Epoxy Flooring in Shadeland, IN

Shadeland is unusual, and that affects the epoxy flooring jobs we see there. The town covers the same ground as Union Township, about 27.33 square miles. Union Township chose to incorporate to prevent partial or total annexation by Lafayette. The result is a town with about 1,757 residents in 2020 spread across land the size of a small city. That works out to roughly 65 people per square mile. Homes sit on large lots, and many have a second building out back.

Shops, pole buildings and oversized garages

When a lot has room, owners build. In Shadeland we often coat:

• Three- and four-car attached garages
• Detached shops used for equipment repair, woodworking or vehicle storage
• Pole buildings with a poured concrete floor
• Mowers, trailers and tractor storage bays

These floors are bigger and work harder than a typical subdivision garage. A shop that holds a skid steer or a truck with a plow needs a thicker system than a floor that only parks cars. We use 100% solids epoxy bases and chemical-resistant topcoats on working floors, and we add grit where boots and tires bring in wet mud.

Big floors take planning

A 2,000 square foot shop is a different job than a two-car garage. We measure the whole space, check the slab for moisture and old sealers, and look at where the floor drains and how equipment moves through. We can split a large floor into sections so you keep part of it in use. The written estimate lists the square footage, the prep and each coat.

State Road 25 and road salt

Indiana State Road 25 runs east and west through Shadeland. State and county trucks salt that road and the side roads all winter, and that brine comes home on every truck and trailer. Outbuilding floors often get the worst of it, because equipment is parked wet and left for weeks. A sealed floor keeps salt on the surface where you can scrape and rinse it away.

Growth on the edge of Lafayette

Shadeland grew from 1,610 people in 2010 to 1,757 in 2020, and housing units went from 675 to 731. Many newer homes here have large attached garages, and those slabs are a good time to coat, before salt and oil set in. The township's history goes back much further. Farmers Institute and Stidham United Methodist Church are both listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and older farmhouses in the area often have barns and garages with floors that need repair before coating.

Old farm floors

Barn and garage slabs on older farmsteads were often poured in sections at different times. We see uneven joints between pours, edges that have chipped away and patches of different concrete. We grind high joints down, rebuild broken edges with repair mortar and fill gaps before the coating goes on. The goal is one continuous floor that is easy to sweep and hose out.

Timing a big job

Large shop and outbuilding floors need steady temperatures to cure. Unheated buildings are best done from late spring through early fall. Heated shops can often be coated in colder months. We check the slab temperature before we start and will reschedule rather than put a coating on concrete that is too cold to cure. For floors that must stay in service, we can coat one half, let it cure, and then move equipment over to do the other half.