Garage, basement and commercial floors that are ground, moisture-tested and built to the thickness written in your proposal.
Elmhurst Epoxy Flooring has spent 20+ years installing epoxy flooring in Elmhurst, IL, from garage floor epoxy and basement floor coatings to polyaspartic systems, metallic and flake finishes, polished concrete, and commercial and industrial floors. Every job starts the same way: the slab is opened with a diamond grinder or a shot blaster, tested for moisture and mapped for damage before a price is final.
That order matters because most coating failures start below the coating. A garage slab that was never profiled, a basement that still pushes water vapor, or a crack filled with a bead of caulk will all show through a new floor within a few seasons, and none of them is fixed by a thicker topcoat.
Our proposals name the product line, the number of coats and the finished thickness, so you can hold the finished floor against the quote. We also explain what the coating warranty leaves out before any work is sold, because the time to learn that moisture is excluded is before the grinder arrives, not after a blister appears.
What we do
Epoxy Flooring for Elmhurst Garages, Basements and Businesses
Ground, moisture-tested epoxy garage floors with flake, quartz or metallic finishes, built to take winter salt and warm tires.
Ground, densified and polished concrete floors for showrooms, warehouses, offices and basements, with the exposure and sheen named up front.
Fast-curing, UV-stable polyaspartic coatings and topcoats for garages, basements and commercial floors that need to reopen quickly.
Basement floor epoxy installed after a moisture test and a read of the basement's water history, with the primer chosen from the numbers.
Marbled metallic epoxy floors for basements, showrooms, offices and show garages, installed over a flat, ground and moisture-tested slab.
Diamond grinding and shot blasting that remove old coatings and glue, flatten lips and leave the profile a new floor system needs.
Crack, spall, pitting and joint repair for garage, basement and commercial slabs, with a straight answer when replacement is the better call.
Commercial epoxy, quartz, urethane cement and polyaspartic floors specified in writing and phased around the hours a business keeps.
Static-dissipative and conductive epoxy floors for electronics, imaging and lab spaces, grounded and tested to the range the work requires.
Full-broadcast vinyl flake epoxy floors for garages, basements and commercial rooms, with chip size, blend and texture chosen up front.
Heavy-build epoxy, mortar and urethane cement floors for plants, machine shops and warehouses, installed around production schedules.
Seamless urethane cement and quartz kitchen floors with integral cove bases, textured for wet work and scheduled around service.
Two decades of floors means we have seen how coatings age on attached garages, damp basements and busy commercial slabs, not just how they look on the day they are finished. That history is why our scope starts with testing and repair rather than color charts, and why we tell you plainly when a slab should wait or be replaced first.
Every slab is opened with a diamond grinder or shot blaster to a measured ICRI concrete surface profile, so the epoxy primer bites into sound concrete rather than sitting on a film of etched surface paste that a hot tire can lift. Acid etching is cheaper and faster, which is why careless crews still rely on it.
No basement or garage slab gets a final price until it has been tested with calcium chloride kits or in-situ relative humidity probes, so a slab on Elmhurst’s glacial till, where the seasonal water table can sit close to the surface, gets the primer it needs rather than a coating that blisters the first wet spring.
Elmhurst’s 2021 code amendments require a 6-mil vapor barrier under basement floors and attached-garage slabs, and many of the city’s homes built before 1960 were poured long before that rule existed, so we treat an older slab as unproven until it is tested rather than assuming a barrier that may not be there.
Brine and rock salt ride in on tires all winter in DuPage County, so our garage systems are chosen and built to a thickness that holds up to chloride slush and road grit rather than a thin roll-on coat that turns chalky and lets salt reach the concrete by the second spring.
Home jobs over the Illinois Home Repair and Remodeling Act threshold get a written contract and the consumer-rights pamphlet before any grinding starts, and every proposal names the product line, coat count and finished thickness, so the floor can be checked against the paperwork rather than against a salesperson’s memory.
Hospital, school and office floors are phased around operating hours with overnight and weekend windows, so a clinic or campus building keeps running rather than closing a wing for a week because a crew could only work days.
An epoxy garage floor starts with a walk-through, a moisture test and a crack map, then moves to diamond grinding, repairs, a primer, the body coat and broadcast, and a clear topcoat. Foot traffic returns first and vehicles wait longer for a full cure, and we give you those dates in writing so nobody has to guess when the car can come back in.
In an attached garage, the door into the house is the weak point for both grinding dust and coating odor. We grind with vacuum-equipped machines that capture dust at the cutting head, seal the house door during the work and ventilate through the overhead door. Low-odor systems are available where someone at home is sensitive to smell during the cure.
Elmhurst’s amendment to the 2021 International Residential Code calls for a 6-mil vapor barrier under attached-garage slabs, while detached garages are exempt. A newer attached garage likely has that barrier below the concrete, but an older one may not, and a detached garage never had to. That is why we test each slab rather than assume what lies under it.
Moisture vapor rising through concrete is what pushes coatings off garage floors in blisters and bubbles. We use ASTM F1869 calcium chloride kits or ASTM F2170 in-situ relative humidity probes, with an ASTM D4263 plastic sheet test as a quick first read. The result decides whether a standard primer works or a moisture-mitigation primer goes down first.
Coating an existing slab is finish work, and Elmhurst’s code lists finish work among the exemptions from its rule that all work needs a permit. Replacing the slab is a different job: the city calls for 5-inch mesh-reinforced concrete over crushed stone, sloped 2 inches toward the overhead door rather than to a drain. We check the permit question with the city before scheduling either.
Hairline cracks, shallow spalls and salt pitting are routine repairs, filled with a rigid epoxy or polyurea filler and ground flush before coating. Heaving sections, wide cracks with a vertical offset and slabs that rock underfoot are different, because the movement is still happening. When we find that, we tell you the slab should be replaced before anyone coats it.
Calcium chloride and rock salt deicers ride in on tires and soak into the surface of a bare garage slab, where repeated freeze-thaw cycles break the top layer into scaling and pitting. Over several winters the damage creeps outward from the tire tracks. A sealed, coated floor keeps that brine on top, where a squeegee can push it out the door.
Epoxy cures by chemical reaction, and a cold slab slows that reaction or stalls it, leaving a soft film prone to amine blush. We read the slab temperature and the dew point spread at the surface, not the air temperature at the door. An unheated garage in deep winter is told to wait for spring rather than coated to fit a calendar.
Hot tire pickup happens when warm tires soften a thin coating and pull it off the slab as the car backs out, often taking a patch of concrete paste along with it. It is most common on thin kit coatings over unprofiled slabs. A ground surface and a 100% solids epoxy body coat under a polyaspartic topcoat resist it.
Big-box epoxy kits are usually water-based, applied thin over an acid-etched surface, and depend on the slab being clean and dry. A professional floor is ground to a measured profile, built with high-solids material to a stated thickness and topcoated for abrasion. The difference shows the first winter, when salt and hot tires find every weak spot in a thin film.
Garage floor price moves with square footage, the condition of the slab, the amount of crack and spall repair, whether a moisture-mitigation primer is needed, and the system chosen, from a flake broadcast to metallic epoxy. We price after measuring and testing, so the number on the proposal covers the floor you actually have rather than a best-case guess.
A basement slab sits against the soil on every side, so moisture is the first question rather than the last. We test before pricing and read the walls, the sump and the floor drain for signs of past water. If the slab tests within the coating’s limits, the job proceeds; if it does not, the scope changes before the color does.
Elmhurst’s worst recorded flood, in August 1987, damaged about 3,100 homes, and later storms between 2010 and 2013 brought street flooding and sewer backups. A basement that has taken water needs cleanup, disinfection and full drying before any coating, and the slab is retested afterward. Coating a wet slab traps the water and sets up a failure.
Elmhurst shares 50 percent of an overhead sewer conversion up to 5,000 dollars and 50 percent of a check valve up to 3,000 dollars, and new basements must be built with overhead sewers. If a basement has backed up, that plumbing work comes before the floor, because no coating stops sewage rising through a floor drain.
A coated basement floor has to meet sump pits, floor drains and ejector pump basins cleanly. We stop the coating at a crisp edge around each pit, keep drain grates removable and leave pumps and lids accessible for service. A sump that cannot be reached is a sump nobody checks, and a basement depends on that pump more than on its floor.
Many basement floors carry decades of paint, patching compound and black tile adhesive. Coatings do not bond reliably over any of them, so we grind every layer to bare concrete first. In older homes, old paint and adhesive may contain lead or asbestos, and we ask for testing before grinding when the age of the house suggests it.
White, crusty powder on a basement floor is efflorescence: salts carried up through the concrete by moving water and left behind when it evaporates. It is a sign that moisture is passing through the slab, which is the same condition that pushes coatings off. We treat it as a test result rather than a cleaning problem and plan the primer around it.
When testing shows vapor emission or relative humidity above the coating maker’s limit, a moisture-mitigation primer goes down before the decorative system. It is a dense epoxy layer designed to tolerate vapor pressure from below. It handles vapor, not liquid water or hydrostatic pressure, so it only works in a basement that does not take water in.
Laundry rooms need a floor that shrugs off detergent spills and washer vibration, workshops need resistance to dropped tools, oil and solvents, and home gyms need a surface that takes rubber mats and dropped weights. We match the system and thickness to the room, and add a textured broadcast wherever wet feet or bare feet will cross it.
Floor coating warranties commonly exclude moisture vapor transmission and hydrostatic pressure, because those come from the slab and the soil, not the coating. We read those exclusions to you before the job is sold. If your basement has a history of water, you should know before you pay that the warranty will not cover a moisture failure.
A floor coating is not radon mitigation, and in Illinois radon mitigation is licensed work under the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. A coating is not waterproofing or flood protection either. We never sell it as either one, and if radon or water entry is the real concern, that work belongs to a licensed mitigator or a waterproofing contractor first.
A vinyl flake floor is a colored base coat with paint chips broadcast into it, then sealed under a clear topcoat. Smaller chips read as a fine speckle, larger ones as a bolder pattern, and a full broadcast hides more of the slab than a partial one. Blends with gray and tan tones hide dust and tire marks especially well.
Metallic epoxy uses pigments that move as the resin levels, creating a marbled or cloud-like floor that is different on every job. It needs a flat, well-ground slab, a practiced hand during the working window and a stable temperature, because high spots and drafts show in the pattern. It suits basements, showrooms and offices more than salty garages.
Polished concrete grinds the slab itself through progressively finer diamonds, hardens it with a lithium silicate densifier and polishes it to a sheen. A light grind keeps a cream finish, a deeper one exposes fine salt-and-pepper aggregate, and a full grind shows larger stone. Which of these a slab can give depends on how it was poured.
High gloss reflects light and brightens a basement or workshop, but it shows dust, footprints and tire marks more readily. Satin and matte topcoats hide everyday dirt better and read calmer in living space. Sheen is set by the topcoat, so we match it to how the room is used rather than to a sample board under showroom lights.
A quartz broadcast floor seeds colored quartz aggregate into the resin, often in two broadcasts, and seals it with a clear topcoat. The result carries color and a durable, slip-resistant texture in one system, which is why it is common in commercial kitchens, locker rooms and wet entries. The texture is set by the grit size and the topcoat build.
A solid color epoxy or polyaspartic floor is the simplest look and often the most practical: a clean gray in a workshop, a light color in a basement storage room, or safety colors marking aisles in a plant. Without flake or quartz it shows dust more readily, so we add a fine texture to the topcoat wherever traction matters.
Many epoxies yellow, or amber, under ultraviolet light, which shows first near a garage door left open or in a sunny room. Polyaspartic and aliphatic polyurethane topcoats resist that change. Where a floor sees daylight, we put a UV-stable topcoat over the epoxy body so the color you chose stays the color you see.
Saw-cut lines can be scored into the slab to create tile patterns or borders, and contrasting colors can be laid in bands along walls or around equipment. Commercial floors can carry a logo or wayfinding mark set into the coating. Each needs planning before the base coat, since nothing can be cut cleanly into a finished floor afterward.
Commercial floors bring heavier traffic, chemical exposure, safety rules and schedules that the building sets, not the crew. A commercial job usually needs a site meeting, a written phasing plan, containment for occupied areas and coordination with facilities staff. The system is chosen for forklifts, cleaners or carts rather than for looks alone.
Health care is Elmhurst’s largest employer, and clinic floors cannot simply close. We phase medical office and clinic work room by room, contain dust and odor away from patient areas and schedule the loudest grinding outside clinic hours. Seamless, cleanable resin floors suit exam rooms, corridors and utility spaces where disinfecting wipe-downs happen daily.
The school district and the university are among Elmhurst’s largest employers, and their floors run on an academic calendar. We schedule school and campus work for summer, winter and spring breaks, with overnight shifts where a building cannot sit empty long enough. Cafeterias, labs, locker rooms and maintenance shops each get a system matched to what crosses them.
Machine shop and plant floors take coolant, cutting oil, metal chips and steel-wheeled carts, often in the same aisle. We use 100% solids epoxy built to a heavy thickness, chemical-resistant topcoats where coolant pools and safety striping for aisles. Oil-soaked concrete is degreased and tested before coating, because oil left in the slab breaks the bond.
Warehouse and distribution floors take forklift wheels, pallet jacks and dragged pallets all day. We coat with systems built for wheel loads, fill control joints so hard wheels do not chip their edges, and mark lanes and staging zones in contrasting colors. Work runs in sections so racking aisles reopen as each one cures.
Food plan review in Elmhurst belongs to the DuPage County Health Department, whose design manual asks for smooth, nonabsorbent, non-slip, grease-resistant floors and a coved floor-to-wall junction with a radius of 3/8 inch or more. We install integral resin cove bases so the floor and wall meet without a seam, with textured finishes where kitchens run wet.
Kitchens with hot-water washdown, steam, fryers and harsh cleaners can soften or debond a standard epoxy. Urethane cement tolerates thermal shock and constant moisture far better, which is why it is the usual choice in commercial kitchens, bakeries and food plants. We pair it with a cove base and drain details so the whole wet zone is one seamless surface.
Retail floors need to look good on opening day and still look good after a season of salt, slush and foot traffic. Polished concrete, metallic epoxy and quartz systems suit downtown storefronts, and we schedule the work after closing so the shop opens on time. Entry zones get extra texture where wet boots cross them every winter.
Illinois caps volatile organic compounds in coatings under Part 223 of Title 35 of the Illinois Administrative Code: 250 grams per liter for floor coatings and 340 for industrial maintenance coatings. The rule binds whoever applies the product, not only the seller, and DuPage and Cook counties sit inside the Chicago ozone nonattainment area. We pick products inside those limits.
Some businesses cannot close for a floor, so we work in the hours they are closed. Overnight and weekend shifts, fast-cure polyaspartic topcoats and phased sections let a store, clinic or office return to service on time. The phasing plan is written before the job starts, so managers know which rooms are out of use, and when.
Elmhurst Epoxy Flooring provides epoxy-flooring throughout the greater Elmhurst area, with the same crews and the same standards on every job.
Good to know
Most residential garage floors take a few working days from the first grind to the final topcoat, depending on how much crack and spall repair the slab needs and which system goes down. Foot traffic comes back first and vehicles wait longer, and we put the exact cure times for your system in writing.
No. Every slab is prepared with a diamond grinder or a shot blaster to a measured ICRI concrete surface profile. Grinding removes weak surface paste, old sealers and contaminants that acid leaves behind, and it gives the primer a real texture to grip instead of a thin etched film.
We use ASTM F1869 calcium chloride kits, which measure the vapor emission rate at the surface, or ASTM F2170 relative humidity probes set inside the slab. An ASTM D4263 plastic sheet test gives a quick first read. The numbers decide whether a standard primer is enough or a moisture-mitigation primer is needed.
Elmhurst's code lists painting and other finish work among the exemptions from its rule that all work needs a permit, and coating an existing slab is generally finish work. Replacing a slab is new construction with its own specifications. We confirm the answer with the city's Building Division before scheduling either one.
Epoxy is a thick, high-build resin that bonds well to ground concrete and works as a primer and body coat. Polyaspartic cures much faster, stays clear under sunlight and resists abrasion, so it is often used as the topcoat. Many of our garage systems combine the two to get the strengths of each.
Often, yes, once the source of the water is fixed and the slab has dried and tested within limits. A coating does not stop seepage, sewer backup or a sump that cannot keep up, so those problems come first. If the slab still pushes too much vapor, a moisture-mitigation primer goes down under the finish.
Usually not. Floor coating warranties commonly exclude failures caused by moisture vapor transmission and hydrostatic pressure, because those come from the slab and the soil rather than the coating. We read the exclusions to you before the job is sold, so you know exactly what is and is not covered.
No, and we never sell it that way. In Illinois, radon mitigation is licensed work overseen by the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, and a floor coating is not a mitigation system. If radon is your concern, have the house tested and talk to a licensed mitigator before the floor is coated.
Yes. Home repair jobs over the threshold set by the Illinois Home Repair and Remodeling Act get a written contract and the Home Repair: Know Your Consumer Rights pamphlet before any grinding starts. The proposal itself names the product line, the number of coats and the finished thickness.
Sweep or dust-mop grit regularly, because sand and salt act like sandpaper under foot and tire traffic. Mop with a pH-neutral cleaner and warm water, and squeegee winter brine out of the garage rather than letting it dry on the surface. Avoid harsh solvents and acidic cleaners unless the system is rated for them.
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