Vinyl Shop Floor

[Stan Krupowies]

I'm finally getting to the point where I am thinking about my shop floor. I'm in the basement of my house with concrete floors and the shop is about 18 x 13. I am thinking about commercial vinyl floor tiles that they sell at the Big Orange Box for about $0.75 / sf. Would this hold up well to shop life? The biggest machine I have is my Delta 3hp Cabinet Saw and, of course, that won't move on a regular basis.

Thanks for your opinions.

Stan

[Mike De Luca]

I researched floor covering for the shop last year and finally decided to leave it concrete. The builder had put a sealer down and it makes the floor easy to sweep and keeps the concrete dust to a minimum... The downside to the sealer is that it "melts" if anything is spilled on it... It is easy to put down a fresh coat when needed though...

The vinyl tiles can become very slippery when covered with a thin layer of sawdust...

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...slippery-ideas

Epoxy can be a nightmare if not properly prepared... mixed results from posts I've seen on quality and longevity not to mention a vast variety of qualities, pricing, and claims...

[Russ D Wood]

"The vinyl tiles can become very slippery when covered with a thin layer of sawdust..."

YEP! Had tile in my basement shop and it was great right up to the point you started up the ts or the bs or the . . . and then it was a skating rink until I got the sawdust off the floor. I now have a 'regular' shop with sealed concrete and that is much safer. I did add some mats for each of my major tools. The mats are from the local feed store and are used for horse stalls. They are 3x6 foot rubber and about 1/2 inch thick. Very comfortable while working and will NOT slip or slide. Russ

[Bill ThompsonNM]

You can also look into slip resistant tiles -- Armstrong has them to match their regular commercial vinyl tiles. See their website. Btw, I've frequently been able to get flooring products cheaper from flooring stores than the big box stores.

[Don Jarvie]

Dricore panels might be an option. Basically OSB which is slip resistant and will provide some cushion and keep the cold at bay. You don't have a huge area so it maybe worth the price.

[Stan Krupowies]

Thanks for the warnings. I hadn't thought of that. I think I may go with an epoxy paint, which leads me to my next question. The epoxy I've used in the past required the concrete be washed prior to applying the finish. Is washing absolutely critical? How does one do that in a basement with no floor drain? The concrete is 8 years old, painted when it was new and has had carpet on it since the paint dried.

Thanks for your help.

Stan

[Jerome Stanek]

For that size I would look at the interlocking rubber mats. I have them around my CNC and love them they are easy on the feet plus warmer in the winter. A great benefit is if you drop something it doesn't chip or break.

[Ron Natalie]

I have a commercial rubber floor in my shop over the concrete floor (in fact we also have this in the kitchen and laundry). It comes in large (.5 x 1 meter) sheets that glues down. Easy peazy. Works well in the shop except maybe I'd not use black again as any amount of sawdust shows up.

[Stan Krupowies]

For that size I would look at the interlocking rubber mats. I have them around my CNC and love them they are easy on the feet plus warmer in the winter. A great benefit is if you drop something it doesn't chip or break.

I have a commercial rubber floor in my shop over the concrete floor (in fact we also have this in the kitchen and laundry). It comes in large (.5 x 1 meter) sheets that glues down. Easy peazy. Works well in the shop except maybe I'd not use black again as any amount of sawdust shows up.

Are either of these good for the entire floor or do they go around the machines? What I mean is, can equipment roll on this floors or will the wheels sink in to the mat? Ron, what brand did you use?

[Jerome Stanek]

If you get the kind for horses you could roll stuff around. The kind I have is softer but larger casters do roll on it

[Ron Natalie]

My rubber floor is stuck down wall to wall. In my case it's not squishy but a little more resilient than most other floors (and certainly a whole lot better than the underlying concrete). It's akin to the kind of stuff you find on commercial stairways or around the bar and service areas in restaurants (except it's slate finished rather than those round rubber dot type finish). The house in Virginia has NORA in it. We have a different brand in the one in NC that escapes me right now, but I'll look it up.

[Rick Christopherson]

The issue of a vinyl composite tile floor being slippery is often overstated. It is no different than any other smooth floor, and that includes the wood floors that many of us grew up with in high school shop class. I've never slipped on sawdust in the workshop. Water would be a different matter, though.

The greatest benefit for the smooth floor is how much easier it is to clean up. I picked up a 24" dust mop at the orange box that does a fantastic job of quickly and easily getting all of the fine dust off the floor. It used to take me nearly a half hour to sweep the shop because for every stroke of the push broom, I had to take 3 strokes to actually get most of the dust. (It's a pretty big shop). Now it is done as quickly as I can walk around the room.

My main reason for putting down the floor was to brighten the shop. Light does not reflect well off of rough, dirty concrete. Even with several dozen fluorescent lights, it was never bright in the shop. In the image below, you can see the huge difference between the concrete and the tile, and this is even after the concrete was fully cleaned and acid etched. It takes far less light to make the shop bright and pleasant to work in.

Tile1.jpg

The other reason why I chose tile over the epoxy that I used up in the garage, is because I didn't have to do the entire floor at one time. My tablesaw takes up 110 square feet of floor space, so even moving it the 5 feet shown above was a huge challenge. Most of the other tools are also too large to move very far. I ended up getting several Vega Machine Movers specifically for getting these large tools moved. They even custom built an 8-foot mover for my Oliver lathe.

It's so easy to clean the floor, that I actually keep it clean. It used to be such a painful task that I wouldn't clean the shop until a project was done. The shop is now bright enough that I can use it as a studio for both photography and video production.

NewWallOfShame.jpg

I used to be a slob with my floor, but I've actually gone to the opposite extreme now. I like having the floor so clean all the time, that I located a mini floor scrubber on Craig's List for $200.

Zamboni.jpg

By the way, I am contemplating redoing the garage floor with tile now. Even though it had 2 heavy coats of commercial-grade epoxy (not sold in home centers), it is chipping in the main bay. It has lasted for 7 years, but most home-center-quality epoxies would have come loose long before. Once it starts chipping, it is not easily repairable. Unlike epoxy, that is only a few thousandths of an inch thick, the VCT is 1/8" thick, and if necessary, you can sand it to remove stains or gouges.

[George Bregar]

Here's what I did. http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...light=delta-fl