Every year, our designers and technicians at BadAss Garage Floors answer many questions from curious business owners and residents about the reusability of their deck, garage, and patio surfaces. Many call us to study how they can resurface a concrete floor, which will help them put their homes and commercial properties on the market for a better price. Some are trying to reduce their home improvement and remodeling expenses, and our technicians are more than happy to help.
BadAss Garage Floors is proud to be a reliable source of information for property owners who want every square foot of their homes, offices, and restaurants to look well-maintained and beautiful. Our technicians have decades of combined experience refreshing every type of concrete surface.
In this explainer, we will outline whether your floors can accommodate a concrete resurfacer and the preparations to complete before buying a concrete overlay from the home improvement store.
What Is the Average Lifespan of a Concrete Driveway or Garage?
Product engineers and technicians know three things about concrete mixes that will never change, no matter how advanced manufacturing procedures become:
- It will always be the most popular aggregate-based construction product for all types of buildings
- It will always be cheap to make
- It will deteriorate over time, even if you install the highest-quality coatings
At BadAss Garage Floors, most of our house calls are for spalling, stain, and blemish removal jobs, so we recommend epoxy and polyaspartic coatings to extend the life of concrete surfaces. However, no matter how well you protect them, concrete floors will develop puddles, cracks, and dents over time, especially with heavy vehicle and foot traffic and exposure to adverse weather.
Research from the Portland Cement Association reveals that while concrete can last for more than a century, as seen in ancient Roman and Greek structures still erect today, its average service life is 30 years before chipping and cracking. An epoxy base coat and polyaspartic top layer will extend this durability by another 30 years. However, as ambient temperatures get more extreme, vehicles become heavier, and more seismic activity occurs under your feet, your concrete garage, driveway, and sidewalk will eventually require resurfacing or refinishing.
Can You Resurface a Concrete Surface That Is Decades Old?
Many historical buildings in Atlanta predate World War II, and their interior and exterior floors look just as picturesque as they did in the 1940s. Engineers and architects preserve their beauty by resurfacing and protecting concrete surfaces with polyurethane-based or resinous substances and mold killers. You can resurface a concrete floor no matter its age, which will help improve the overall curb appeal and real estate value of any house or business structure you own.
Considerations Before Using a Concrete Resurfacer
Most people do not require technical training to apply a concrete resurfacer to repair their dented floors. Resurfacing is a more cost-efficient and accessible solution than concrete slab reinstallation, but it has a few caveats.
When you resurface a concrete floor, it will require two to three days of curing time before you can park a vehicle on top of it. Many homeowners use resurfacing as an opportunity to change the aesthetics of their homes by stamping, coloring, or staining their floors to add depth and texture. These visual additions require professional expertise.
After curing, a concrete resurfacer will gain a compressive strength of at least 4,000 psi, equivalent to a brand-new concrete slab. Technicians can add polymers and other enhancers to improve the tensile strength of resurfacers by at least 400 psi and decrease their likelihood of cracking and shrinkage.
The Value of Resurfacing
When customers call us to resurface a concrete floor, they want to save money by bypassing the concrete removal and reinstallation process, which can require thousands of dollars for a single room. Instead of using jackhammers, excavators, and grinders to remove your concrete floors and put in new ones, we will merely apply a thin coat of polymer-modified pre-blended mortar on top of your cracked, spalled, or uneven concrete floor. Resurfacing is less time-consuming, labor-intensive, and financially risky.
The average cost to resurface a concrete floor is between $0.25 to $1.50 per square foot—a far cry from the $4 to $6 per square foot you would need to install a new floor.
Resurface a Concrete Floor Today
Discover a problem-free way to resurface a concrete floor by calling our licensed technicians at BadAss Garage Floors at (678) 713-4348. We will give you a free consultation and a no-obligation quote for all resurfacing jobs.
