Do you like your Racedeck floor??

I went with ceramic tiles in my garage. With the racetrack tiles I would think water and dirt drips under the tile and sits there. I can sweep and even hose down the floor and squeege off easily.

 

I have had Racedeck floor since 2005 and I really like it. We live in Alberta where we don't get a lot of snow usually, but enough to make a floor messy, but even more importantly we have considerable freeze thaw cycles which cracks floors.

The floor has been very easy to clean, the and it looks great. Our garage is over 1000 ft2, so it wasn't an inexpensive purchase, but I would not hesitate to do it all over again.

 

I just did our Garage with RaceDeck last month - and am loving it. The floor had originally been done with epoxy, which looked really good for almost 5 years, then progressively worse and worse. To re-do in a good 2 part professionally applied epoxy would have been very expensive and a logistical nightmare, and I've liked all the RaceDeck floors I've seen, so it was a pretty easy decision.

It took about 3 hours to lay the tiles for the main 2 bays, then another 5 hours to roll the lift over, lay the third bay, then trim the edge pieces etc. The 4 post lift sits right on top of the tiles. The sound when walking on it is different than bare concrete, but not a clacking, and not annoying at all. After the first day or two, you don't even notice the difference anymore.
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I have liked my Racedeck floor a lot, and had it professionally installed. Now 5 years later,
I don't get off my butt near as often to clean it. Mine is black, white and red, and I wonder if gray might make it look cleaner for longer. It has worn well, except for a spot where a tire spun and left an imprint. I have extras to replace it, but too lazy for that too.
Here are a couple of pics.
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Love mine. Have had it 2 yrs. Loved it so much, I put it in my 2nd garage last year (different pattern/colors).
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Yes, I do wash the cars there (my floor has radiant heating, it still heats the garage fine with the tiles on it). I have a floor drain in the garage, it's covered by two flow tiles in the light gray section, visible in both pics. the water does run across to the drain very well. Being in Alberta also, we got a fair bit of sand, grit, etc. tracked in by the cars in winter with the slush/snow, and it's actually easier to wash out from the RaceDeck floor than it was on the epoxy floor. I don't think much of the sand/grit gets between the tiles, they're pretty snug.

 

Is the best purchase option directly through racedeck.com? Unless of course you're paying som to install and the material just looking to install myself.

 

I have had my Race Deck flooring since 03. Very durable!

Rb
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When building my garage, I considered Racedeck, Swisstrax, and similar systems and did as much reasearch as I could. They are quite appealing. Some who installed them though complained about how difficult it was to keep the seams clean. I also wondered about oil and liquids spilled on the floor. That made me decide against them.

They seem to be fine though for parking garages and dens. My opinion only.

I decided on epoxy finally. On reflection, tile might be a good alternative.

Visit Garage Journal. They have a forum just on floors. Very instructive.

 

Ditto to this advice - www.garagejournal.com . The President/owner of RaceDeck participates there - in several of the threads, you'll find an offer to call RaceDeck directly (ask for... Jenn?, IIRC... it's in the RaceDeck threads there), and members of Garage Journal forum get a decent discount. Again IIRC, standard price is around $3.50/sq ft, the GJ member discount is ~$2.60/sq ft plus free shipping.

 

I went with engineered travertine tile. Basically fack travertine. It wasn't cheap, vertually industructable. My first installer didn't do a good job (long story). It would have been better and cheaper to go with real tile or real travertine by the time my project was completed. My fake travertine looks real and allows install without grout seams and thats why I choose it. If I did it again I would use the real stuff and make the grount lines as small as possible and seal, seal, seal the grout!! I need to get some pix of the completed job. My fav is the paint.
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I love my RaceDeck flooring. It's very tough. Solvents don't hurt it. You can hit it with a ball peen hammer. But it's also forgiving. So a dropped glass doesn't always mean a broken glass. It's also not slippery when wet.

One big plus (in my case, a huge plus), is that it allows the floor to breath. I converted a bank barn (a barn that is built into the side of a bank) into my garage. I poured a very thick concrete floor. Since it was built into the side of a bank or hill, the concrete released mositure for a long time. I don't think that I could have used epoxy for many months. With RaceDeck, I was able to lay the tiles on the floor a week after the floor was poured.

 

The gist I've gathered is the cheaper off-brand products are most likely to do this. I won't have this worry as my garage door faces north.

 

Okay, so I've spent some time on the RD website and man is it going to be tough to finalize a design!

 

I'm sure the material will stand oils and fluids very well. My concern is that spilled fluids will seep in between the cracks and get trapped beneath the tiles. My workshop section has a perfectly (well, as close to perfect as we can it) flat floor, for wheel alignment & corner weight adjusting, so fluids will not drain out. Even if there were a slight incline, I imagine oil would cling to the floor beneath the tiles. Also, would grease, etc., be difficult to clean from the seems between the tiles?

I have never had Racedeck, so those concerns probably have little basis, but they did swing me toward an epoxy floor.

 

I'm concidering Racedeck for my garage and plan to use some free flow tiles and also plan to drill holes in the concrete to allow water to flow under my slab (I have lots of stone under it).

I'm planning that each spring I'll need to remove a section and clean the conrete floor from all the sand and crap used in the north east - I'm OK with that.

However, I'm not liking the idea of the click-clack sound so I'm wondering if anyone put a thin rubber membrane down first and if so, any issues with doing that?

 

The clicking sound in my garage rarely occurs. It all depends on well the builder laid your concrete floor. It does not bother me at all I think it is just an excuse for not buying it. Everybody who sees my garage floor loves it.

 

I've had Race Deck blue and grey tiles on my garage floor since our house was built in 2003 and I like it as far as durability. I have found it difficult to clean oil spots and other stains that seem to now be imbedded in some of them. I've used all sorts of stain and grease removers (including Race Deck's own cleaner) but they still haven't taken out some of the stains. I even purchased a dual pad floor scrubber but that still hasn't worked well. I do wish the manufacturers of vinyl and rubber products would imbed some sort of sealant on their products someday. For example, I've had trouble with ALL vinyl and rubber floor mats discoloring to the point where no product (GoJo, Softscrub, Chlorox, Orange degreasers included) really takes some of the stains out.

Having said that, I sill really like Race Deck. I just wish someone made a stain-proof sealant that you could put on them.

 

Try Oil Flo cleaner that works great. I use it on my cars to remove undercoating and to spot clean my red, silver, and black race deck tiles.