Epoxy Flooring in Sioux Falls, SD

Epoxy flooring in Sioux Falls usually starts in the garage. More people here search for garage floor coating than for epoxy flooring itself, and that tracks with what we see on estimates: most calls are about a garage slab that is pitted, stained or dusty after a few winters. A coated floor seals that concrete, sheds meltwater and cleans up with a squeegee and a hose.

Why Sioux Falls garages wear out

Wikipedia's climate figures for Sioux Falls show about 45.3 inches of snow a year, a January daily average of 17.9°F and a record low of -42°F. The city plans for 40 to 50 inches in a typical year, and KELOLAND reported in October 2023 that crews spread about 12,000 tons of salt the season before. That salt comes home in your wheel wells. It melts off in the garage, pools under the tires and soaks into bare concrete.

A 2008 literature review that the Michigan Tech Transportation Institute prepared for the South Dakota Department of Transportation explains what happens next. Sodium chloride causes severe scaling when concrete freezes and thaws, and calcium and magnesium chloride can attack the cement paste chemically. In a garage, the damage shows up first near the door and under the wheels: flaking, pitting and white crust where puddles dried.

Garage floor coating: what the job includes

• Moving everything off the floor, or working around what you cannot move
• A moisture test and a close look at cracks, scaling, stains and old paint
• Diamond grinding the whole slab, edges included, then vacuuming the dust
• Filling cracks, chipped control joints and pitted spots
• A base coat, a flake broadcast or solid color, and a clear topcoat
• Written care steps for the salt season

Newer homes, newer slabs

Sioux Falls is a young city by housing age. American Community Survey figures for 2019 to 2023, summarized by Point2Homes, put the median year built at 1993. About 37% of homes went up between 2000 and 2019, and only 8.7% date from 1939 or earlier. Many garages here are attached two- and three-stall slabs that are flat and structurally sound. They still need grinding. New concrete often has a smooth troweled surface or a cure-and-seal product on it, and a coating will not hold to either without mechanical prep.

The older neighborhoods near downtown are different. Detached garages there can have thin slabs, settled sections, decades of oil, and paint that was rolled on years ago. Those floors take more prep, and we price that work line by line.

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Basements in a high-radon, humid-summer area

Summers here are humid. Wikipedia lists average relative humidity near 65% in June and July and about 68% in August. The EPA recommends keeping indoor humidity below 60% and notes that condensation forms when warm, humid air meets a cold surface, which is how a basement slab ends up damp in July. We test for moisture before we coat a basement and use a moisture-tolerant primer or tell you to fix a water problem first.

South Dakota's Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources places the eastern part of the state, including Sioux Falls, in EPA radon Zone 1, the highest potential. A coating is not radon mitigation. If you plan to finish a basement, test first.

Choosing a coating

• Garage floor coating with flake: our most common job. Vinyl chips broadcast into the base coat hide salt residue and add grip.
• Polyaspartic systems: fast curing, UV stable, and workable at lower temperatures than standard epoxy.
• Basement floor epoxy: a sealed, washable floor for family rooms, gyms and storage.
• Metallic epoxy: a poured, swirled finish for basements, bars and finished spaces.
• Shop and commercial floors: thicker 100% solids systems for heavy loads, vehicles and chemicals.

Cold-weather installs

Resin coatings need a warm enough slab to cure. In winter we check the slab temperature, may heat the space, and often recommend polyaspartic topcoats, which HomeGuide lists as having a wider application range than epoxy. If it is too cold for the product, we reschedule rather than put down a floor that will not cure properly.

Sioux Falls is home base. We also coat floors in the suburbs that have grown up around it: Brandon, Harrisburg, Tea, Hartford, Crooks and Renner. Farther out we work in Dell Rapids, Baltic, Garretson, Colton, Humboldt, Valley Springs, Lennox, Worthing, Canton, Chancellor, Beresford and Montrose, and across the state lines in Luverne, Minnesota and Larchwood and Inwood, Iowa. The work changes with the place. Fast-growing suburbs like Harrisburg and Tea are full of newer attached garages, while the older river towns and county seats have more detached garages, older basements and farm shops. Each town page covers what we know about homes and floors there.