Eight things
we won't skip
Every one of these costs us money on every job. They are also the entire reason a floor is still bonded in year fifteen.
We diamond grind. We never acid etch.
Acid etching is the cheap alternative to grinding: pour muriatic acid, scrub, rinse, coat. It produces an inconsistent surface profile, leaves salts behind if the rinse is imperfect, cannot remove contamination or old coatings, and cannot flatten anything. It exists because it is fast and requires no equipment. Every failed coating we have removed was etched, not ground.
In practice
Planetary diamond grinders with HEPA dust extraction, profiled to CSP 2-5 depending on system.
We moisture test before we quote.
A slab on grade without a working vapour barrier moves water upward continuously. Trap that under a coating and hydrostatic pressure lifts the film off, usually in year two. A moisture test costs a contractor a kit and a return visit, skipping it makes a quote look cheaper and moves the entire risk onto you, who finds out two years later.
In practice
Calcium chloride or in-situ RH probe on every interior slab. The reading goes on your written quote.
Full broadcast, not partial.
A partial broadcast scatters flake to 40-60% coverage so the base colour shows between chips, using about a third of the material. It is what most budget "flake system" quotes are actually pricing. We broadcast to full rejection, until the floor will not take another chip, then scrape it back flat the next day.
In practice
Roughly 0.5-0.8 lbs of flake per square foot, scraped and vacuumed before topcoat.
Repairs happen before resin.
Cracks get chased into a V and filled with rigid polyurea that cures harder than the concrete around it. Spalls and pop-outs are rebuilt with resin mortar and ground flush. Control joints are filled flush or honoured through the coating depending on whether the slab is still moving. Coating over unrepaired damage just prints the damage back in a new colour.
In practice
Repair is a line on the quote, not a mid-job discovery.
Written, fixed, itemised quotes.
Our quotes name the products, the coverage rates, the CSP profile and the total film thickness in mils. That is not paperwork for its own sake. It is what lets you hold us to a standard, and what lets you compare our number against anyone else on the same terms rather than on a single figure.
In practice
Fixed price. No time-and-materials. No change orders for anything visible on the site visit.
The owner is on the job.
Matt quotes it, Matt runs the grinder, and Matt answers the phone in three years when you have a question. There is no sales rep who hands you to a subcontractor you have never met. The person who told you what would happen is the person who does it.
In practice
Small crew by choice. We take fewer jobs and do them properly.
We will talk you out of the wrong product.
Metallic in a working shop, a dark deck on a south-facing patio, a coating on a slab that should be polished, a full system on a floor that only needs a densifier. We would rather lose the upsell than install something that will disappoint you. The referral is worth more than the margin.
In practice
A densifier at $1.50/sq ft is a real recommendation when it is the right one.
Cure schedules are not negotiable.
Twenty-four hours to walk, seventy-two to park. Not because we are cautious, but because a floor that has not finished cross-linking will take a tire print permanently. We would rather have an awkward conversation about the schedule than hand over a floor that gets damaged in its first week.
In practice
Handover includes a maintenance sheet and the product data sheets for your records.
New brand, not a new contractor
Apex Concrete Coating Ltd. is a new name. It is not a new tradesperson. Matthew Becker has been installing floors across the Okanagan for over a decade through Becker Flooring, where coating work grew into a specialty of its own, different equipment, different chemistry, different failure modes, and a body of knowledge that had outgrown being one line on a flooring company's service list.
So it became its own business. Same owner, same standards, same phone answered by the same person, with the equipment, the product relationships and the focus that concrete coating actually deserves. If you have worked with Becker Flooring before, nothing about how we work has changed.
Our launch gallery uses clearly labelled generated scenes and planning examples. Explore the flooring application conceptsto see possible systems and finishes. We will add documented Apex projects as jobs finish.
Hold us to it
Every claim on this page is checkable on the site visit and written into the quote.