Epoxy garage floor pricing: what to charge and why

The two car garage is a day, until it is not

Residential garage work is the backbone of most coating shops. It has a particular shape. A day of work, a fixed amount of loading and setup, and a slab you did not pour and cannot see until you are standing on it.

That last part is where the money goes. On clean, solid concrete an experienced crew finishes a two car garage in a day. On a slab with a failing coating, half a dozen spalls and a crack through the middle, the same floor is a day and a half. On a job this size, half a crew day is usually most of the profit.

So the whole pricing question for residential garages is one thing. Did you price the slab you are actually going to grind, or the one you pictured on the phone?

Costing a garage floor, line by line

Four lines. The first is easy. The second is where the risk lives. The last two get forgotten.

Material

Resin, topcoat, flake, patch, and the stuff that dies on the job. Use what you actually invoiced on a similar floor divided by the square feet you actually coated. That quietly includes your waste. A price list does not.

Crew days, prep included

Whole crew cost for a day, times the days the floor really takes. Not the days it takes when everything goes right. Your own history on similar slabs is the honest input here.

Loading, driving and setup

Load up, drive, unload, set up, break down, drive back. This happens the same way on a 300 ft² floor and a 600 ft² one. That is why small floors cost more per square foot, and why a flat rate punishes you on them.

Overhead

Not a line on the job, but the job still has to pay it. As a percentage of revenue, carried by every floor you sell.

Where the half day goes

The gap between a profitable garage and a painful one is almost always time. Almost always prep time. The usual culprits, roughly in order of how often they turn up:

• An existing coating. A failing roll on kit from the big box store has to come off completely. Different job, not the same job with a surcharge.
• Oil. Soaked in oil at the parking spots needs degreasing and sometimes harder grinding. You can see where the car sat.
• Spalling and cracks. Each repair is minutes of work plus cure time, and cure time is schedule you cannot squeeze.
• Moisture. The expensive one. A slab with a vapor problem needs testing and maybe a different primer. Find it after you quoted and you eat it.
• The homeowner’s stuff. A garage full of boxes, a freezer, a workbench. Either they move it before you arrive or you are being paid to move it. Agree that in writing. Do not discover it.

Three questions settle the risk before you quote. What is on the slab now. How much patching. Is there moisture. If you cannot answer all three, you are not quoting. You are guessing with a decimal point on it. Price the walk through, never the phone call.

Quote three options, not one

A single number is a yes or no question. On residential work it is a yes or no question the customer takes to two other shops. Three options turns it into a which one question, and lets a price sensitive buyer choose up instead of talking you down.

Build the difference into things the customer can see and understand.

• The system. Different base and topcoat, different expected life.
• Flake coverage. Partial broadcast versus full refusal. You can see the difference from the driveway.
• Topcoat. Standard versus the harder, more chemical resistant option.
• Repair included. Up to a stated amount of crack and spall work, instead of an unknown.
• Warranty length. The quiet one that sells more than people expect.

What you must not do is quote the same floor at three prices. Customers notice, and it costs you exactly the trust you needed to close. The guide to quoting a coating job covers how to lay the three out so the middle one wins.

Keep the square foot rate off the proposal

Use it to cost. Do not use it to sell.

Put a rate on the page and you have invited the homeowner to compare you line by line against the cheapest number in town. That is the one axis where cheap always wins. You have also built a trap for yourself on small floors. An honest rate on a 300 ft² single garage looks absurd next to the same rate on a 600 ft² double, because your setup time did not halve.

Quote the finished floor with the scope written out. What you grind. What you repair. What goes down. What the warranty covers. And what the customer needs to move before you arrive.

Check the quote against what happened

This step turns pricing from a guess into a system, and almost nobody does it.

When the floor is finished, put the real material and the real crew hours back against the estimate. Ten garages in, you stop estimating your daily rate and start knowing it. You will almost certainly find one slab condition that costs you more than you have been charging for it.

Doing that by hand means somebody retyping numbers in the evening, which means it stops after the third job. Automating it is the whole point of job costing and materials tracking, and it is what makes the next garage quote better than this one.

Common questions

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