Garage floor repair: fixing peeling epoxy and paint
If your garage floor coating is flaking, bubbling or lifting where the tyres sit, it can be fixed. The answer is almost never another coat on top. The failed layer has to come off first.
Why garage floor coatings fail
- No grinding. Paint rolled onto smooth or dusty concrete has nothing to grip.
- Moisture. Water vapour rising through the slab pushes the coating off from below.
- Hot tyre pick-up. Warm tyres soften thin coatings and pull them up.
- Thin product. One-pack floor paints are far thinner than a two-pack system.
- Oil in the concrete. Old spills stop anything bonding unless they're ground out.
How we repair it
- Moisture test to find out why it failed.
- Grind off the old coating back to clean, open concrete.
- Fill cracks, chips and spalling, then grind flush.
- Add a moisture barrier coat if the slab needs one.
- Lay a new flake system with a polyaspartic topcoat.
What a repair costs
Removing a failed coating takes extra grinding time and diamonds, so it costs more than coating bare concrete. Most repairs on a double garage land between $2,500 and $3,400 including GST, done in one to two days.
Repair FAQ
Can you patch just the peeling bits?
Only if the rest of the coating is still firmly bonded. If it's lifting in several places, patches usually fail at their edges, and full removal is cheaper in the long run.
Why did my epoxy garage floor peel?
The usual causes are no grinding before coating, moisture coming up through the slab, a thin one-pack product, oil in the concrete, or driving on it before it fully cured.
Can you fix cracks in a garage floor?
Hairline and shrinkage cracks are filled and ground flush as part of every job. Cracks that are widening, uneven or moving may be a structural issue, and you should have them checked before coating.
Send us a photo of your floor
Tell us your suburb and what's happening to the coating. We'll tell you if it can be patched or needs redoing, and book a free moisture test.