Epoxy Flooring in Des Plaines, IL

Epoxy flooring in Des Plaines starts with the age of the concrete. Census figures from the 2019 to 2023 American Community Survey, as summarized by Point2Homes, put the city's median year built at 1966, and about 43% of its homes went up in the 1950s and 1960s alone. Many of those garages and basements still have the original slab. A good coating can make that floor easy to clean and hard-wearing again, but only when the old concrete is ground, repaired and checked for moisture first.

Why the postwar slab matters

Des Plaines grew quickly after World War II, helped by the opening of O'Hare next door. Wikipedia records the population jumping from 14,994 in 1950 to 34,886 in 1960. Garages from that era are often narrower, and their floors have had sixty-plus winters of use. We regularly find cracks that run from the door to the back wall, chipped control joints, low spots that hold water and layers of gray floor paint. Paint has to come off. Cracks have to be filled. The slab has to be opened by a diamond grinder so the resin can grab it. Skip those steps and even an expensive coating will lift.

Winters at the garage door

The weather station at O'Hare, about 2.5 miles from downtown Des Plaines, averages 38.4 inches of snow a year, and January's daily mean is 25.2°F. Snow means road salt, and salt rides home on your tires. Brine dripping onto bare concrete soaks in, and repeated freezing near the door slowly flakes the surface. A sealed resin floor keeps that brine on top, where a squeegee can push it out. We add texture with flake or an anti-slip additive so the floor is not slick when it is wet.

Basements in a river town

The city takes its name from the Des Plaines River, which runs just east of downtown. A February 2022 letter from the city's Public Works and Engineering Department calls April 2013 the worst flood in Des Plaines history, with the river reaching 20.92 feet. The same letter notes fifteen designated repetitive loss areas and warns that overloaded sewers can back up into basements during heavy storms. A coated basement floor cleans up far more easily after water than carpet or bare concrete. A coating will not keep water out, though. If your basement takes on water, the water problem gets solved first, and we will tell you if we see signs of it.

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Moisture, clay and radon below the slab

Much of northeastern Illinois sits on clay-rich glacial till. The USDA describes the Morley soil series, mapped across eastern Illinois, as 35 to 50 percent clay with very slow permeability in the substratum. Soils like that can hold water against a basement floor for days after a storm. Vapor moving up through the concrete is the main reason basement coatings blister, so we read slab moisture before recommending a system and use a moisture-tolerant primer where readings call for it. Radon is a separate concern. The American Lung Association, citing the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, reports that about 45 percent of Illinois homes tested were at or above the EPA action level of 4 pCi/L. A coating is not radon mitigation, so we suggest testing before you finish a basement.

Systems we install

• Garage floor epoxy: a ground, repaired slab with an epoxy base and a clear protective topcoat.
• Polyaspartic coatings: fast-curing and UV-stable, useful when you need the garage back the next day.
• Flake floors: colored chips broadcast into the base coat for texture and to hide winter grime.
• Basement floor epoxy: moisture-checked systems for finished and utility basements.
• Crack and floor repair: filling, patching and leveling old concrete, with or without a coating.
• Commercial and warehouse floors: thicker, high-solids systems for shops and light industrial space near O'Hare.

What happens on install day

• Belongings out and the space protected
• Diamond grinding wall to wall, then a full vacuum
• Cracks, spalls and joints filled and ground flush
• Primer or base coat, broadcast or color coat, and topcoat
• Written cure times for walking, moving items back and parking

Our base is Des Plaines, and we coat floors across northwest Cook County and the edges of Lake and DuPage counties. That includes Park Ridge, Mount Prospect, Arlington Heights, Niles, Morton Grove, Glenview, Northbrook, Prospect Heights, Wheeling, Elk Grove Village, Rolling Meadows, Palatine, Schaumburg, Buffalo Grove, Deerfield, Vernon Hills, Franklin Park, Bensenville, Wood Dale and Itasca. Inner suburbs like Park Ridge and Niles have more older brick homes and detached garages. Villages built from the late 1950s on, such as Elk Grove Village, Buffalo Grove and Vernon Hills, have more attached garages with slabs in better shape. The industrial parks around O'Hare add shops and warehouses to the mix. Each town page explains what we tend to find there.