When “Stronger Than Garage Floor Epoxy” Backfires: The Anatomy of a Failed Coating

Let’s look at how a garage floor coating failure unfolds—and why a professional garage floor epoxy system could prevent it.

Picture this:

A homeowner in Upstate New York hires a 1-day floor coating company. The promise? “Our product is 4 to 20 times stronger than epoxy!”. The job is done in a day. It looks sharp and glossy, and the price seems reasonable. But as the seasons change, something starts to go wrong—blistering, cracking, even peeling.

Stage 1: A Misleading Sales Pitch

That strength claim sounds convincing—until you realize the comparison isn’t against a professional-grade garage floor epoxy system. It’s against low-cost, water-based DIY kits from big-box stores.

The 1-day company installs a thin polyurea or polyaspartic coating directly on bare concrete. It cures fast, sure—but fast isn’t the same as durable.

Stage 2: Ignoring Moisture Mitigation

In Upstate New York, concrete slabs are often saturated with moisture—especially during wet springs and humid summers. Moisture vapor rises from the ground and can destroy any coating not equipped to block it.

1-day installers might test for vapor, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that they don’t mitigate it. They skip the crucial epoxy primer designed to stop moisture at the surface.

Without that layer, vapor pushes upward. That’s when trouble begins.

Stage 3: A Thin, Vulnerable Coating

To meet the “one day” timeline, the company cuts layers:

• No epoxy base coat
• No proper buffing of the flakes before sealing
• Just one topcoat, often less than 100%-solids

This creates a thin system with little protection from moisture, wear, or UV exposure.

Stage 4: Delamination Sets In

As temperature and humidity fluctuate, the coating begins to delaminate. Bubbles appear. Chunks flake off. And the floor—once pristine—now looks worse than before.

The homeowner remembers the “stronger than epoxy” claim and realizes it was never about real performance.