Garage Slabs In Oakville Are Eaten From The Top By Road Salt
We cover a salt-pitted garage floor with a layer that brine cannot get into. From December to March every car that comes off the QEW, Dundas Street or Trafalgar Road drips salt water onto the slab all night. Salt draws moisture into the concrete, and the slab sheds its top skin as flakes; that is why so many Oakville garages have a rough grey crater under each front wheel.
Rubber surfacing is not affected by salt. The brine sits in the porous rubber, drains to the floor drain or evaporates, and hoses out in April. The slab underneath stays sealed and stops losing surface.
A Rubber Garage Floor Is Quieter, Warmer And Easier To Stand On
We pour garage floors with rubber surfacing that runs from three-eighths on a plain parking floor to a three-quarter-inch floor in a working garage, which is enough to take a dropped wrench, a jack stand and a bicycle on its kickstand without marking. Concrete is cold and hard for anyone who works or trains in the garage, and a bare slab sweats in a humid Oakville July. Rubber is warmer underfoot and does not sweat.
For a garage we use recycled black SBR granules, usually with a grey or coloured EPDM fleck to hide tire marks and dust. Black is the cheapest rubber surfacing option and the most practical one indoors.
A garage in Glen Abbey or Joshua Creek that doubles as a workshop or a gym gets the thicker end of that range. A garage that only parks two cars gets the thinner end, and the price follows the thickness. Floor drains, posts and the door track are cut around so the rubber surfacing sits flush with each of them.
Driveways And Aprons Get The Same Rubber Surfacing At A Firmer Mix
We pour driveways, aprons, front steps and walkways in a firmer rubber surfacing mix than a pool deck. The surface takes a parked car, a snow blower and a plastic-edge shovel, and it drains rain through instead of leaving a sheet of ice by the door. The old concrete or asphalt driveway stays put and becomes the base.
Asphalt driveways that are dull and cracked but not sinking are good candidates. A driveway that is heaving or has a hole through the base is not, and we say so at the visit rather than pour over it. The driveway needs about three days of cure before the car comes back on it.