to choose a floor covering, but concrete is not resistant to temperature fluctuations, humidity or mechanical shocks.
For the most part, whether you use professional services to install the floor or do it yourself, you will still need to pour the concrete floor. Later, you will form the next layer on this layer - it can be a special floor paint, epoxy coating, ceramic tiles or something else. So concrete, as it is your own foundation in a car repair shop, its layer must be sufficient to support not only the weight of the vehicles, but that it can still be anchored to it and anchors or other equipment.
One of the most common options is ceramic tiles, of course thicker than those used in the home. This is one of the most practical options for a car repair shop, but they are only durable if they are laid on a completely correctly leveled surface and the concrete layer is such that the frost does not penetrate. It is often said that tiles in a garage are impractical because cracks appear immediately when the tool falls. To avoid this, it is important that no air gaps are left when tiling the car service floor, as it is only by negligent work that cracks from simple shocks are possible.
If you have already chosen to tile the car service floor, keep in mind that glazed tiles are very slippery, especially when the floor is wet. So choose tiles with a slightly rough surface or some scratches, special grooves in the tile.
The most popular and high quality would be to protect the car service floor with epoxy paint. These paints trap grease or other chemicals and protect them from contamination. Because concrete service floors wear easily when walking, the epoxy coating will protect them not only from fading, but also from the formation of cracks and fissures. Epoxy painting is an inexpensive and effortless way to protect a car service floor. The paint is also good in that it can brighten and, at the same time, visually enlarge the premises, and adding sand to them will improve adhesion and make the floor less slippery.
Epoxy coatings have good mechanical properties, abrasion resistance, good chemical resistance, give the floor an aesthetic appearance, can be of various shades. Before coating this type of coating, sandblast or roughen the surface, the concrete is well cleaned, and defects are repaired. Perhaps the most important advantages of epoxy coatings are that they are quick and cheap to work with, and the quality and aesthetic appearance of these materials are inferior to expensive ceramic or stoneware tiles.
Mineral and waterproofing sprinklers - this technology is used only when the floor is newly concreted. For example, with epoxy paint can be perfectly used both for the new installation of a car service floor and for the renovation of an existing surface. Mineral sprinklers are recommended for use in frequent humid environments, spills of grease or other petroleum products.
Mineral floor sprinklers are made on the basis of cement with special additives