LESLIE: Carol from Florida. How can we help?
CAROL: I have a problem in my garage which is … I live in Florida, close to the … very close to a sea wall on the intercoastal. But I don’t know if that has anything to do with my problem. My garage is on the same level as the street. There’s no like elevation to my house in that area. However, the rest of my home is about a foot-and-a-half higher than the garage level. The problem I’m having is that, especially in the winter, I notice there are areas of moisture. It’s a concrete floor. It was in the garage floor. And I was thinking of … considering cleaning it up and having it painted. But I look at those areas of moisture and it seems like it’s more noticeable in the winter months.
TOM: OK.
LESLIE: Well, that’s clear because what you’re having is condensation because the air is cooler than the ground temperature from being warmed in sunny Florida all through the summer months.
TOM: Well, what you want to do is definitely clean that up and then paint it. That’s not going to help your condensation issue but there’s no reason you can’t. And if you use the right kind of paint, it will stick and it’s going to make it look a lot nicer.
CAROL: Do you have any recommendations? Do I need to prime it?
TOM: Absolutely. What I would recommend is a product called EPOXYShield. It’s an …
LESLIE: Mm-hmm, this is fun.
TOM: It’s an epoxy-based garage floor paint that comes in a two-part mix. So you get a gallon of this epoxy product and you get a quart of the hardener. And actually, the gallon is short-filled; there’s like three-quarters of a gallon of material in there. So you open it up and you mix the two together, stir her up and that has a chemical and an air-based cure. And they also include, in that box, this cleaning detergent that’s designed to really kind of neutralize and sort of etch the surface so you get good adhesion. But I think if you do that, it’s a real thick, durable surface.
We actually put it down in – believe it or not – the Boy Scout house here in my hometown. The guys put it down in the kitchen because it takes a ton of traffic from all of those scouts. So they went out and picked up some EPOXYShield and put it right down and it looks great.
You can also put like this chipped surface in it so it kind of has this sort of nice, speckly look to it which hides the dirt, too.
CAROL: Thank you so much.
TOM: You’re welcome, Carol. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
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