Epoxy Flooring in Missoula, MT

Epoxy flooring in Missoula means working on almost every kind of slab there is. The city began in 1860 as the Hellgate Trading Post, became a town in 1883 and a city in 1885, and has been building ever since. The 2020 census counted 34,747 housing units here. Some sit on Northside lots between Interstate 90 and the rail line. Some are in the South Hills, which Wikipedia describes as an upscale neighborhood with its own trail system. Many are in between. We start every Missoula job by finding out which kind of floor we are standing on.

Ten historic districts, eighteen neighborhoods

Missoula has 18 neighborhood councils and 10 historic districts, including the Lower Rattlesnake, Northside, Southside and University Area. Houses in those older areas often come with a detached garage off the alley and a basement that has seen several owners. Those floors tend to have the same short list of problems:

• Thin or patched slabs that were never ground or sealed
• Old porch paint or garage paint that is peeling in sheets
• Shrinkage cracks that have opened wider over the decades
• Low spots where meltwater sits all winter

None of that rules out a coating. It just means the prep takes longer, and the quote should say so. We grind off old paint rather than coating over it, and we fill cracks with a repair material before the base coat goes down.

Newer homes on the valley floor

The other half of the picture is newer construction toward the edges of town. Those garages are usually flat and sound. Their weak point is a smooth, hard-troweled surface, sometimes with a cure-and-seal product from the builder. A coating will not grip that until it is diamond ground. Owners of newer homes often want a full flake floor or a polyaspartic system from the start, before oil stains and tire marks set in.

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What deep cold does to a coating plan

Missoula's winters are milder than much of Montana because the city sits west of the Rockies. They are still long. Wikipedia's climate figures show about 45 days a year when the temperature never rises above freezing and about 7.8 days at or below 0°F. The record low is −33°F, set in January 1957. January averages a high of 31.6°F and a low of 18.0°F.

That cold matters twice. First, a detached garage with no heat can hold a slab well below the minimum temperature a coating needs to cure. Second, every warm car parked on a frozen floor drips meltwater that freezes again overnight. Our approach:

• Fall and spring scheduling for unheated detached garages, when slab temperatures are in range
• Polyaspartic topcoats when a job has to happen in cool weather, since they cure faster
• Textured finishes so a floor wet from melted snow is not slick underfoot
• Attached and heated garages can often be done in winter after we measure the slab

Shops, trades and commercial floors

Wood products shaped Missoula for most of the 20th century. In 1979, almost 40 percent of the county's labor income still came from the wood and paper sector. The Bonner sawmill closed in 2008 and the Smurfit-Stone pulp mill in 2010. Today the largest employers are the University of Montana, the school district, St. Patrick Hospital, Montana Rail Link and Community Medical Center. The work changed, but plenty of Missoula people still keep a shop. Home shops, small service bays and back rooms of local businesses take a beating from rolling carts, dropped tools, oil and solvents. For those floors we build thicker coats and pick a topcoat for the chemicals that will actually land on it.

A floor on an old lakebed

About 13,000 years ago, this whole valley sat at the bottom of Glacial Lake Missoula. Where the University of Montana stands today, the water was roughly 950 feet deep. You can still see the old shorelines on the hillsides. For a floor job, that history is a reminder that every slab sits on ground that varies from one part of the valley to another. Some slabs crack and settle more than others. We map cracks before quoting and tell you if a crack looks like it is still moving, because a coating cannot hold a slab together.

Which service fits which Missoula floor

• Garage Floor Coating: most attached and detached garages in town
• Epoxy Flake Floors: busy family garages where hiding grit and drips matters
• Polyaspartic Floor Coating: cool-season jobs and anyone who needs the garage back fast
• Basement Floor Epoxy: older basements in the historic districts after a moisture test
• Shop & Commercial Floor Epoxy: home shops, service bays and work rooms
• Concrete Crack & Floor Repair: patched alley-garage slabs and spalled entries

Call (406) 412-3732 and we will come measure the floor, check it for moisture and give you a written price.