Arlington Heights Epoxy Flooring has spent more than 20 years on epoxy flooring in Lyons and nearby villages, and the work here has a particular shape. Almost every call concerns a slab that has been in place for decades, often under a coating someone else put down. We grind it open, test it for moisture and tell you what it can carry before we price anything.
That matters most on older concrete. A garage floor that has taken years of tire traffic, oil drips and patch jobs does not behave like fresh concrete, and a basement slab poured long ago may have no vapor retarder under it. Our proposals name the product, the system build and the finished thickness, so the floor you were quoted is a floor you can check.
What follows is how we approach a Lyons floor: what the village’s housing stock means for the job, how village paperwork fits in, and what changes when the owner lives in one half of a two-unit building.
No New Houses Since 2010, So Every Slab Has a Past
The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, in its 2024 five-year estimates, counts zero housing units in Lyons built between 2010 and 2019. Of the village’s 4,390 housing units, 1,131 date to 1939 or earlier and another 798 to the 1950s. For a flooring contractor, that leaves almost no new-construction work, with only 25 units counted from 2020 on. Nearly every job is a recoat, a repair of a failed coating or a first coat on concrete that has been in service for years.
What is usually already on the floor
On an older garage slab we expect some mix of oil and brake fluid stains, worn one-part paint, patched spalls and sometimes a hardware-store epoxy kit lifting at the tire paths. Each of those is a bond breaker until it is removed. We read the cracks and the old coating before we quote, and if the slab needs repair before it can take a coating, the proposal says so plainly.
Lifting at the tire paths is often hot tire pickup: a thin film softened by warm tires and pulled off when the car backs out. It usually traces back to a coat applied too thin over a surface that was never properly opened.
We also say before the job that a coating will not stop a slab from moving. A crack that is still opening will telegraph through any film laid over it, so we fill and treat cracks as repair work and tell you which ones may show again.
Opening the surface mechanically
We open every slab with a diamond grinder or a shot blaster and never acid etch. Grinding removes the old film and the weak top layer and leaves a profile we can check against the ICRI CSP chart, usually CSP 2 to 3 for a thin-film or broadcast system. Acid on old, contaminated concrete leaves residue behind and does nothing about a coating that is already there.
Where an older slab has been densified or sealed, we test how it takes a coating after grinding, since a lithium silicate densifier or a penetrating sealer can resist bond. On a slab that only needs hardening and dust control, a densifier on its own can be the right answer, and we say so.
Moisture testing on old concrete
Concrete poured decades ago may have no under-slab vapor retarder of the kind ASTM E1745 now describes, so moisture testing is a written line item in our scope. Depending on the slab, that means ASTM F2170 in-situ relative humidity probes, an ASTM F1869 calcium chloride test, or an ASTM D4263 plastic sheet check as a first read. When readings come back high, we price a moisture-mitigation primer or a urethane cement base rather than hoping a standard epoxy will hold.
A basement slab and a garage slab get the same testing. A garage is not exempt because it has a door to the outside, and a blister there is just as costly to correct.
Looking for epoxy-flooring closer to Warrenville? See Epoxy-Flooring Services in Warrenville.
Village Paperwork: The Contractor License and Garage Specifications
The Village of Lyons Building Department at 4200 Lawndale Avenue handles plan review, inspections, permits and occupancy certificates. Among the forms it publishes are a Contractor License Application and a Garage Specifications form. Both are worth knowing about before a garage project starts, not after the crew arrives. Lyons Township and Cook County sit above the village, but for a garage or basement floor inside village limits, the Lyons building department is the office we deal with.
The village contractor license
Illinois issues no state license for flooring or coatings work, so there is no state license number for us to print on a proposal. What we show instead is what each municipality asks for: the village contractor registration, our bond and our insurance. In Lyons, that means checking the current Contractor License Application requirements with the village before we quote and completing them before work begins.
Ask any contractor for that paperwork before signing. One who cannot show a current village registration, bond and insurance for the town where the job sits is a reason to pause, whatever the price.
Garage Specifications and bigger garage projects
We do not guess at what the village’s Garage Specifications form does or does not say about a floor coating. When a coating is one piece of a larger garage project, such as a rebuilt slab or a new structure, the owner and the builder work through the building department first, and we coat the slab once it is poured and cured. For a straight recoat of an existing garage floor, we ask the building department what applies before we put a date on the calendar. If you are planning more than a coating, get a copy of the form from the village early.
Contract and warranty before the work
Every home job gets a written contract and the Home Repair: Know Your Consumer Rights pamphlet before work starts, as the Illinois Home Repair and Remodeling Act requires. Warranty exclusions are read out before the job is sold, and moisture is the first one we name.
The Owner Who Lives in One Half of a Two-Unit Building
Lyons has 405 housing units in two-unit buildings, and the survey counts 275 owners who live in one unit of a two-unit building. That owner is a resident first, but the garage or basement they are deciding about may serve a second household too. The choice is theirs to make, and the floor has to work for both units.
Scheduling around the other unit
A shared garage or basement cannot simply close for days without warning the neighbors upstairs or downstairs. We set out the timeline up front: grinding day, coating day and the cure window before foot traffic and before vehicles. A polyaspartic topcoat can shorten the return to service compared with a full epoxy build, and we explain that trade in cost and working time instead of defaulting to the fastest option.
A basement both units use
An older two-unit building often has one basement with laundry, storage and a floor drain serving both households. Before coating it, we look at the sump pit and floor drain detailing, any efflorescence on the slab and signs of past water. A coating is a film that follows the slab under it; it does not keep water out, so on a basement with a water history we test before we commit to a system.
If the readings are high or the slab shows a history of water, the honest scope may be repair and moisture mitigation first and a coating later. We would rather say that at the first visit than after a floor has blistered.
A finish that suits two sets of users
For a garage two households share, we usually recommend a 100% solids epoxy base with a vinyl flake broadcast and a polyaspartic or polyurea topcoat, because the flake hides wear and the topcoat stands up to traffic. In a basement laundry, a quartz aggregate broadcast adds grip where the floor gets wet. Either way the proposal lists the build, so both units can see what went down.
Hofmann Tower, the Portage and an Old River Village
Lyons was incorporated in 1888, and its history runs along the water. Hofmann Tower was built in 1908 by brewer George Hofmann Jr., with a neighboring dam, as part of a pleasure park, and it joined the National Register on December 22, 1978. The Chicago Portage National Historic Site sits in Lyons north of I-55 along Harlem Avenue.
Salt Creek meets the Des Plaines River at the village, and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District has a project to repair, rehabilitate and replace the Lyons Levee to protect against a 100-year flood event. MWRD also helps homeowners along Salt Creek in Lyons through voluntary purchase of properties that repeatedly flood. For us, that means a basement’s history is the first question we ask, before any product is named.
Shops and small commercial floors
Commercial jobs in Lyons are scheduled around the hours the building has to stay open, which can mean grinding after closing and coating over a weekend. For a food-service space, the Illinois Food Code adopts the 2022 FDA Food Code, and the Cook County Department of Public Health is the health authority here. We detail coved floor and wall junctures under Food Code 6-201.13 where the space needs them. Where a light industrial or electronics space needs static control, we specify a static-dissipative or ESD system with its resistance range written into the proposal and test it after cure.
What we will not promise
We do not sell a floor coating as radon reduction, because in Illinois that work takes an IEMA radon mitigation license. What we will stand behind is the system on the proposal, applied to a slab we prepared and tested ourselves, using coatings chosen within the Illinois VOC limits in 35 Ill. Adm. Code Part 223.
If your floor in Lyons is an older garage or basement slab, with or without a coating already on it, we start with a site visit, moisture readings and a written proposal you can hold us to.
- 20+ Years Coating Concrete
- Moisture Tested Before Quoting
- Itemized Written Proposals
