One of the nice benefits of interlocking tiles is that little preparation of the garage floor is generally required before installation. You can lay them right on top of your oily and concrete dust ridden floor if you like and almost no one would be the wiser. But should you? Sweeping beforehand is a great start, but we want to give you a few recommended tips for prepping your garage floor before you install your garage tiles.
Keep in mind, some of these tips will depend on the current condition of your garage floor as well as the climate of where you live. For many, all that may be needed truly is just sweeping the floor before you begin. Please note that none of these following tips are required to install your interlocking tile, they are just our recommendations based on experience.
Clean the garage floor
OK, we know that this goes without saying. Nobody really wants to lay their brand new garage tile on a disgusting floor, but there is another reason for cleaning it. Cleaning beforehand will reveal any cracks that you may not have been aware of and will also make the floor ready for any of the other recommendations that we cover below.
Unless your concrete is already fairly clean or you have a brand new floor, the best method is to mix up some powdered Tide laundry detergent in a bucket (or your favorite powdered detergent) and scrub the floor down. Hose it out well and then let it dry. For more information, we cover how to clean a garage floor in depth here.
Seal cracks in the concrete
If you live in a snow belt then the last thing you want is watery road salts and deicing fluids finding their way deep into the concrete of your garage floor. Water can cause freeze thaw damage and cracks can be the biggest contributor.
We admit that if you are installing a solid design interlocking tile then not a whole lot of water is going to get through to the concrete below. However, the free-flow, self-draining styles are great winter weather tiles because they are easier to keep clean and are more slip resistant. They also deposit all that winter water and snow melt onto the concrete underneath your tile due to their design.
If these are your tiles of choice, then sealing your cracks is more a necessity than an option.
Notice that we said, “seal the cracks.” Since you are not applying a coating or painting the floor, a strong structural repair that is ground flat with the concrete is not needed. You just need to seal the crack to prevent water intrusion.
The easiest method is to just wire brush the cracks after cleaning the garage floor and then seal them up with a flexible polyurethane sealant. SikaFlex self-leveling sealant is our favorite. It’s inexpensive, easy to apply, and you can find it at your local home improvement center for less than $10 a tube.
If you have larger cracks that are deep, fill them up first to within 3/8 to 1/2 inch from the top with silica sand or clean play sand before applying the sealant. This will allow your sealant to go farther and prevent it from sinking before it cures.
Seal the concrete before interlocking tile installation
What? OK, right now we know what you may be thinking. Why would you want to seal the concrete when you are planning to spend good money for a nice interlocking tiled garage floor?
The reason depends mostly on the climate where you live. If you experience snowy winters then you will be bringing road salts and deicing fluids into the garage. While these chemicals will not harm your interlocking tile, they are hard on your concrete.
Road salts will cause spalling and pitting. You may already have this problem with your garage floor and it could be one of the reasons why you are installing interlocking tiles in the first place. If you have a self-draining style of interlocking tile, then these chemicals will still get deposited right onto the concrete under the tile.
A good concrete penetrating sealer will protect your garage floor against road salts as well as repel liquids in general. They will also prevent further damage to your garage floor if you have this problem already. They can be purchased for less than $50 to cover a standard 2-car garage and are very easy to apply.
It’s also cheap insurance to protect the concrete of your garage floor in general, including limiting how badly it would stain if you had a major oil spill. You can read more about penetrating sealers here.
If your floor is clean, it will take less than an hour to apply the sealer and you can be installing your interlocking tiles within a few hours.
Lay down landscape fabric
Because interlocking garage floor tiles are made of plastic and are hollow underneath, they have their own unique sound when walking on them. Every once in a while, a particular tiled floor may make a clicky clack sound that some people do not care for.
Laying landscape fabric during interlocking tile installaion
The remedy to help lesson that sound is to lay synthetic landscape fabric down onto the concrete underneath the tile. The mesh design of the landscape fabric does a much better job of absorbing sound than the concrete. It helps to dull noise instead of it being amplified from bouncing back and forth in the small hollow off the concrete and underside of the plastic tile.
Because of its thin, mesh synthetic design, landscape cloth will not rot and it will dry quickly if it gets wet.
If you are one of those people that are concerned about your garage tiles making noise, then we recommend that you install the landscape fabric before you install your interlocking tile instead of discovering you need to do it afterwards.
You can usually purchase 400 sf² for less than $30 from the garden department of your local home improvement center. We talk more about reducing noisy garage floor tile here.
Final Tips
As we said previously, there is little you have to do to prepare the garage floor before installing interlocking garage tiles. If you have a fairly new floor and don’t live in a snowy climate, then sweeping the floor may be all that you need to do.
Even if you have a poor concrete floor with cracks, pitting, and salt damage, you can install the interlocking tiles right on top without doing a thing to the concrete in your garage and it will not affect the tiles.
However, if noise is your biggest concern or you live in an area where your garage floor will encounter road salts and deicing fluids every winter, then you may want to follow some of these tips to protect the concrete in your garage before installation.
Can interlocking floor tiles be installed over vct tile that is already laid on basement laundry floor? If so, would it be advisable to lay the landscaping fabric first?
Sure it can Joena. Complaints of noise is very low, but the landscape fabric is very inexpensive so it’s not a big investment to lay it down first if you want. If the tiles make any noise at all it will be subdued compared to concrete since VCT is softer.
Hi do you have one for a driveway that water can drain underneath and won’t fade in sunlight? Thanks
Hello Eoin. Just to clear things up, we do not sell flooring. We recommend that you contact SwissTrax and talk to them as they have interlocking tile that can used outdoors. Keep in mind though that these are not intended for driveways. They are not surrounded by 3 walls to keep them from moving so you would have to anchor them down somehow and still allow room for the tiles to move due to expansion and contraction.
What about if someone is installing the interlocking garage floor tile in a basement, specifically RaceDeck Diamond?
I am assuming there would need to be very little floor prep before laying the tile in this scenario, since it will not be exposed to much water, salt, etc. like a garage floor could.
The only cracks I have are the expansion joints. Should I fill those in at the surface?
Should I seal the concrete first? As I do not expect any moisture beyond what the concrete might be creating.
Hi Shawn. You are correct, there is not much prep required. Filling in the expansion joints is not necessary. Being that it’s a basement, we would recommend applying a penetrating sealer first in order to prevent possible moisture intrusion that can create humidity issues at different times of the year, but that is entirely up to you.
Thanks Shea, sealer is installed.
Do these tiles need to be acclimated before install?
I left them out in the Garage last night. They will be installed in the basement.
If they need acclimization, how long? I’m itching to get them installed, but want to do it right.
Thanks!
You’re welcome Shawn. Yes, you want to acclimate them to the environment they are being installed in. Move them to the basement and give them 24 hours and you will be ready to go. If you unpack and separate them they will acclimate faster.
What About minor low spots in concrete? I get 2 spots in my garage where puddles like to develop near the rear tires of my car. Does the ground need to be completely level before installing tiles? I want to do solid tiles since I would have no way push the water away in the low spots with the drainage tiles.
No garage floor is perfectly flat Ben. Minor low spots are the norm and will be perfectly fine with interlocking tiles, so no worries there.
This is very helpful. There are vinyl tiles on my garage floor over the concrete.
Some of the vinyl tiles are cracked and there are many missing tiles revealing the bare concrete–areas up to 5′ x 6′. Is it necessary to remove all the vinyl tiles or smooth the floor with something to fill in for the missing tiles before installing interlocking tiles?
Hi Jan. It would be best to remove the vinyl tiles first if you can. It’s not too difficult with the right tools. A heavy duty scraper like this one works wonders on VCT. If the tiles are already coming up it may be easier than you think. Another option is to just fill the empty spaces with more vinyl tile. You can find peel and stick vinyl tiles as home improvement centers on sale for less than .50 per square foot sometimes. Don’t worry about lining them up perfectly or small gaps between the tiles. Just fill the space. You can lay interlocking tile over your existing floor, however, the tiles will move some (up and down) as you walk or drive over those areas and it may sound hollow when walking over those areas as well.
How do you move heavy rollaways onto this material?
Hi John. There are a variety of ways you can do this. Assuming you have the standard 1/2″ thick tiles, you can cut two strips of 1/4″ plywood with one strip being a few inches wider than the other. Stack the strips on top of each other against the tile edge with the wider strip of course being on the bottom. This will give you a good step-up ramp to the tile floor.