Garage floor coatings are designed to enhance the floor’s durability, protect the concrete surface, and improve your garage’s aesthetics. However, without proper care, it can’t do its job effectively. Hot tire pickup can occur when vehicle tires soften and lift floor coatings, leaving behind marks or damage.
If you’re wondering how to protect your garage floor coating from hot tire pickup, keep reading to learn more about what it is, why it happens, and how to avoid it.
What Is Hot Tire Pickup?
First, let’s go over what exactly hot tire pickup is. When you park your vehicle in the garage after cruising around the town — especially when it’s hot outside — the place where the tires meet the floor experiences a lot of heat and pressure. In these situations, the tire material can transfer onto the floor coating or the coating itself can lift or peel off the concrete.
Hot tire pickup can look like dark, tire-shaped marks, areas of peeling, or patches where the coating has come off. It’s one of the most common complaints among homeowners with residential garage floor coatings, but it can occur in some commercial spaces, as well.
Why Does Hot Tire Pickup Happen?
Let’s take a closer look at the chemistry behind why this happens. Tires get extremely hot while driving, especially when traveling on highways. This heat softens the tires, and when it heats up the floor, it softens the coating, as well. The combination of heat, pressure, and softening can cause plasticizers and oils in the rubber tires to leach out and bond with coatings, leading to damage.
But why does this happen to some floor coatings and not others? If your floor coating is low-quality or thinly applied (like often found with standard paints or DIY kits), it’s more prone to failure. This is especially true if the floor coating has not properly cured before driving on it. Additionally, inadequate surface prep prior to coating application (not grinding or etching the concrete) weakens adhesion.
Environmental factors also play a role. Hot climates increase the likelihood of hot tire pickup by making the rubber even hotter, which is why it’s essential to be vigilant during the summer.
How to Prevent Hot Tire Pickup
Now that you know why hot tire pickup happens, let’s go over some prevention strategies.
Choose the Right Coating
One of the most effective ways to avoid hot tire pickup is to choose the right coating. Invest in professional products and application services, not DIY kits. Avoid painting your concrete floors — paint is much less durable and more prone to issues. Epoxy coatings are better than paint, but polyaspartic and polyurethane coatings are the best, offering superior resistance.
Proper Surface Preparation
Proper surface preparation is also essential. Grinding, sand blasting, and dry ice blasting are commonly used to prep concrete surfaces for coating applications and ensure the surface is smooth and even. The surface prep process also involves repairing cracks and removing contaminants like dust and oil.
Correct Application and Curing
Once you have the right coating and a prepared surface, you must properly apply the coating at the right thickness and allow it to fully cure before parking your vehicle on the floor.
This is where professional services are most valuable — technicians are trained in the best practices and procedures, ensuring high-quality, long-lasting results. They also have access to industrial-grade coatings with a higher tolerance for heat, further reducing the risk of hot tire pickup. Plus, they often offer warranties or guarantees, providing valuable peace of mind that if anything goes wrong, you’ll be taken care of.
What To Do If You Already Have Hot Tire Pickup
Prevention strategies won’t do you any good if you’re already dealing with hot tire pickup. In these cases, try scrubbing the floor to see if it’s just tire residue. If the coating has peeled or lifted, don’t try to touch it up yourself — professional repairs or re-coating may be necessary to address the underlying adhesion issues.
Reliable Garage Floor Coatings by Brush Brothers
At Brush Brothers Coatings, we use high highest quality products, along with proper surface preparation and application techniques, to ensure you won’t have to worry about hot tire pickup. Investing in a professional garage floor coating from us is the best way to achieve lasting durability and protection. Contact us today to learn more or submit a request for an instant online quote.
