The room where a leak is inevitable
Washing machines fail eventually. A sealed, coved floor turns that from a damage event into a mopping event.
Residential work
What a coated laundry floor actually does
Every washing machine leaks eventually. A supply hose perishes, a pump seal goes, a drain hose works loose behind the drum, and the first anybody knows about it is water somewhere it should not be. What decides whether that is an inconvenience or a repair bill is entirely what the floor under the machine is made of.
It contains the water. A sealed slab with a coved base running up the wall is a shallow tray. Water that comes out of a machine stays on the surface where you can see it and mop it, instead of soaking into porous concrete or running under a stud wall into the next room.
It stops the concrete dust that otherwise gets pulled into every load of clean washing, which in a basement laundry is a real and under appreciated annoyance.
And it takes detergent, bleach and fabric softener without staining. Those are all mildly aggressive and bare concrete absorbs every one of them permanently.
We show up, finish on time, and get it right. No hidden fees, no surprises.
Jimmy and Justyn, Cobra EpoxyWhat the price covers
Every one of these, every time
None of this is an upgrade or an optional extra. It is what the job is, and anything unusual about your slab gets raised before the work starts.
Coving is most of the value
On most floors a coved base is a detail. In a laundry room it is the reason to do the job.
A ninety degree joint between a slab and a wall is where water goes first and where it does damage you cannot see. Running the coating up the wall a few inches removes that joint entirely, so the floor and the bottom of the wall are one continuous sealed surface.
It also means the room can be washed rather than wiped, which in a laundry that doubles as a mud room or a pet washing area is worth having.
Working around the machines
Laundry rooms are small and full, which makes them fiddly rather than difficult. The machines have to come out, which means disconnecting supply and waste, and it is worth checking the hoses while they are accessible because a lot of them turn out to be older than anybody remembers.
The room usually has a floor drain, a utility sink, a furnace or water heater nearby and a doorway with a threshold. Every one of those is a hand cut edge, and small rooms are judged almost entirely on their edges.
A typical laundry is a one day job with an overnight cure, which usually means one wash cycle missed rather than a week of inconvenience.
A floor that was ground properly and repaired before the first coat will still look right in ten years.
Cobra Epoxy and Flake Coatings, Boyertown PAHow the floor gets built
It starts with grinding rather than cleaning. Acid etching and pressure washing leave a surface that looks prepared and is not, which is why coatings applied that way come off in sheets. We run diamond grinders with dust extraction until the concrete is open and clean.
Then the slab gets fixed. Cracks and divots filled, pitting levelled, spalled areas cut back to something sound. Whatever we find gets told to you rather than buried, because the finished floor is only ever as flat as the concrete underneath it.
The base coat goes on next, American made, and while it is still wet the flake goes in by hand across the whole area until the surface is completely full. Doing that inside the working time of the base is why it takes two people.
The following day the excess chip is scraped and vacuumed off and the polyaspartic topcoat goes over the top. That is the wear layer and the reason the floor still looks like this in ten years.
Worth doing alongside something else
A laundry room on its own is a small job, and if you are anywhere in the middle of our patch that is completely fine. At the outer edge of the radius it is worth pairing with something else on the property so the trip makes sense for both of us.
The obvious pairing is the basement it usually sits in. Doing the laundry area and the rest of the basement floor in one visit costs considerably less than two separate jobs, and it gives you one continuous surface with no transition strip in the middle.
The other common pairing is a mud room or a boot room by the back door, which has the same requirements for the same reasons.
On the map
Where we do this work
This work goes anywhere inside our normal radius, which is about fifty miles from the shop in Boyertown and takes in four counties. Every town we have written up is on the service areas page.
If your town is not listed, that is not a no. Plenty of jobs happen in places that never got their own page, so it is worth a call either way.
Questions
Before you book
What comes up most on the first call, without the sales version.
What does a moisture test involve?
Either a calcium chloride kit, which sits under a sealed dome on the slab for about three days and measures how much water comes through, or a probe drilled into the concrete that reads the humidity inside it. Both give a number rather than an impression, and the number decides the specification.
Does it need resealing every few years?
No. This is not a sealer that wears off and gets reapplied, it is a bonded system with a polyaspartic wear layer on top. Day to day it wants a dust mop and the occasional wash with a neutral cleaner. Skip the wax and anything acidic and it looks after itself.
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 grey dust that bare concrete gives off constantly.
Can it be done in one visit?
The two days are usually consecutive, so it is one visit in practical terms. Day one is grinding, repair, base coat and the broadcast. Day two is the scrape back and the topcoat. Where a basement is very large or very cut up we will sometimes split it into halves, and we will tell you that at the walkthrough rather than on the day.
What happens to the cracks in my slab?
They get repaired before anything is coated. Cracks, divots, pits and spalled areas are cut out where they need it, filled and levelled so the finished floor is flat. Coating over a crack simply prints its shape through the surface, and it will open again anyway.
Does the warranty transfer if I sell the house?
Ask us at the walkthrough and we will tell you plainly for your job rather than giving you a general answer here. What is worth knowing is that a coated garage or basement is a genuine selling point, and being able to show a buyer written paperwork from a local company that is still trading twenty minutes away carries real weight.
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 neighbours ask. Send somebody our way and both of you save. There are also discounts for military, police, fire and hospital workers.
I want the same floor my neighbour has. Is that possible?
Most of the time, and it happens more often than you would think. If we laid it, we know the blend. If somebody else did, bring a photo and we will get close. The caveat is light. The same chip in a north facing garage and a south facing one genuinely does not look the same.
Book a walkthrough
Get pricing on your laundry room epoxy floor
Tell us roughly what you have and Jimmy will be in touch inside a business day. The walkthrough is where the real decisions get made, standing on your slab with the samples in hand rather than guessing off a screen.
We cover four counties from the shop in Boyertown, which is most of Berks plus a good piece of Montgomery, Chester and Lehigh.
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.
More of what we coat: basement epoxy flooring, home gym epoxy flooring, garage epoxy flooring. See finished floors in the gallery, read about Jimmy and Justyn, or check the towns we cover. Ready to talk? Book a walkthrough.