Preparation
Sealers, paint, glue and mastic, off the slab and gone
Not everything on an old floor is epoxy. Cure and seal from the day it was poured, deck paint somebody rolled on in the nineties, black mastic under lifted tile, carpet glue, urethane, thinset ridges. Each behaves differently under a machine, and a floor usually has several of them at once.
Pour this floor
Tell us the space and rough size. Or call (941) 504-9132.
Detail
Identify it first, because the material dictates the method
Acrylic cure and seal is thin and often invisible until water beads on it. Deck paint and porch enamel sit on top and flake at the edges. Carpet adhesive is yellow and rubbery and smears. Black cutback mastic under old vinyl tile is tar-based and turns to grease under any heat at all. Urethane and elastomeric membranes are flexible and stretch instead of fracturing.
We test in a corner before quoting. A few passes tells us how the material comes off, which tooling it wants, and whether one operation is going to do it or three.
One more thing worth flagging honestly: black mastic in a building of a certain age can contain asbestos. We do not disturb suspect material and we do not guess. If the age and the look raise the question, it gets tested and, if positive, it goes to a licensed abatement contractor before we come anywhere near it.
Soft, gummy and stretchy is harder than hard
People assume the tough coatings are the difficult ones. It is the opposite. Hard brittle material fractures and comes off cleanly. Soft material smears, loads the tooling and refuses to shear.
Carpet glue and mastic melt under friction, glaze the diamonds and turn a productive machine into an expensive polisher within a minute. The fix is aggressive open-face tooling that clears itself, sometimes PCD blocks, and sometimes accepting that the material comes off cold and slowly rather than fast and hot.
Flexible urethane stretches instead of breaking, so an abrasive drags it rather than cutting it. That one usually wants a scarifier or PCD to shear it, then diamonds to clean up.
Getting back to bare, sound, profiled concrete
Removal is not finished when the visible coating is gone. Sealers and adhesives soak into the pores of the slab, and a residue you can barely see is enough to stop a new coating bonding in patches. So we keep going past the visual clean point until we are into fresh concrete across the whole area, including the stretches where the coating was only ever thin.
The check is simple and we will do it in front of you. Drop water on the finished floor. If it darkens the concrete and soaks in within a few seconds, the surface is genuinely open and porous. If it sits and beads, something is still in there and we are not done.
Then we can talk about profile for whatever is going on top. Removing the old floor and preparing for the new one are two jobs, and any bid that treats them as one is going to come up short somewhere. Call us on (941) 504-9132 and we will look at what is actually on your slab.
Preparation
What happens before any resin comes out
This page is the preparation. It is the part of the job nobody photographs and the only part that decides whether a coating is still down in year eight.
We diamond grind every floor. Progressively finer diamond tooling runs across the slab until the surface is opened to a profile the coating can key into mechanically, with the dust going into a vacuum rather than into the house. Acid etching, which is what most retail kits instruct, barely touches a hard-troweled slab.
Then we read moisture. Florida slabs sit on sand with a high water table and move vapor upward continuously; trap that under a film-forming coating and you get bubbling and delamination that can only be ground off and redone. Where the numbers come back high we specify a moisture-tolerant primer instead of pretending the problem is not there.
Cracks get chased out to a clean edge and filled rather than skimmed over, spalls and pop-outs get rebuilt, and any previous coating comes off entirely. Only when the slab is sound, open and dry does anything get mixed.
The finish is what you see. The grind underneath it is what decides whether you are still happy in year eight, and it is where we spend the time other quotes save money.
It is also why we will occasionally tell someone their slab needs repair before it needs a coating. A floor that should be fixed structurally is not a floor we will put resin on, because the crack comes back through and then it is our name on it.
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Old Coating Removal questions
How much does old coating removal cost?
Price follows square footage, the condition of the slab and the system you choose. A sound slab that only needs grinding costs far less to prepare than one with cracks, old coating or a moisture problem. We look at the floor and give you a real number rather than a range that means nothing.
How long does old coating removal take?
Most residential work is two to four days on site depending on size and system. Commercial and industrial floors are scheduled around your hours and often run nights or weekends. You get exact dates before we start, including when you can walk on it and when you can put weight on it.
Do you grind the floor first?
Always. Diamond grinding is the only way to get a profile the coating can key into, and it is the single biggest reason floors either last or fail. We do not acid etch and we do not coat over a sealed slab.
What about moisture in the slab?
Florida slabs move water upward constantly, and vapor trapped under a coating is a guaranteed failure. We take a reading before quoting. If the numbers are high we specify a moisture-tolerant primer rather than pretending the problem is not there.
Can you match a color or a look I have seen?
Usually. We carry eighteen flake blends and mix metallic per floor, so bring a photo, a cabinet door or a paint chip and we will get close. We put samples down in your own light before you commit.
Do you work outside Sarasota?
Yes. We cover a 120-mile radius from Sarasota, which is twenty-four counties from Naples up to Ocala and across to Orlando. Check the service areas page or call and ask.
Send us the space. We will send back a number.
Rough size and a photo is enough to start. We cover Sarasota and twenty-four counties around it, so tell us where you are and we will tell you when we can get there.
Pour this floor
Or call (941) 504-9132.