Hot tire pickup, explained (and how to prevent it)
The rubber-to-coating chemistry that lifts epoxy at the tire contact points, and how to stop it before it starts.
The EpoxyCalc blog
Notes from real projects. Opinionated, specific, occasionally wrong.
Cracked slab? Fix it before you coat it
Polyurea crack fill, when to rout out a crack first, and when the slab is telling you not to coat at all.
The best DIY epoxy kits of 2026, ranked by a real home project
Rust-Oleum EpoxyShield Pro, Epoxy Master, Armorpoxy DIY, and the Home Depot kit that you should probably skip.
Basement epoxy, the moisture problem nobody warned me about
Calcium chloride tests, Tramex meters, moisture mitigation primers, and why basement epoxy is harder than garage epoxy.
When epoxy fails, what the photos actually show
Peeling, bubbling, fish-eyeing, hot tire pickup, flake wear. Real failure photos and what each one means.
Polyaspartic vs epoxy, which actually holds up longer?
Cure time, UV stability, hot tire performance, cost, and when one is objectively the right choice.
The 7-step garage floor prep that makes or breaks the coating
Degrease, patch, grind, vacuum, test moisture, prime, and the one step most DIYers skip entirely.
Flake vs metallic vs solid epoxy, which should you actually pick?
Three coatings, three use cases, three honest price brackets. The visual comparison nobody else gives you.
DIY vs pro epoxy, the honest tradeoff (with real numbers)
When DIY is fine, when it's a disaster waiting to happen, and the actual savings after you account for tools, time, and risk.
Prep is everything: why slab prep is 60% of an epoxy budget
The sentence the epoxy industry tries hardest to hide: coating is cheap, prep is expensive, and prep is what fails first.
Need a cost estimate first? Head to the epoxy floor calculator. Got a post idea? Send it over.