Epoxy & Resinous Flooring
CSI Division 09, Finishes
A seamless, high-performance floor coating system, epoxy, polyurethane, or polyaspartic resin applied in liquid form directly over a properly prepared concrete slab, used in industrial, commercial kitchen, and laboratory settings where chemical resistance, cleanability, or heavy traffic durability matter more than the look or feel of a standard floor finish.
Why it matters
Resinous flooring's bond to the slab depends entirely on the concrete surface preparation, typically mechanical grinding or shot-blasting to open the surface's pores, skipping or shortcutting that prep step is the single most common cause of a resinous floor delaminating from the slab underneath it.
On a real project
An installer shot-blasts a warehouse's concrete slab to the specified surface profile before applying an epoxy coating system, confirming the prepared surface meets the coating manufacturer's required profile rather than applying the coating directly over the slab's original finished surface.
Who this matters most to
A specialty flooring subcontractor, often working alongside a Concrete Worker who finished the slab beneath it, prepares the surface and applies the resinous coating system, following the manufacturer's specified surface preparation and cure time between coats.
Where this goes wrong
A kitchen installer substitutes a lower-grade epoxy system to save on material cost, rating it acceptable for light-duty use without confirming it matches the manufacturer's chemical-resistance data sheet for the specific cleaning agents and grease the space will actually see. Within a few months, the substituted coating starts softening and discoloring wherever the kitchen's degreaser is used, and the floor has to be recoated with the originally specified system.