Best flooring for detailing

[baseballlover1]

Originally Posted by admac

some people re-use the gray water for non-potable purposes like watering the lawn or landscaping. it's a conservation effort.

We do not.

Again, im not possitive how it works. me and my father have a 13 hour car ride to FL today so ile ask him and have an answer for you tomorrow.

[mhadden]

Originally Posted by baseballlover1

Im thinking epoxy, or stained right now. This garage would ONLY be used for detailing and car storage for my personal car every night. This "wing" of the garage would be added onto our pretty large garage already that is concrete.

As for the drain, there are a couple problems i plan on by passing. My house isnt hooked up to the sewer system, we have it drain under ground in backyard so it is a little hard. Since we have to take up the whole thing anyway we are just going to put a drain that goes directly behind the garage. This is illegal but we can just tell the inspector that we dont like water collecting on the floor. Theres gotta be a way around it.

If you do epoxy, I can't stress enough how important the first step of stripping/cleaning the floor prior to application is. If you don't do it properly, the epoxy will peel up. Usually, the only time I've seen a problem in the 7 garage my father and I have done is when the concrete was sealed already. If it is, the acid cleaner won't do enough. You will have to purchase some concrete etch to remove most/all the sealant, then use the acid cleaner, then apply.

As for the drain, yes, the EPA sucks sometimes, but now with my floor epoxied and smooth, I just spray with a hose or PW and use a 24" squeegee to wipe dry.

[Setec Astronomy]

Originally Posted by admac

some people re-use the gray water for non-potable purposes like watering the lawn or landscaping. it's a conservation effort.

I'm familiar with the technique, having lived through two periods of water rationing. I'm just not familiar with building a house with two sets of drain plumbing to facilitate that or to relieve the load on a septic system (in which the aforementioned "draining it under the back yard" would not be considered a conservation method).

[MBenz]

The way most septic systems work to my knowledge is what is a 2 tank system. The solids fall into the first tank and the liquids spill over into the second thank. From there the liquids will go out into the leach field. It is dry enough here in Colorado that you can noticeably see how the grass is greener over the leach filed. That is probably why you think it is draining into the backyard. Just a friendly word of advice, know where your septic tanks lids are and get them pumped as a precautionary measure when you move in.

Anyways, back to the subject at hand,
I've personally had really good luck with just plain concrete. I really wish i had a drain in my garage, especially in the winter when the snow melts off the cars and pools up. I'm not sure what it takes to put in a drain in Virginia, but if you are going to do it to code, do it right, trust me it will pay off. If the inspector is a real A$$, he could make you rip it all up and do it again.
My $0.02

[BlueLibby04]

Originally Posted by Setec Astronomy

Wow, I've never heard of a house with separate drain plumbing for the sinks and showers from the toilets. What do you call that...you have sanitary lines for the toilet, and gray water lines for the sinks and showers? Sounds to me like all that extra plumbing and keeping it all straight would be more expensive than just having a properly sized septic system, but then again, you do live in one of those affluent areas where people would pay more to run their gray water somewhere other than the septic system.

Its not that complicated. All of the pipes in our house go to the basement. It just so happens when they built the house, they made it so all the showers and sinks in the bathrooms went into one 2" pipe with the washer(which is in the basement). We cut that and sent a pipe over the hill for the showers and sinks. Works out great!

Usually you have one big tank(ours is 10, 000 gallons) then a smaller tank for the water. The water stays on top of the poo then goes into another small box called a distribution box. This is where all the water goes out into the yard.

[baseballlover1]

we have 1 septic tank and the fluids spill over and into the septic feild. the solid matter is eaten by bacteria.

i think im going to go with epoxy.

[Setec Astronomy]

Originally Posted by baseballlover1

we have 1 septic tank and the fluids spill over and into the septic feild. the solid matter is eaten by bacteria.

So what was the answer, do you have separate lines for the sinks and showers that bypass the septic system, as you said earlier, or does all of the water go to the septic system?

[Accumulator]

Originally Posted by baseballlover1

..i think im going to go with epoxy.

If you mean epoxy *paint*, note that a) it probably won't adhere 100% even if professionally installed on a new floor (voice of experience several times over), and b) it'll be *VERY* slippery when wet unless you add some friction media (e.g., sand) to the top layer.

There are other "epoxy" floor coatings. I have a mixture of epoxy and stone (they advertise these for basememts/etc.) that's also sealed with more epoxy. This has the friction media too, but after ~8 years it's wearing away enough that I know I'll have to have it redone some day.

The "regular"/unsealed epoxy and stone flooring did *not* work well for me...it held water and made for way too much humidity. They'd said that the water would flow to the drain and that it'd dry out, but that didn't happen so they had to redo the whole (44' x 44') floor.

Oh, and I really would give some thought to the drainage. A lot of the stuff that'll be going down the shop's floor drain is stuff you *do not* want to just leave untreated. I'm nobody's idea of a tree-hugger, but still.....this is a case where IMO you really oughta do the responsible thing.

Yeah, I know, that's a big PIA over "what goes down the drain". When we were looking for our current place, stuff like that was a big part of deciding which property was/wasn't suitable. Before we built this place, I had to have a commercial building to do my detailing as my previous homes just weren't set up to handle such stuff.