An epoxy floor is a specification, not a commodity. Concrete Your Way specifies and installs commercial and industrial epoxy floor systems across Toronto and the GTA around the loads, the chemicals, and the shutdown window of the facility they go into.
Systems specified for: warehouse and distribution · food and beverage · manufacturing · ESD and anti-static
Commercial and industrial focus
Warehouses, plants, food facilities and fit-outs across Toronto and the GTA.
Prep done mechanically
Shot blasting or diamond grinding, whichever the slab calls for, with moisture vapour testing before any coating goes down.
Specified in mils
Every proposal states the total system thickness in mils.
Rated by GTA clients
4.5 stars · 64 Google reviews
Most commercial epoxy floors don’t fail because epoxy is a bad product. They fail because the wrong system was installed, at the wrong thickness, over concrete that was never properly prepared. Concrete Your Way installs commercial and industrial epoxy floor coatings across Toronto and the GTA — and every project starts with the same three questions: what loads and chemicals will this floor see, what condition is the slab in, and how long can the area be out of service?
That discipline is why a 48,000 sq ft pharmaceutical warehouse in Mississauga trusted us with a full epoxy installation on a 10-day timeline — shot-blast prep, warranted for 5 years — and why developers and general contractors such as the Madison Group have brought us onto their projects.
If you manage a warehouse, plant, food facility, or commercial property, this page explains how we select systems, why surface preparation determines lifespan, and what return-to-service actually looks like — so you can evaluate any epoxy quote, including ours.
Most enquiries we get start one of four ways. Each points to a different part of the specification — jump to what matters for you.
Delaminating epoxy, dusting concrete, an oil-saturated slab. Floor failure is almost never a resin problem — it’s a preparation or specification problem from the original install, and we diagnose the failure mode before we quote a replacement.
GCs and developers need a sub that meets the spec, hits the schedule, and generates no call-backs. New slabs get moisture vapour testing before coating — uncured concrete is the most common cause of early fit-out failures.
CFIA-regulated washdown areas often need urethane cement, not epoxy — standard epoxy delaminates under thermal shock. We spec by zone so you pass inspection without over-buying.
Polyaspartic topcoats and phased installation compress return-to-service from about a week to roughly a day, section by section, while the rest of the facility keeps operating.
See Cure Times and Return to Service ↓
Warehouse and distribution flooring
The resin chemistry, build thickness, and topcoat should follow directly from your operating conditions. These are the systems we install most often, and where each belongs.
Best for: warehouses, manufacturing, logistics and distribution floors carrying forklift and pallet-jack traffic.
100% solids epoxy contains no solvent carrier: what goes down is what cures on the floor, allowing high builds in fewer coats. This is the default for warehouses, manufacturing, and logistics floors carrying forklift and pallet-jack traffic. Water-based epoxies have their place — thin-build recoats and lighter-duty commercial areas — but they cannot deliver the film thickness an industrial floor needs.
On the floor: for our 416 Automation project, a 12,000 sq ft automotive manufacturing facility in Mississauga with heavy oil exposure, we installed two 20-mil coats of 100% solids epoxy with oil mitigation, completed in 7 days.
Best for: CFIA-regulated processing, commercial kitchens, hot washdown and steam-cleaned zones.
Standard epoxy softens and delaminates under thermal shock — the hot-water and steam washdowns routine in CFIA-regulated food and beverage plants. Urethane cement (cementitious urethane) handles thermal cycling, sustained moisture, and organic acids that destroy epoxy. If your facility runs washdown protocols, operates ovens or fryers near the slab, or processes dairy, meat, or beverages, urethane cement is usually the correct spec — sometimes just in the wet zones, with epoxy elsewhere. We cover the decision in detail in our comparison of epoxy versus urethane cement floors.
On the floor: our food-service installs range from the Mon Sheong and Wheatley commercial kitchens to Mucho Burrito locations in Barrie and Bowmanville.
Best for: compressed shutdown windows, freezers, cold storage, and unheated space.
Polyaspartics cure fast, tolerate low temperatures, and offer strong UV stability — which makes them the right call in two situations: compressed shutdown windows, and cold-storage or unheated spaces where epoxy cures poorly or not at all.
On the floor: when a Walmart facility in Huntsville had a failed epoxy floor in a freezer, we repaired it with a polyaspartic system built for that environment. At Fritzy’s Yogurt in Aurora, a designer-specified colour scheme went down as self-levelling resurfacing under a 3-coat polyaspartic finish.
Best for: bike rooms, locker areas, showrooms, service corridors, and back-of-house traffic.
Vinyl flake broadcast into the wet basecoat, sealed under a clear topcoat, adds texture (slip resistance), hides minor slab imperfections, and disguises everyday soiling between cleanings.
On the floor: common in bike rooms, locker areas, showrooms, and service corridors — including a bike room we installed in a downtown Toronto high-rise at 16 York St.
Best for: electronics manufacturing, laboratories, and facilities handling flammable materials.
Electronics manufacturing, labs, and facilities handling flammable materials need floors with controlled electrical resistance. ESD epoxy systems use conductive primers and grounding points to dissipate static to specified resistance ranges. These are engineered installations — grounding layout and post-install resistance testing are part of the job, not an afterthought.
Thickness is where budgets and floor performance are actually decided. As a working guide, always confirmed against the product data sheet in your proposal:
Light commercial traffic, offices, retail back-of-house. Economical, with a shorter recoat cycle.
The standard for warehouse and manufacturing floors — our two-coat, 40-mil total build at 416 Automation sits here. Handles forklift traffic and drum impacts.
Slabs that need resurfacing, heavy point loads, or aggressive service. At AGFA Inc’s Mississauga warehouse, we installed self-levelling cement to restore the slab profile before a 2-coat epoxy system.
A quote that doesn’t state total system thickness in mils isn’t a specification — it’s a guess. Ask every bidder for it.
Send us your facility details — we’ll tell you what we’d specify and why, before you commit to anything.
Epoxy bonds mechanically. If the concrete surface profile is wrong, the best resin on the market peels. This is the single largest difference between a floor that lasts and one that fails in year two. Our process runs the same five steps on every floor:
Shot blasting propels steel shot at the slab to fracture the surface and open the pores — the right prep for large industrial floors and high-build systems, and what we used across all 48,000 sq ft at Mint Pharmaceuticals in Mississauga. Diamond grinding suits smaller areas, edges, and floors with existing coatings or contamination that must come off — at a fish store on Yonge St in Toronto, we ground off glue and tile cement before installing a 3-coat epoxy system. Acid etching, still offered by low-bid installers, does not produce an adequate profile for industrial builds; if a bidder proposes it for your warehouse, that tells you something.
Toronto-area slabs — especially on-grade and below-grade — can transmit enough vapour to blister a coating from beneath. Where readings are high, we specify a moisture-mitigating primer rather than hoping.
Crack and joint repair, spall patching, and — where the slab profile is gone — self-levelling underlayment, as at AGFA. Where the slab is too far gone to coat directly, that becomes a concrete repair and resurfacing scope first, before a coating is worth buying.
Primer, body coat(s), broadcast where specified, topcoat — built to the mil thickness stated in your proposal.
Safety lines applied within the coating system, not painted on top afterward.
A commercial floor is a working surface, and the details are part of the spec:
Aisleways, pedestrian walkways, hazard zones, and rack footprints striped in coloured epoxy or applied within the system — as we did for a production plant in Brampton finished in clear epoxy with integrated safety lines. Lines installed within the coating system outlast painted lines dramatically.
Broadcast aggregate (aluminium oxide, silica, flake) tunes texture zone-by-zone — aggressive in wet process areas, smoother in dry aisles for easier scrubbing. More on this in are epoxy floors slippery?
Standard epoxies resist oils, fuels, and most alkalis; novolac epoxies and urethane cements handle harsher acids and solvents. Bring us your chemical exposure list — it changes the topcoat spec.
For Adidas’s national head office in Vaughan, we delivered a grey-to-black eggshell finish across 4 coats; for Taco Bell washrooms in North York, a metallic epoxy; for the Madison Group’s décor studio, a finish clean enough to sell condos from.
Downtime is usually the real cost of a floor, so we plan installations around it. As industry guidance — always confirmed against the product data sheet in your proposal:
Foot traffic in roughly 24 hours, wheeled traffic in 48–72 hours, full chemical cure around 7 days.
Dramatically compressed — often back in service in about a day, and installable in cold spaces.
On large floors, we section the work so operations continue around it. Mint Pharmaceuticals’ 48,000 sq ft went in over 10 days; 416 Automation’s 12,000 sq ft took 7 — both with timelines committed up front.
If your facility runs warehouse or distribution operations, we’ll build the phasing plan around your receiving schedule, not ours.
48,000 sq ft
Largest single epoxy install — Mint Pharmaceuticals, Mississauga
10 days
Install window on that 48,000 sq ft warehouse floor, phased around operations
5 years
Warranty carried on the Mint Pharmaceuticals system
40 mils
Two-coat industrial build at 416 Automation, Mississauga
Epoxy itself is far harder than the concrete beneath it — when a floor cracks, it’s almost always the slab moving underneath. That’s why our process includes crack repair, joint treatment, and moisture vapour testing before coating. Dynamic joints are honoured through the system with flexible sealant rather than coated over, so slab movement doesn’t telegraph into the finish.
As industry guidance, confirmed against the product data sheet in your proposal: roughly 10–15 years in lighter commercial service, 7–10 years under medium industrial traffic, and 5–8 years in hard-run zones — with the topcoat renewed on a 3–5 year recoat cycle in the highest-wear areas. The base build stays bonded; only the wear surface is refreshed. Lifespan depends on build thickness, traffic, and prep quality more than on brand of resin. Full breakdown: how long do commercial epoxy floors last.
Smooth-troweled epoxy can be — which is why slip resistance is a specification choice, not luck. Broadcast aggregate and flake texture are tuned zone-by-zone to your operations: aggressive texture in wet and washdown areas, smoother finish in dry aisles. Details: are epoxy floors slippery?
If the area sees hot washdowns, steam, thermal shock, or organic acids — typical in CFIA-regulated processing — urethane cement is usually correct; epoxy in those conditions delaminates. Dry storage, packaging, and corridor areas are often better value in epoxy. Most food plants get a hybrid spec. See epoxy vs urethane cement.
As industry guidance, confirmed against the product data sheet in your proposal: foot traffic typically returns in about 24 hours on standard epoxy, wheeled traffic in 48–72; polyaspartic systems compress that to roughly a day. On larger floors we phase the installation so the rest of the facility keeps operating — 48,000 sq ft at Mint Pharmaceuticals took 10 days total, phased.
Almost certainly prep or moisture, not the epoxy. Coatings applied over contaminated, unprofiled, or moisture-laden concrete fail at the bond line — no brand of resin survives a bad bond. Our standard process — shot blasting or diamond grinding, oil mitigation where needed, and moisture vapour testing before coating — exists specifically to prevent the failure you already paid for once.
No reputable installer coats over a failing floor — the new system inherits the old bond. We mechanically remove failed coatings by grinding or shot blasting, correct the cause (usually moisture or inadequate original prep), and rebuild from sound concrete. That’s exactly what the Walmart Huntsville freezer repair required.
For some facilities, commercial concrete polishing is the better-value system — we install both, so our recommendation follows your operating conditions, not our inventory. If the slab itself is the problem, repair and resurfacing comes first; new builds and fit-outs start at concrete floor installation, and distribution operators can start at warehouse flooring.
We install commercial epoxy floors across Toronto, Mississauga, Vaughan, Scarborough, North York, Brampton and Richmond Hill, with dedicated pages for Richmond Hill and Burlington. Beyond the GTA, our crews have worked in Aurora, Barrie, Bowmanville and as far north as Huntsville.
Tell us your square footage, facility type, and shutdown window. We’ll respond with a system recommendation and a site assessment — from the contractor Mint Pharmaceuticals and the Madison Group hired.
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