Anyone out there finished their hangar floor with swisstrax? Our hangar floor is pretty ugly which this stuff would cover up with ease. We have some uneven cement seams though so not sure if those would crappy. Other than that any other reason no to cover the floor with these? Maybe the 3/4" lip to push the plane up onto might be too much? They sure look nice. No clue on price to cover 50'x35'
There’s one good rea$on not to do it, in my book. They’re $ouch! I filled out the quote request on their website and was shocked at the amount.
50 x 35 is 1750 sq ft and Home Depot sells Swisstrax for $5 a sq ft (average) so that's about $8750 in material. I just epoxied my hangar floor for much less per sq ft...
That looks great. Every couple months I get interested in a product to cover the hangar floor, which is currently about 50% covered with old flaking epoxy. Then I do the math. Hangars are big. Sanding the floor for new epoxy looks like a lot more work than I'm willing to put in to my ugly, leaky, rented metal box. The best idea I've come up with is used commercial carpet squares, but as wet as my hangar gets at times, I'm pretty sure they'd get moldy. The airport is developing a new master plan... maybe that'll include some new hangars
The folks who do epoxy floor coating can also come in and do the prep for you. Just depends on what you want to spend. Although I'm not up to speed on how it works to spend a few thousand dollars on a rental. Maybe if it was my hanger on a long-term land lease??
My next door neighbor put Swiss Trax in his hangar. It’s beautiful. I can’t afford it for the whole hangar, but it’s going in my garage and their gym floor product will go in the gym corner of the hangar.
When we took occupancy of our newest hangar, several others got a bit of a package deal for epoxy floors, but the cost was a bit much for me. Plus the flecks make finding dropped screws, etc, a real beyotch. Modutile.com diamond top tiles with ramp edge on the front for the lip, $2.39 sqft and easy to install, slight variations not a problem, travels with you to another hangar:
I haven’t my hangar, but did my 36x30 detached garage. I used a product called U-Coat-It. It is a water based system. The first coat goes onto damp concrete and has a promoter added. It soaks in some and bonds to the concrete. I have had it in the garage for 20 years and NO chips or coating damage. I did not top coat it with clear, so it has becomes stained some. BTW, speckled floor looks nice, but makes it IMPOSSIBLE to find small parts that you drop.
I put down RaceDeck, which is a competitor brand that used to show at OSH and had a very good show price ($2.50/sf, including shipping?). My floor is a patchwork from remodels and it was a good choice for me. Several caveats: It definitely changes size with temperature. I put it in in the winter and thought I had left enough room around the edges, etc. In the summer, I found out I didn’t judge it right. It really wasn’t hard to redo it, though. I’m talking maybe 3/4” over 50ft. Second part of that is if the sun shines on it, it will buckle - a LOT. It returns to normal later but unless your door faces north (which mine does), keep that in mind. It’s only an issue for me in mid-summer in the afternoon but it is a consideration. Although most stuff won’t stain it, mogas left on it for a while will. I even have a blue 100LL stain or two from when I loaned my hangar out. Clean it up within a day and not a problem. It’s easy to damage with a jack stand, etc. but putting boards down works well and damaged tiles are easy to replace. In fact, RaceDeck been very good with honoring my original price - and free shipping - for the handful of tiles I’ve asked for over the years. It looks great, is good on your feet, is overall easy to clean. I laid weed cloth underneath it to reduce the noise and that has helped a lot. Not sure but I suspect SwissTrax will have similar performance attributes
I really like the look of epoxy flooring, but the architects and contractors I know all recommend against. Even with the fussy prep done by professionals they have had issues with all the brands they’ve tried. I don’t have any recommendations for a nice alternate. Just figured I’d put it out there.
Ooh, following. I bought a port-o-san (lol) and it's parked on some pretty rough and cracked up concrete and I've been uncertain how to improve things. The idea of laying down poly tiles that I can take with me if they get tired of tolerating little planes at the class C airport is appealling. Of course doing the math isn't so hot. Like 3-4 grand worth of tiles. Still... I've spent way more on way stupider things.
