Frank’s TruAlloy™ Installation and Review

“Very Happy With This Product” – Frank

Frank* installed our new TruAlloy™ coating. The product completely transformed his garage.  The TruAlloy™ is a single-component, metallic garage floor coating. This product is known for its abrasion resistance, extended pot life, and its protection against hot tire lifting.  For best results, use the recommended roller coverage – this avoids roller marks and ensures the profile required to protect your floor.

Frank installed the TruAlloy™ in his 2400 square foot barn. The space is an insulated building used as storage, workshop, mechanic shop (no welding or fab), and asphalt maintenance equipment shop. He utilized a three-coat system that included three coats of grey, flake, and one coat of clear on top. He describes his concrete as “in sound condition with a handful of minor, hairline surficial cracks.” Frank completed the installation during the winter of January 2021 in Pennsylvania. He noted that inside, the temperature was about 72° F.

Final thoughts 72 hours POST CURING and using the garage for the first time 

1. The smell dissipated each day after work was complete, even without “airing” out the garage. After  72 hours, there was not so much as a hint of fumes or smell, even though the doors had been left shut. My wife and 5-year-old son spent time in the garage after the 72-hour curing, with the doors shut, and could not detect any foul or unpleasant odors/fumes.  
2. Beads water beautifully cleans easily yet still has grip (Justin, thank you so much for not giving me the option whether or not I wanted to put antiskid in the clear coat… rather, you insisting it was a must… and now I understand why. The clear, with the addition of the antiskid, has a really neat way of being “easy to sweep” yet still grippy when wet. I love it!) 
3. Drove heavy trucks in garage, turned the tires a bit… not an issue so far. My son rode his scooter around, skidded the tires, etc…. Doesn’t even leave a mark. We won’t get into any real heavy use until summer, but so far it appears to have great hardness and resilience.  

Overall very happy with this product, very appreciative that you gave me the quantity (gallons) you gave me because I was able to do a total of 4 coats, and I do not feel like I missed out on anything by not doing a polyurea or epoxy system. Everyone who has seen the floor is impressed, it appears durable so far, and it was relatively easy and inexpensive to execute. I had to do this project in two phases: in phase 1  we did about ¾ of the floor and in phase 2 we finished it. This was because I had an unwinterized boat as well as a trailer full of traffic paint that could not go outside in the cold—so we had to work around them. You’ll see in the project photos of the “final cured product” a couple of photos that show the line where we separated phase 1 from phase 2, and the difference between my floor before and after! Wow!

Frank’s Project Photos

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Notes during install: 

Prep:

The floor had previously been unfinished and was heavily soiled. Prep consisted of Degrease/pressure wash with rotating floor disc, then full diamond grind, then commercial floor scrub which applied a diluted degreaser, bristle scrub, and wet vac in one step. We had to wet the floor down and wet vac a second time to lift all the dust. 

1st Coat: 

The product does not smell as bad as expected, but the effect of vapors gets more potent as you go along 

Mixing – difficult to homogenize, still see swirl marks in the can, even in the paint tray, but not on the floor. Color is uniform once you roll it down. 

Super easy to roll, flows like water, covers nice, easy to spot your thin spots. Lots of roller marks on the first coat.  

Spreads and covers so easily could inadvertently install it too thin. Have to intentionally leave some build and resist the urge to over roll.  

Dries quick on the heated floor (edges were glazing over within 15 mins).  

350 SF/gal on our first coat.  

Drippings from roller/tray = no big deal if you are moving fast enough to work over them in a few mins.  We had 3 guys and moved quick, tried to keep a wet edge at all times 

2nd coat: 

After 1 hour, the 1st coat had flashed over and was “dry” but not cured enough to walk on—it would tear if we tried. Was trying to balance opening my garage doors to let the fumes out vs keeping them closed to keep the heat in. 28 degrees outside temp, 70 degrees inside temp. waited 1.5 hours then was able to get back on 1st coat with socks only (still leaving some marks but covered over w 2nd coat, no harm done). 2nd coat 400 SF / gal. Realized we had a lot of material left (thanks to Justin’s generous  philosophy of giving the customer more than they’ll probably need), so we opted for a 3rd coat

3rd coat: 

Got back on the floor with socks after 2 hours. By this point, the spread rate would/could be so high that we had to intentionally resist the urge to over-spread and over roll the product, and make sure to leave behind some build to hold the flakes. Roller marks were becoming less noticeable with each subsequent coat. 3rd coat coverage was approx 400 SF/gal, the same as 2nd coat. Installed a light flake into 3rd coat – very easy to do. Decided to do this after ordering materials from Justin, so just bought a few bags of flakes from Lowes.  

4th Coat – Clear: 

Waited 4 hours after 3rd coat, didn’t want any imprints or smudges in previous coats. Flakes held great – I did a very light broadcast. Clearcoat is the most challenging coat, for these reasons: 

1. No handles on 1 gal cans 
2. Mixing antiskid (referred to as “AS” in the remainder of this segment) into the can, no void space in the can so product level wants to rise above the rim when you mix. Unsure how to measure the weight of AS, no small instrument for measuring weight. Ended up putting (2) 5 oz Dixie cups worth of  AS into each can, as I approximated this to be about one pound 
3. Antiskid does not suspend well in clear. I wanted a lot of AS (for durability’s sake), but I probably should have used less.  
4. Clear is hard to see, hard to tell if you’re getting an even coat. The AS actually helped bc it made it look milky, so I could see it at certain angles.  
5. With the amount of AS I was using, it was even dropping out of the clear on the floor. Meaning,  I would dip my roller, drop the roller on the ground, make a W shape, and then most of my AS was settling out immediately, in the W shape, and was hard to spread around evenly onto the area being worked. 
6. Drips or spills – immediately darken that area of a floor, and even if you coat over it a few minutes later, you can see where the drips were at. *Update after full cure – no longer able to see drips,  all blended in nice* 
7. Fumes – potent. Probably more so than the MCU aluminum. The fumes in this system are nothing to shrug off.  

Overall, the clear coat went on OK and came out nice, roller marks were barely visible. Coverage was about 350 SF/gal – I was trying to leave some build without leaving puddles. Clear doesn’t flash over as  fast as gray. I am very happy with the preliminary texture and appearance of the clear coat right after finishing the application. 

Additional thoughts DURING install: 

1. We definitely still had stains on our floor when we applied the coating—even after grinding,  pressure washing, commercial scrub. The MCU covers them beautifully—as long as there is some porosity to the floor. After the final product is done, one cannot tell “well here is where I  had previously spilled this or that…”. The MCU totally covers everything.  
2. Even as a thin-build product, it covers the floor with a strong opacity that does not appear thin—after 2 coats of MCU, the concrete was never to be seen again… I would say it has the  “effect” of a higher build system, especially after the clear goes on.  
3. A few TINY (2”x2”) areas bubbled a few hours after the install of the MCU. Not sure what was  going on there (see photos in dropbox)
4. For a multi-coat project, customers need to know that there is a MAJOR difference in finished appearance where you put varying numbers of coats. So, if a customer were to devise a plan of putting 1 coat on half A of his garage and 2 coats on half B, with the rationale that “This side will get more abuse”…. This is a bad idea for aesthetic reasons. You will see a night-and-day difference where you put more coats. (I know this because places where I did a quick 1st coat under workbenches, but no 2nd or 3rd… looks totally different. The texture and color is different). 
5. I would venture to say this product is more forgiving than high build systems in terms of the floor not being perfectly prepped. It just seems to stick to anything. Obviously, that does not mean I discourage prep… but it might mean that an acid wash might be sufficient.  

*The customer providing this information was given special pricing in return for providing photos and honest feedback on a newer product.

Project Photos:

Floor Prep

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First Coat of TruAlloy

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Second Coat of TruAlloy

Third Coat of TruAlloy With Flake:

Clear-Coat After Flake (Uncured):

Final Product Photo:

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Related Link: Garage Floor Epoxy Review