Epoxy Flooring in Arlington, TX

Epoxy flooring in Arlington is mostly about garages. Many of the homes here sit on concrete slabs with attached garages, and bare gray concrete stains, dusts and pits over time. A coated floor seals the slab, wipes clean, and turns the garage into usable space for a workshop, gym or storage. The catch is that a coating is only as good as the prep under it and the system on top of it, and Arlington's heat and clay soil are hard on both. Our job is to pick a system that holds up here, not just one that looks good on day one.

What makes Arlington garages different

Arlington sits in Tarrant County, about 12 miles east of downtown Fort Worth and 20 miles west of downtown Dallas. Its July average high is about 94°F, and the National Weather Service puts the average first 100-degree day at DFW on July 1 and the last on August 27. In 2011 DFW logged 71 days at 100°F or more. A closed garage gets hotter than the air outside, and a car driven on hot pavement brings that heat into the garage in its tires. That is the setting for hot tire pickup, where a soft or poorly bonded coating lifts off the slab under parked tires. Heat also shortens the working time of epoxy, so mixing and spreading have to be planned for it.

Hot tire pickup and how to avoid it

Hot tire pickup is the most common complaint about garage floor coatings, and it is mostly a prep and product problem. Heat and chemicals from tires soften a weak coating and pull it off concrete that was never properly profiled. Coating makers point to the same causes: concrete that was only cleaned or acid-etched instead of ground, moisture coming up through the slab, and thin, low-solids coatings without a tough topcoat. That is why we diamond grind every floor, check for moisture, and build the coating to a real thickness with a wear-resistant topcoat. Thin one-day DIY kits from the home center are where most peeling floors come from.

Clay soil and slab cracks

Much of North Texas sits on expansive black clay that swells when it is wet and shrinks when it dries; in summer and drought you can see the cracks open in the ground. Slabs on that soil move, and many Arlington garages have at least a few cracks, often running from the corners of the door or along control joints. A coating will not stop a slab from moving. What we can do is clean out and fill cracks with a repair material made for concrete, grind it flush, and tell you honestly which cracks are cosmetic and which are moving enough that a hairline may show through again. If we see signs of a foundation problem, we say so before quoting a coating.

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Epoxy, flake, polyaspartic or metallic?

For most garages we recommend a flake system: a base coat, a full broadcast of colored vinyl flakes, and a clear topcoat. The flakes hide dust and small flaws and add texture so the floor is less slippery when wet. Epoxy makes a strong, thick base coat, but it can yellow in sunlight. Polyaspartic topcoats resist UV and cure fast, which matters for garages that sit open to afternoon sun and for patios. Metallic epoxy gives a poured, marbled look and suits interior rooms more than working garages. We explain which mix fits your space and budget at the estimate.

What a typical garage floor job includes

• Moving out or working around stored items, as agreed in the quote
• Diamond grinding the whole floor to open the concrete surface
• Filling cracks, pits and spalled spots and grinding repairs flush
• A moisture check and the right primer or base coat for the slab
• Base coat, flake broadcast if chosen, and a clear wear-resistant topcoat
• Cove or edge detail at the walls and a clean transition at the garage door
• Written cure times for walking on the floor and parking on it

What it costs

HomeGuide's garage floor coating guide (its Arlington page uses general, not local, figures) puts epoxy at about $4 to $10 per square foot for materials and professional labor, polyaspartic at about $5 to $12, and polyurea at about $5 to $10. HomeGuide's national guide lists a typical two-car garage (400 to 576 square feet) at $1,600 to $5,800 for epoxy. Crack repair, old coating removal and decorative upgrades move the number. We give you a written price after measuring the floor.

Arlington is home base: a Tarrant County city of 394,266 people at the 2020 census, in the Mid-Cities between Dallas and Fort Worth. From Arlington we work across the Dallas–Fort Worth area, including Grand Prairie, Mansfield and Kennedale to the east and south, Fort Worth to the west, and the Mid-Cities to the north. The same clay soil and summer heat run across the whole area, but homes differ from city to city: older neighborhoods often have slabs with decades of oil stains, old paint and settled cracks, while newer subdivisions have cleaner, harder slabs that still need grinding before anything will bond. Each area page covers what we see there.