Industrial Epoxy Flooring for Toronto Manufacturing and Distribution Facilities

Forklift traffic and load-bearing performance

Forklift damage is rarely caused by the weight of the truck — it is caused by concentrated shear at the contact patch when a loaded truck turns. Hard polyurethane and steel wheels transmit that shear straight into the coating. A thin roll-on film has nothing to absorb it and tears at the edges; a troweled epoxy mortar has enough mass and compressive strength to spread the load into the slab.

For heavy forklift environments we specify a quartz-filled epoxy mortar at 1/8" or a urethane cement at 3/16", both with compressive strengths well above the concrete beneath them. Control joints in the traffic path are treated with a semi-rigid polyurea filler so the joint edge is supported rather than being a hard shoulder that spalls under wheels.

We also look at where the trucks actually go. Mapping your aisle layout lets us put the expensive build where the abuse is and a lighter, less costly system under racking and in low-traffic storage — which usually saves more than it costs.

• Quartz-filled mortar in aisles and turning circles
• Semi-rigid polyurea joint fill to protect joint edges
• Reinforced dock plate and ramp transitions
• Traffic mapping so budget goes where wear happens

Concrete preparation is the whole job

Roughly 80% of resinous floor failures trace back to preparation, not product. A coating can only be as sound as the surface it bonds to, so this is where our crews spend most of their time on site.

We begin with a moisture vapour test and a bond assessment. The slab is then mechanically profiled — diamond grinding for most interiors, shot blasting for large open areas or heavily contaminated concrete — to an ICRI CSP 3 to CSP 5 profile depending on system thickness. Acid etching is never used; it leaves salts behind and cannot produce a consistent profile.

Repairs come next: cracks are chased out and filled with an epoxy or polyurea, spalls and pits are rebuilt with a fast-set mortar, and low spots that would hold water are levelled. Control joints are honoured, not bridged, so the slab can still move without cracking the coating. Only then does the primer go down.

For an in-depth look at our preparation methods, see our dedicated page on concrete grinding and sealing — the same surface preparation discipline underpins every coating we install.

• Calcium chloride or in-situ RH moisture testing
• Shot blasting and diamond grinding to CSP 3–5
• Crack chasing, spall rebuild and levelling
• Documented profile and primer records at handover

Limitations you should know before you buy

We would rather set expectations than oversell. Epoxy systems are rigid; they will telegraph a moving structural crack no matter how well the crack is filled, so slabs with active differential settlement need structural remediation first. Standard epoxy ambers under direct UV, which is why exterior loading docks get an aliphatic polyaspartic or urethane topcoat instead.

Very smooth gloss finishes become slippery when wet — in wash-down and freezer-adjacent areas we broadcast aggregate for grip and accept a less glossy, harder-to-mop surface as the trade-off. And no coating will fix a slab with excessive moisture drive unless a mitigation primer is used, which adds both cost and a day to the schedule.

If your facility has one of these conditions, we will say so at the estimate stage and price the correct solution rather than the cheapest one.