The core you cannot skip
If you cannot buy or rent these, you cannot do the work properly. Everything else on this page is a judgement call. This part is not.
Planetary grinder
The machine that makes the floor. Coating sticks because of mechanical profile, and nothing else produces it reliably. Acid etching is not an equivalent, and it is why a lot of cheap floors fail. Size it to the work you actually plan to sell. A residential sized machine fits through a door, runs on power you will find at a house, and one person can handle it.
Dust extractor, sized to the grinder
HEPA, with enough airflow to keep up with the machine it is paired to. This is the most commonly undersized item in the trade, and it causes three problems at once. Silica exposure, clogged filters, and a slow crew working in a cloud.
It is also your main engineering control for silica compliance. Masks are the last line, not the first.
Diamond tooling
Different bonds for different concrete hardness, plus a spare set. Segments are a consumable and they run out mid job. A shop with no spares has a crew standing around on the customer’s floor.
Hand grinder and edger
Perimeters, closets, thresholds, behind the water heater. The big machine cannot reach the edge, and the edge is where a homeowner looks first.
Low speed mixer and paddles
A proper mixer. Not a hardware store drill. Resin that is not mixed right does not cure right, and that failure arrives weeks later on a finished floor.
Hand tools, one set per installer
Squeegees, rollers, spike shoes, brushes, blades. Cheap, consumable, and routinely underbought. One set shared across two installers costs you a day, and a day costs far more than the tools.
Moisture meter and test kits
The cheapest insurance in the business. A slab with a vapor problem will lift a perfectly installed floor, and the test takes minutes. Find out after you quoted and you eat it.
Respirators, fit testing, and a written silica plan
Not optional, and not just equipment. You grind concrete, so the federal silica rules apply. Engineering controls, respiratory protection, fit testing and a written exposure control plan. More on how that fits with the other requirements in the guide to licensing and compliance.
Buy soon, used is fine
These make you faster and more professional. They do not change whether you can do the job. Used is completely reasonable on all of them.
- Enclosed trailer. Your rolling shop, and a billboard parked on a residential street all day. A dented one coats exactly as well as a new one.
- Racking, bins and organization. Not a luxury. A trailer you cannot find anything in costs hours every week, and hours are your biggest cost.
- Generator. For sites where the power is not where you need it, which is more of them than you would think.
- Broadcast gear. Blower or hopper, depending on how you throw flake.
- Crack chase and patch tools. Chaser blade, trowels, mixing pails.
- Lighting. You cannot inspect prep you cannot see, and garages are dark.
- Site protection kit. Floor protection, clean drop cloths, boot covers. The crew that leaves a tidy site gets the referral.
Buy later, on purpose
Each of these is justified by a schedule you do not have yet. The mistake is not buying them. It is buying them in month one, when cash is tight and the calendar is thin.
- Shot blaster. Faster on large open commercial slabs. Overkill for residential garages, and expensive to own while it waits.
- Sprayer rig. Faster topcoats on big floors. On a 600 ft² garage it saves minutes and adds cleanup.
- Second grinder. Buy it when you have two crews. Not in anticipation of them.
- Second truck. The purchase most first year owners regret. It feels like progress and it loses value while the calendar is still thin.
- Every color of flake made. Carry what you sell. Inventory you are not turning is cash on a shelf.
A fair way in. Rent the grinder and the extractor for your first season. It turns your biggest cash purchase into a per job cost while your close rate is still unknown, which is the right trade in year one.
The costs are real and worth naming. Rental eats margin on every floor, your schedule depends on what is available, and you cannot tune tooling to the slabs in your market. Most shops rent until the machine would have paid for itself, then buy.
The consumables nobody budgets
Equipment lists get written as one time purchases. That is why shops get surprised by the recurring half. These come back every month.
- Diamond segments. Budget them per square foot, not per year. They are a cost of production, same as resin.
- Vacuum filters and bags. Filters clog and performance drops. A struggling extractor is a silica problem before it is an inconvenience.
- Squeegee blades, roller covers, mixing paddles. Replaced constantly.
- Tape, plastic, blades, rags, pails. Trivial one at a time. A real line added up.
- Respirator cartridges and fit testing. Recurring, and dated.
These belong in your job costs, not in overhead. Push them into overhead and every floor you quote looks more profitable than it is. That is exactly the kind of slow leak covered in job costing for coating contractors.
Track what is on the truck
One habit worth starting on day one, because it is nearly impossible to start later.
Know what material is on the truck, what each job used, and what needs reordering. Resin and flake are your biggest cost after labor, and they leave job sites quietly. A shop that counts material per job finds the leak within a month. A shop that counts it quarterly against a supplier invoice never finds out which job it happened on, so it cannot be fixed.
In a one truck shop a notebook works fine. The break comes when a crew is running while you are out selling, and nobody is writing anything down. That is what inventory and job costing software is for. The material that went on the floor lands against the job automatically, instead of somebody rebuilding it on a Sunday.
Material tracking that comes with the resin
CoatHQ tracks material on the truck, used per job, and due for reorder. It is free to active Resinwerks partners. You buy the resin, the software comes with it. No subscription and no per seat fee.
Get the software free with ResinwerksCoatHQ is free to active Resinwerks partners. You buy the resin. No subscription and no platform fee. Resinwerks makes its money on resin, not on software.
Common questions
What equipment do I need for an epoxy flooring business?
The core you cannot skip is a planetary grinder, a HEPA dust extractor sized to it, diamond tooling, a hand grinder for edges, a low speed mixer, hand tools for spreading and broadcasting, a moisture meter, and respiratory protection with a written silica plan. Everything else, including a shot blaster, a sprayer and a second grinder, is capacity you buy once the calendar proves you need it.
What size concrete grinder do I need?
It depends on the floors you plan to do. A machine sized for residential garages is easier to move, fits through a standard door, and runs on power you will actually find at a house. That matters more than raw coverage on small floors. Bigger machines cover ground faster on commercial slabs but need three phase power or a generator and are harder to handle alone. Most shops start residential sized and add a bigger machine when commercial work pays for it.
Do I really need a HEPA vacuum?
Yes. Grinding concrete makes respirable crystalline silica, and the dust extractor is the control that keeps exposure down. Undersizing it is the most common mistake on this whole list. A vacuum that cannot keep up with your grinder leaves dust in the air, clogs filters, slows the crew, and gives you a compliance problem on top of a health one. Size the extractor to the grinder, not to the budget.
Should I buy new or used coating equipment?
Buy used on the forgiving items. Trailer, racking, hand tools, mixing gear. A dent changes nothing. Be more careful with grinders and dust extraction, where condition affects floor quality and your lungs. Even there, a well maintained used machine from a shop that is upgrading is often the best value in the trade. Renting the grinder for a first season is a fair way in, not a compromise.
What is the most commonly forgotten item?
Spare diamond tooling. Segments are a consumable and they wear out mid job, not conveniently between jobs. Second place goes to having enough hand tools for the whole crew. Running one set of squeegees and spike shoes across two installers costs you a day, which costs far more than the second set would have.
No prices on this page, on purpose. Equipment costs vary too much by brand, condition, region and the week you buy for a published figure to help. A confidently wrong number is worse than none.
The startup cost calculator lays these out as line items with clearly labeled placeholder amounts you replace with real quotes.