When Mint Pharmaceuticals needed 48,000 square feet of warehouse epoxy flooring installed in 10 days — around racking the client had already installed, while HVAC and roofing trades worked in the same building — we handed the floor over on schedule and backed it with a 5-year warranty. ConcreteYourWay has been installing warehouse floor coatings, polished concrete, and slab repairs across Toronto and the GTA since 2007, and because we’re a concrete contractor first and a coating installer second, the slab gets fixed and coated under one contract, by one company that’s accountable for both.
Planning a warehouse floor project? Call (905) 669-5353 for a free on-site assessment.
Warehouse floors we’ve installed across the GTA
Mint Pharmaceuticals, Mississauga — 48,000 sq ft in 10 days
A pharmaceutical warehouse can’t sit idle waiting for its floor. To hit a hard 10-day handover, we prepped the slab with a Dynamic shot-blasting machine that profiles 10,000–15,000 square feet per day — equipment that, at the time, only two GTA companies owned — and hand-ground around the racking already in place. Crews ran 10–12 hour shifts to place two coats of light grey epoxy while coordinating with the other trades sharing the space, and the finished floor carries a 5-year warranty. Read the full Mint Pharmaceuticals case study.
What this means for you: prep production rate decides how long your warehouse is offline. A contractor grinding a few thousand square feet a day is quoting a very different shutdown than one shot blasting 15,000.
416 Automation, Mississauga — saving an oil-soaked slab from a re-pour
The concrete under this 12,000-square-foot automotive manufacturing floor was broken and saturated with oil — a substrate most contractors would condemn, because coatings applied over contamination peel. We ran oil mitigation, repaired the broken sections, then installed two coats of epoxy at 20 mils each — a build in the class that routine forklift and pallet-jack traffic demands. Four technicians, seven days, and the client saved thousands over pouring new concrete. See the 416 Automation project.
AGFA, Mississauga — resurface first, coat second
AGFA’s warehouse slab was too worn to coat directly. We resurfaced every unit with self-levelling polymeric cement to create a new substrate, then installed dark grey epoxy protected by two clear wear coats. Coating over a failing surface is the fastest way to waste a flooring budget; rebuilding the substrate first is why our floors last.
Walmart, Huntsville — when epoxy is the wrong answer, we say so
In Walmart’s freezer facility, the existing epoxy had lost its flexibility under sub-zero temperatures and constant moisture, and it was letting go. We removed it and installed a polyaspartic chip system that tolerates the temperature extremes of cold storage. The lesson: no single chemistry suits every warehouse. Freezers, washdown zones, and loading docks each get specified on their own conditions — even when that means recommending something other than epoxy.
We’ve also installed warehouse epoxy and concrete polishing for EM Dynamics’ metal-fabrication facility in Scarborough, and coated a new Stouffville warehouse complete with safety-line striping for forklift and pedestrian traffic.
How we spec a warehouse floor coating
Every one of those projects followed the same discipline. Here’s what goes into a ConcreteYourWay warehouse quote — and what’s usually missing from a cheap one.
Moisture testing before anything touches the slab. Older GTA slabs were often poured without an effective under-slab vapour barrier, and moisture vapour is the classic root cause of blistered, delaminated coatings. Suspect slabs get moisture-tested — in-situ relative humidity probes (ASTM F2170, with 75% RH the common pass limit) or calcium chloride testing (ASTM F1869, 3 lb per 1,000 sq ft per 24 hours). Where readings run high, your quote prices the fix up front — a vapour-barrier epoxy primer or a switch to a moisture-tolerant system — before you sign, not after your floor bubbles.
Mechanical surface preparation, not acid etching. Industry guidance attributes the large majority of coating failures to inadequate prep, which is why our specs call for dust-collected steel shot blasting to a proper concrete surface profile (CSP 3–5 per ICRI Guideline 310.2), with diamond grinding at edges, around rack legs, and wherever old coatings need to come off — the same near-dustless prep that let us work Mint Pharmaceuticals’ occupied site.
Thickness matched to your wheels. Thin-film coatings around 7–10 mils suit foot and cart traffic only — not a warehouse spec. Pallet jacks and routine forklift traffic call for 20–30 mil builds, typically with a quartz broadcast; loading docks, staging lanes, and hard-wheel zones step up to 35+ mils or troweled mortar systems; coolers, freezers, and hot-washdown areas are urethane-cement territory. Under-building thickness for the traffic is the easiest corner for a low bidder to cut.
Slip resistance, zoned. Texture is engineered by broadcasting aggregate into the wet coat — aggressive at docks and wet areas, smoother in dry pick aisles where cleanability and wheel wear matter more.
Safety markings installed in the coating, not on it. Tape and floor paint peel under lift-truck wheels. We stripe forklift lanes, pedestrian walkways, and dock staging grids as coloured epoxy locked under the wear coat — as on the Stouffville project. Durable, separated pedestrian routes are also how Ontario employers demonstrate due diligence under OHSA, with CSA B335 guiding lift-truck safety practice.
Keeping your warehouse running while we work
Most of our warehouse clients never fully close. We phase installs zone by zone, work nights and weekends, run dust-collected prep in occupied buildings, and coat around rack legs so your racking stays put — exactly how we handled Mint Pharmaceuticals’ pre-installed racking. As a rule of thumb, standard epoxy takes foot traffic in roughly 24 hours and forklifts in 48–72; where you need faster, a polyaspartic topcoat takes foot traffic in 6–8 hours and wheels in about 24 — close a zone Friday night, run forklifts Monday. Your proposal states the milestones for each phase in writing.
Comparing quotes? Ask every bidder three questions: How will you test for moisture? What prep method and profile? What mil build, where? Then put our written spec beside theirs — (905) 669-5353.
Warehouse concrete polishing: the coating-free alternative
If your slab is dusting — coating racking and product, clogging equipment filters — a coating isn’t the only fix. For dry-goods storage, warehouse concrete polishing often beats a coating: there’s no film to delaminate, the slab can breathe (so moisture vapour isn’t a risk), dusting stops, and the reflective surface brightens high-bay space. At RotoPrecision in Mississauga we polished more than 10,000 square feet of decades-old industrial concrete back into service. Polished concrete offers no chemical barrier, though — coatings still win wherever there are oils, chemicals, or washdowns. Many facilities sensibly combine both: polish the bulk storage floor, coat the battery-charging, maintenance, and washdown zones. We install both, so the recommendation follows your operation, not our product line.
Warehouse floor repair: fix the slab before you coat it
Spalled control joints are the most expensive small problem in a warehouse: hard forklift wheels pound broken joint edges wider every shift, damaging wheels, bearings, and product along the way. We rebuild spalled joint shoulders and fill joints full-depth with semi-rigid epoxy or polyurea fillers — rigid enough to transfer hard-wheel loads across the joint, unlike flexible caulking. Fast-set polyurea can be shaved and back under traffic in roughly 30–60 minutes, so aisle repairs fit inside a working shift. Broader damage — cracks, worn surfaces, oil-soaked concrete — is handled through concrete repair and resurfacing before any coating goes down, the way AGFA’s floor was rebuilt before coating. For manufacturing plants and facilities beyond warehousing, see our industrial flooring page.
Why GTA facility managers shortlist ConcreteYourWay
- Warehouse and commercial floors installed across the GTA since 2007 — Mississauga, Scarborough, Vaughan, Stouffville, and beyond
- Trusted by names including Walmart, Adidas’ national head office in Vaughan, The Keg head office, CIBC at 25 King St W, and Conestoga College
- A 5-year warranty delivered on our flagship 48,000 sq ft warehouse epoxy install
Warehouse flooring FAQ
Do we have to shut down the warehouse?
Almost never entirely. We phase the work zone by zone on nights and weekends, prep with dust-collected equipment in occupied space, and use fast-cure systems where turnaround is critical. Mint Pharmaceuticals’ 48,000 sq ft floor went in around live trades and pre-installed racking in 10 days.
What does warehouse epoxy flooring cost in the GTA?
As a market guide, commercial epoxy systems typically run about $5–$12 per square foot installed, heavy-duty high-build and chemical-resistant systems $8–$15, and polished concrete less. Price per square foot drops significantly with area, and slab condition, moisture mitigation, and off-hours scheduling are the biggest variables — which is why we quote after a site visit and moisture testing, not from a price sheet.
How soon can forklifts drive on a new floor?
As a rule of thumb for standard epoxy: foot traffic in roughly 24 hours, forklifts in 48–72 hours, full chemical cure in about a week — confirmed against the product data sheet in your proposal. Polyaspartic topcoats compress that to foot traffic in 6–8 hours and wheels in about 24.
Can you install in winter?
Yes — winter installs in heated GTA warehouses are routine. Standard epoxies want slab temperatures around 13–15°C with the surface safely above the dew point, so unheated space may need temporary heat and dock-door scheduling. Cold-environment work is familiar ground — see the Walmart Huntsville freezer project.
How long will a warehouse floor coating last?
Honestly: expect 10–15 years in light-duty service, 7–10 in typical medium-duty use, and 5–8 in hard-run forklift lanes. The wear coat is renewable — recoating just the high-traffic lanes when they dull restores the floor at a fraction of replacement cost.
Our last epoxy floor peeled within two years. Why would yours last?
Because almost every early failure we’re called to fix traces back to shortcuts before the coating went down: no moisture test, acid etching or paint over contamination instead of mechanical prep, or a light-duty build under forklift traffic. Our process is designed to eliminate exactly those — it’s why we could put a 5-year warranty on a 48,000 sq ft floor. Put our spec beside your last contractor’s, line by line.
Get a floor spec’d on your warehouse, not a template
Tell us your square footage, your traffic, and your downtime window. We’ll walk the slab, test where it matters, and hand you a written spec you can hold every other bid against — prep method, mil build, moisture plan, phasing schedule, and firm pricing. Call (905) 669-5353 or book your free on-site assessment today.
