To compare epoxy garage floor bids, ignore the bottom line for a minute and read the prep line. The bid that diamond grinds the slab, tests it for moisture, names the product, lists coats and mils, and writes its warranty exclusions down is the better bid, whether it’s the $6,000 one or the $10,000 one. Price and day count tell you almost nothing on their own. The line items tell you everything.

We see this every week at Epoxee. The homeowner who started a 2022 Garage Journal thread titled “Polyaspartic in one day?” had this exact problem: “First place quoted me $6k, done in one day,” while the second bid was “$10k … 2 or maybe 3 day job.” The cheaper one, he wrote, “comes across as a rush job.” Fair instinct, wrong question.

How to compare epoxy garage floor bids: five line items that matter

Lay both quotes side by side and hunt for these five things. Missing one? Call and ask.

1. Prep method: grinding or etching?

Manufacturers spell out what they want here. Sika’s data sheet for Sikafloor-264 says to “prepare the surface by any appropriate mechanical means, in order to achieve a profile equivalent to ICRI CSP 3 – 4.” Deco-Crete’s Poly Armour 85 TDS is blunter: “DO NOT USE ACID ETCHING TO ACHIEVE PROFILE.” The Sherwin-Williams concrete surface prep guide calls diamond grinding “another preferred choice for preparing concrete for polymer floor systems.”

CSP stands for Concrete Surface Profile, a roughness scale from CSP 1 (nearly flat) to CSP 10 (very rough). Your bid should say “diamond grind” and, ideally, name a CSP target that matches the product’s TDS. “Acid etch” or “clean and prep” means a cheaper job with a shorter life, and the price should reflect it. A poster in a 2016 Garage Journal thread on etching vs. grinding put it this way: “Grind and you KNOW you’ve done the job properly.”

El Paso makes this worse. Most slabs in the older Westside and Northeast tracts were hard-troweled slick, and acid barely touches them. The Sherwin-Williams guide adds that if poured water beads on your slab, a sealer or paint may be present, and it “must be removed by diamond grinding, steel shot blasting or other mechanical methods.”

2. A moisture test, as a line item

Coatings fail from underneath when water rises through the slab. Sika’s sheet says “do not apply to concrete substrate with moisture levels > 4 % mass,” and Deco-Crete’s TDS wants moisture content under 5%. Look for the test on the quote. In a 2019 Garage Journal thread comparing two quotes, the homeowner wrote of Installer 1, “They do perform a moisture test,” while Installer 2’s proposal listed a “Moisture mitigation primer.” Either is a good sign. Silence is the bad one. Newer Far East and Horizon City pours tend to read wetter than 40-year-old Westside slabs.

3. A product name and a TDS

“Commercial-grade epoxy” is a phrase, not a product. A real bid names the manufacturer and system so you can pull the technical data sheet yourself and check that the prep and moisture numbers on the quote match it. Weighing straight epoxy against polyaspartic? Our polyaspartic vs. epoxy breakdown covers the tradeoffs.

4. Coats, mils and coverage rates

A good bid lists how many coats go down and what each one is: primer, base coat, flake, topcoat. A better one states thickness or coverage. One bidder in that 2019 thread quoted “85 sq ft/gal for quartz and 90 sq ft/gal for flake.”

What do mils mean on a quote?

A mil is one thousandth of an inch. When a quote says “20 mils total,” it’s describing the finished thickness of all the coats stacked up. If two bids name the same product but one lists half the mils, that’s not a discount. That’s half a floor.

5. Warranty exclusions, in writing

Every coating warranty excludes something: moisture from below, hot-tire pickup, chemical spills. The good bid lists them. The vague bid says “lifetime warranty” and stops. Read ours before you sign with anyone, including us, on our garage floor warranty page.

Is a one-day bid a red flag in El Paso?

Not by itself. In that 2022 “Polyaspartic in one day?” thread, one reply said an installer “said they can do it in one day easy. 3 man crew.” Another put the real condition on it: “If they are not using diamond grinders we would be suspect.” Polyaspartic cures fast enough that a three-person crew with two grinders can finish a 2-car garage in one long day. A one-person crew claiming the same is either etching or skipping something.

So compare crew size times days, not day counts. Check the calendar too: our slabs sit above 100°F on August afternoons, which changes pot life and cure. We covered that in our post on when it’s too hot to epoxy a garage floor.

Dust control in an attached garage

Grinding throws silica dust, and most El Paso garages open straight into the kitchen. Oregon OSHA’s guidance on Table 1 for walk-behind floor grinders allows either a water-fed machine or a “dust collection system recommended by the manufacturer” with “a filter with 99 percent or greater efficiency,” and indoors, “loose dust must be cleaned up with a HEPA-filtered vacuum in between passes.” Ask each bidder how they handle dust. A shop vac doesn’t count.

Two El Paso bids, side by side

Here’s a composite from a job we bid last spring in Kern Place: a 1950s attached garage, hard-troweled slab, an old sealer that made water bead. The competing quote, a couple thousand under ours, read: “clean, etch, 2 coats epoxy, 1 day, lifetime warranty.” Ours read: diamond grind to the product’s CSP, moisture test with the reading recorded, crack fill, named polyaspartic system with mils listed, HEPA dust extraction, warranty exclusions in writing. Same garage, two different jobs.

UV belongs on the list too. With 300-plus days of sun a year, an open garage door will amber plain epoxy, so both bids should name a UV-stable topcoat, usually polyaspartic.

When the cheaper bid is the right one

Sometimes it is, and we’ll say so. If the lower quote grinds, tests moisture, names a product you can look up, lists coats and mils, controls dust, and writes down its exclusions, take it. We’d rather lose a job to someone who preps right than win against a bid that won’t hold up. Ask us. We’ll tell you.

What should a fair bid cost?

Installed garage floor coatings in El Paso run somewhere between $4 and $13 a square foot depending on prep, the system you pick, crack repair, and how many coats go down. The forum numbers above ($6k vs. $10k) were for a 1,000 sq ft slab, so they work out to roughly $6 and $10 a foot, inside that spread. A typical El Paso 2-car garage is 400 to 500 sq ft, so expect smaller totals. What we don’t do at Epoxee is quote blind. We look at the slab, run the moisture meter, and write all five line items on the quote.

Ready to compare your bids?

Send us the other quote. Seriously. We’ll walk through it line by line, no charge, and hand you ours in the same format. Request a quote online or call (915) 493-0667 and ask for a bid review. Epoxee serves El Paso, far West Texas and Las Cruces.

FAQ

Should I choose the cheaper epoxy garage floor bid?

Only if it covers the same work. If the cheaper bid diamond grinds the slab, tests for moisture, names the product, lists coats and mils, and writes down warranty exclusions, take it. If it saves money by acid etching, you are buying a shorter-lived floor.

Is a one-day garage floor install a red flag?

Not on its own. A three-person crew using polyaspartic and diamond grinders can finish a two-car garage in one long day. It becomes a red flag when the one-day bid skips grinding or does not say how the slab will be prepped.

What does CSP mean on an epoxy quote?

CSP stands for Concrete Surface Profile, a roughness scale from CSP 1, nearly flat, to CSP 10, very rough. The product data sheet lists a target, and the bid should say how the contractor will reach it, usually by diamond grinding.

What do mils mean on a garage floor quote?

A mil is one thousandth of an inch. Total mils on a quote is the finished thickness of all coats combined. Two bids for the same product at different mil counts are not the same job.

Why does a garage floor bid in El Paso need a moisture test?

Coatings fail from underneath when moisture rises through the slab. Manufacturers set limits, such as Sika’s 4 percent by mass, and testing is the only way to know your slab passes. Ask for the reading on the quote.