Down into Chester County
Phoenixville, Spring City, Downingtown and Exton. A county with more pool decks and patios per mile than anywhere else we work.
Where we work
Coating floors across Chester County
Chester County starts a short run south of Boyertown, across the Schuylkill from Royersford, and it changes character faster than any county we work in. Spring City and Phoenixville sit right on the river as old industrial boroughs. Twenty minutes further and you are in the Route 30 corridor at Downingtown and Exton, which is newer, larger and built to a completely different standard.
The thing Chester County has more of than anywhere else on our patch is outdoor concrete. Pool decks, large rear patios, pool houses and long walkways come up here far more often than they do north of the river, and exterior work is a genuinely different specification. Ultraviolet stable topcoats, coarser texture for wet traction, expansion joints cut and treated rather than coated across, and drainage falls left exactly where the concrete was poured to put them.
Being local matters more than it sounds. We coat floors in these conditions every week.
Cobra Epoxy, Boyertown PAThe concrete around here
Phoenixville in particular is worth mentioning on its own, because the borough has spent twenty years turning old industrial buildings into occupied space. That work throws up a steady stream of concrete that was never meant to be a finished floor, and a lot of it has had something applied to it at some point by somebody. Stripping back a mystery coating before building properly is standard practice there.
Out at Exton and Downingtown the houses are newer and the garages are bigger, three bay attached garages are common, and the slabs are usually in good order. The jobs there tend to be straightforward builds where the customer wants the floor to look like part of the house rather than a utility space, which is where the lighter blends and a proper coved base earn their money.
What we get called for
What Chester County asks us for most
Every service runs across the whole county. These are simply the three that come up most often here.
Pool Deck Epoxy Flooring
Wet feet on smooth sealed concrete have almost no grip. This is the fix.
Patio Epoxy Flooring
Joints cut and treated, drainage falls kept, texture chosen for wet feet.
Garage Epoxy Flooring
Two days from bare gray slab to a finished floor with a lifetime warranty on it.
Towns we cover here: Phoenixville·Spring City·Downingtown·Exton·West Chester·Coatesville·Honey Brook·Elverson
Sun, water and the outdoor concrete problem
Chester County has more exposed outdoor concrete per property than anywhere else we work, which means the failure modes down here are different. Pool surrounds, wide rear patios, long walks and pool house floors all take the full weather load rather than sitting inside a building.
That is two problems at once. Winter brings the same freeze and thaw cycle everywhere else gets, roughly forty rounds of water getting into the slab and expanding as it freezes. Summer brings months of direct ultraviolet exposure, which is what ambers and chalks a coating that was never specified for sun.
Both are solvable and neither is solved by an indoor system moved outdoors. An exterior build uses an ultraviolet stable topcoat, a coarser texture for wet traction, and joints cut and treated so the slab can move without cracking the coating along the line.
What happens across the two days
Day one starts with clearing and masking, then grinding. The diamond grinders run with dust extraction attached, which keeps the mess to something reasonable and keeps silica dust out of the air. We work the slab until it is uniformly open and clean rather than until it looks clean.
Still on day one, the repairs go in. Cracks and divots are filled, pitting is leveled and the joints get treated. Then the base coat goes down and the flake is broadcast into it by hand, wall to wall, until the surface is saturated.
Day two is the scrape back, the vacuum and the topcoat. Scraping is what converts a rough chip surface into an even one, and skipping it is why some flake floors feel like sandpaper. Then the polyaspartic seals everything in.
You can normally walk on it that evening. Furniture and light use come back the next day, and a garage is ready for a car after about three days once the system has hardened enough to take hot tires without marking.
On the map
Getting to you from Boyertown
Chester County is inside our normal working radius, which runs roughly fifty miles out from Boyertown. The county seat is West Chester.
If your town is not on the list above, that does not mean we do not cover it. Call and ask. We would rather tell you honestly than send somebody on a two hour round trip, and we would rather hear from you than have you assume.
Questions
Working in Chester County
The questions that come up most on calls from this part of the patch.
Are you too far away to be worth it?
Ask us rather than assuming. At the far edge of the radius we will be straight with you about whether a small job stands up as its own trip or is better paired with something else nearby. What we will not do is price a long round trip into a job quietly and hope you do not notice.
What happens if it rains on the day?
We move it. That is the whole answer, and it occasionally frustrates people in the moment. A coating that gets rained on before it has cured is a coating that has to come off and be done again, so there is no version of pushing through that ends well. We watch the forecast and give you as much notice as it gives us.
Do I have to drain the pool?
No. The deck has to be dry, but the water can stay where it is. Deck work happens either side of the swimming season rather than in the middle of it, so late spring and early fall are the usual windows. Most people who get the date they want booked it over the winter.
What happens at the expansion joints?
They get honored rather than coated over. Concrete moves with temperature and an exterior slab moves a lot, so a coating carried straight across a joint cracks in a line along it within the first year. We cut the coating at the joint and treat it so the slab can move the way it was designed to.
Will the color fade outdoors?
Not with the right topcoat. Exterior work gets an ultraviolet stable system, because a standard epoxy left in direct sun ambers and chalks within a couple of seasons. That is one of the specification differences between an outdoor deck and an indoor garage.
Will the price change once you start?
It should not, and that is the whole point of doing the walkthrough properly. Jimmy looks at the slab before quoting, so repairs are already in the number you are given. If something genuinely unexpected turns up once the old surface is off, you hear about it before we carry on, not on the invoice.
Can you match a floor you did before?
Usually yes. The blend names are consistent, so if you liked a neighbor floor or you are extending into another bay we can normally order the same chip. Bear in mind that lighting changes how a blend reads, so the same product in a different room will not look identical, which is worth seeing in person before you commit.
Is the house going to be covered in concrete dust?
No. Every grinder runs with extraction on it, and we mask off doorways and openings before anything starts. Some fine dust is unavoidable on any grinding job, but the difference between a machine with extraction and one without is the difference between a tidy site and a week of cleaning.
Book a walkthrough
Book a walkthrough in Chester County
Tell us the town, the space and roughly what condition the concrete is in. Jimmy comes back within a business day and arranges to walk it with you.
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.
Call (484) 942-3219 and you will get Jimmy rather than a switchboard. Email jfaust@cobraepoxy.com works just as well, and so does the form on the contact page.
Tell us about the floor
This goes straight to Jimmy. He will call inside a business day and arrange a time.
Also covered: Berks County, Montgomery County, Lehigh County, Bucks County, Lancaster County. Browse the full list of services, see finished work in the gallery, or get in touch.