Fleetwood, and the basements nobody uses yet
Borough housing with proper basements sitting empty. The cheapest square footage in the house, once the floor is dealt with.
Fleetwood slabs, honestly assessed
Fleetwood is a borough north east of Reading off the Route 222 corridor, and the housing stock runs older than the townships either side of it. That means basements. Proper full height basements under a lot of these houses, most of them being used as storage because the floor is bare gray concrete that sheds dust and feels cold.
That is the single best value job in this trade and almost nobody thinks of it that way. The room already exists, it already has walls and a ceiling and light. Coating the slab in a light flake blend is what turns it from a place you put boxes into a room the family uses, and it costs a fraction of building anything.
The garages here follow the same age pattern, often detached, often older, and they benefit from the same treatment for the same reasons. Where a slab has spalled or cracked from decades of use it gets cut out and repaired first, which is normal for a borough of this vintage and gets built into the price at the walkthrough rather than appearing later.
Worth adding that a basement floor changes what the rest of the room is worth doing. People who coat the slab very often end up finishing the walls and the lighting within a year, because once the floor stops reading as a basement the rest of it looks unfinished by comparison. Doing the floor first is the right order, because everything else is easier with a sealed slab underneath it.
Made in the USA product. OSHA certified crew. A true lifetime warranty on residential interiors.
Cobra Epoxy and Flake Coatings, PA HIC 177204How the work runs
Every floor follows the same four stages regardless of the town it is in. The slab gets diamond ground with dust extraction until we are down to clean open concrete. Cracks, divots and pitting get filled and leveled. An American made base coat goes down and the flake is broadcast into it by hand until the surface is full. The next day the excess is scraped and vacuumed back and a polyaspartic topcoat seals the whole system in.
Most residential jobs are two days on site. You can usually walk on the floor that evening, and a garage is ready for the car after about three days once the system has hardened enough for hot tires. Commercial work gets phased into sections so nobody has to close.
What changes between one job and the next is not the method, it is the diagnosis. The blend, the texture, the topcoat and whether a moisture tolerant primer is needed all get decided at the walkthrough, standing on your concrete, rather than picked off a list beforehand.
Services here
Where to start
Everything we do is available in Fleetwood. These three come up the most, and the full list is here.
Basement Epoxy Flooring
The cheapest square footage in the house, once the slab stops being bare concrete.
Home Gym Epoxy Flooring
A coated slab under the rack, with rubber only where the weight actually lands.
Garage Epoxy Flooring
The floor that takes the most abuse in the house, finally protected from road salt and hot tires.
Nearby in Berks County: Reading·Douglassville·Blandon·Bechtelsville·Birdsboro·Kutztown·Wyomissing·Oley·Bally·Hamburg
What a Pennsylvania winter does to a slab
This part of the state runs through roughly forty freeze and thaw cycles between November and March. Water works into the pore structure of the concrete, freezes overnight, expands by about nine percent and pushes the surface apart from the inside. It thaws in the afternoon, travels deeper into the space it just made, and does it again the next night.
Nothing dramatic happens on any single night, which is exactly why nobody acts until the damage is obvious. Five or six winters of it turns a smooth trowelled surface into a pitted, dusty one, and it accelerates as it goes because every new pit holds more water than the flat surface it replaced.
Sealing the surface removes the water from the equation entirely. That is the whole mechanism and the whole fix.
On the map
Fleetwood is 20 miles from the shop
We are based in Boyertown and run roughly fifty miles out, so Fleetwood is comfortably inside the normal working radius. Local reference points around here include the Route 222 corridor and the borough center.
Nearby towns we also cover include Blandon, Kutztown, Reading. If you are on the edge of that and not sure, call and ask rather than assuming. It costs nothing to find out.
Questions
Questions from Fleetwood
What people here tend to ask before they book a walkthrough.
How long does a basement floor take?
Two days for most basements, the same as a garage, though a room with a lot of obstructions takes longer because the cut in work around posts, pits and stairs is all done by hand. You will want to keep off it overnight between the coats.
How do you know whether a slab is too wet to coat?
We put a meter on it. A calcium chloride or relative humidity test tells us how much vapor is coming up through the concrete, and that number decides the specification rather than our optimism. Most slabs are fine. Some need a moisture tolerant primer underneath. A few need a drainage problem sorted first, and you will hear that at the walkthrough.
Is it safe for children and pets?
Yes. The system cures to a hard, non toxic surface with nothing continuing to come off it, and the flake texture gives better footing for a dog than sealed concrete does. It also stops the slab shedding the fine gray dust that bare concrete gives off constantly.
There is a crack right across my garage. Is that bad?
Usually not. A single crack running across a slab is very often a shrinkage crack from the original cure, and if it has not moved in years it repairs permanently. What matters is whether the two sides are level. Run a hand across it, and if you can feel a step, that is movement and a different conversation.
Can you help me pick a color?
That is part of the walkthrough and it is a step customers tell us other companies skip. Jimmy brings samples, holds them against your walls in your light, and talks through what each one will hide and what it will show. It takes ten minutes and it removes the only part of this process people ever regret.
What does the lifetime warranty cover?
Residential interior floors carry a true lifetime warranty against the system failing, which means peeling, delaminating or losing bond to the slab. It is written down rather than promised on the phone, and it is the reason we will not shortcut the grinding stage. Exterior work is warranted separately because sun, ice and ground movement are a different set of conditions.
Are the materials any different from a big box kit?
Completely. A consumer kit is a thin, high water content coating designed to be rolled onto concrete somebody etched with acid. What we lay is a professional grade American made system at several times the build, bonded into a mechanically ground slab. The material is a small part of the price difference. The preparation is most of it.
Do you do anything for referrals?
We do, and in an area like this it comes up more than you would expect, because garage floors are visible from the street and neighbors ask. Send somebody our way and both of you save. There are also discounts for military, police, fire and hospital workers.
Book a walkthrough
Book a walkthrough in Fleetwood
Let us know what the space is and what the concrete looks like now. Jimmy will call inside a business day and arrange to see it.
The crew is OSHA certified, the product is American made, and the warranty on residential interior floors is a genuine lifetime one. PA HIC 177204.
Phone is quickest: (484) 942-3219. Otherwise email jfaust@cobraepoxy.com and Jimmy will pick it up. The contact page takes the same details.
Tell us about the floor
Whatever detail you have is enough to start. Expect a call within a business day.
Fleetwood sits in Berks County, one of four counties on our patch. See the full service area, browse what we coat, look through the gallery, or get in touch.