Garage - floor & wall treatment options?
Garage - floor & wall treatment options?
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zax

Original Poster:

1,058 posts

281 months

Thursday 18th March 2010
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It's time I sorted out the garage. Need to throw away all of Mrs Zax's junk and get the cars in there. It's a double garage with twin doors, currently in it's post-build state and has been for a couple of years. So bare concrete floor and bare gyproc walls.

I would like to make it somewhat water resistant since during the winter when the outside world is frozen for months I could hand wash the car in there. It's heated (underfloor heating) with good ventilation, windows and two floor drains so no problems there. But how to treat the floor and walls? Should I treat it a little like a bathroom and waterproof it "wetroom" style? Some sort of floor paint is needed, needs to be tough since we use spiked snowtyres in the winter. How about the walls? Tile them to waist height? Just paint? Any suggestions welcome!

Doesn't need to look fancy, just needs to be durable and functional.

sleep envy

62,260 posts

267 months

Thursday 18th March 2010
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it's a drained slab with underfloor heating in a garage??

never seen one of them before

in any case I'd advise not to paint the floor unless you add sand to the paint, it will become incredibly slippery when it's wet from washing the cars - over time it will lift though

wrt floor finishes how much do you want to spend?? ceramic tiling is the most expensive although you can get rubber tiles if it will become a wet area

you may need to tank the walls if you're going to be washing cars in there, bear in mind though that you have plasterboard walls and they don't take kindly to very wet environments

personally I'd not bother with washing cars in there if it's heated - over time you may find damp issues and could create the perfect environment to end up with rusty cars

zax

Original Poster:

1,058 posts

281 months

Thursday 18th March 2010
quotequote all
The underfloor heating is of the hot water variety, it's embedded into a solid concrete garage floor. It came about by accident, the boiler and utility room are at the far end of the garage and since the heating pipes had to pass through the garage to get to the house it seemed only fair to heat the parking spaces as well smile

The garage will get wet anyway, I'm in Finland and for 4 months of the year I'll be parking snow & ice encrusted cars in there which will thaw out nicely...

Rubber tiles sound interesting, will have to investigate those. And splashing onto the gyproc walls was exactly what I was worried about. Tiles are perhaps a little too expensive.. I'm still recovering from tiling the house itself, especially since the Mrs has shall we say an aversion to "cheap" tiles eek

Fatboy

8,235 posts

290 months

Friday 19th March 2010
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Go for an epoxy screed on the floor (you can get anti-slip additive, without which, as Sleep Envy says, it'll be a tad on the slippy side when wet), and I'd apply a waterproof paint to the walls - kitchen/bathroom paint should do for random splashes (if you jetwash in there it will be a different matter) - where the wall meet the floor I'd glue on a plastic strip (after painting) to really keep water away from the underside of the gyproc...