Industries — Automotive

Dealership, service bay and workshop flooring

An automotive floor is really three floors wearing one badge. The showroom is retail — light, gloss and finish quality, judged by customers from the doorway. The service bays are industrial — hoists, jacks, dropped tools, and a chemical set that includes one of the coating world's genuine enemies, brake fluid. And the wash and detail bays are wet rooms, closer to a commercial kitchen than to the showroom thirty metres away. Coating all three with the same system is how dealership floors end up failing in one zone while looking fine in another.

West Pacific specifies each zone against its own conditions, from the manufacturer system lines we install across our commercial and industrial work. The result is one continuous standard of floor across the property, with different chemistry underneath it where the duty changes.

Crack preparation at a Main Street auto body shop in Vancouver: an installer grinding out floor cracks with a dust-extracted grinder between the work bays

Finished light grey floor coating in a Main Street auto body shop in Vancouver, around the frame-machine rails by bays 8, 9 and 10

An auto body shop on Main Street, Vancouver, in 2011: floor cracks ground out under dust extraction (left), and the finished light grey coating laid around the frame-machine rails (right). More on the projects page.

Zone by zone

Three duties, three specifications

Dealership zones and what drives each specification
Zone	What attacks the floor	What the specification prioritises
Showroom	Tyre contact, daily cleaning, sunlight at the glass line	Appearance and gloss retention, UV-stable topcoats, repairable finish
Service bays	Brake fluid, oils, coolant, fuel; point loads from hoists and jacks; dropped tools	Chemical resistance verified per datasheet, impact tolerance, hoist-base detailing, line marking
Wash & detail bays	Constant water, warm detergents, pressure washing	Hot-water tolerance, falls to drain, coving, slip resistance when wet
Parts & storage	Racking loads, cart traffic	Abrasion resistance, dust-proofing, economical build

Chemical resistance is a per-product, per-chemical table in the manufacturer's documentation — a floor is specified against that table, not against the phrase "chemically resistant".

The showroom sells the cars. The service floor pays for the building. They are not the same floor and should not get the same coating.

Working around bookings

Coated without closing the department

Dealerships run on booked service hours, so the floor work runs around them. Bays rotate out of service in groups, prep and coating land on evenings and weekends, and each group returns to service once cured — the department keeps trading through the project. Showroom work is sequenced around vehicle moves and launch events, and wash bays are done one at a time so cleaning capacity never fully stops.

Preparation gets no shortcuts for the schedule: existing coatings and oil-soaked concrete come off mechanically, oil-contaminated slabs are assessed honestly — heavily soaked zones can defeat any coating and are identified before quoting, not discovered after failure — and hoist bases, anchor points and floor drains are detailed as part of the system. The sequence and standard are the same as the rest of our commercial and industrial work; only the calendar is different.

Recent work

Mazda Richmond Automall, service shop

A service bay is one of the harder floors to specify. It takes hoist loads and dropped tools, oil, coolant and brake fluid, tyre scuff at every turn, and it still has to look presentable to a customer standing at the service desk looking in. The concrete here was bare and patchy — porous, stained, and impossible to keep looking clean however often it was swept.

The same service bay after coating: a continuous light grey resinous floor under the scissor hoist

The floor was rebuilt in a ResinTech EWS-S system and finished light, which is why the bay reads brighter in the second photograph under exactly the same lighting.

Client: Mazda Richmond Automall
Setting: Mazda service shop
Location: Richmond, BC
System: ResinTech EWS-S
Completed: Winter 2025

Richmond Auto Mall

Toyota dealership, service drive

A Toyota dealership’s service drive at the Richmond Auto Mall, coated in 2014 with a grey traffic coating. The service drive is where customer cars pull in, so the slab was prepared and its cracks filled first, then the coat was laid from the roll-up doors to the service office and round the drains.

Crew laying the traffic coating at the roll-up doors of a Toyota dealership service drive at the Richmond Auto Mall, over a slab with its cracks filled

Toyota dealership, Richmond Auto Mall, 2014: the prepared slab before coating (left), and the crew laying the coat at the roll-up doors over the filled cracks (right). More on the projects page.

Client: Toyota dealership
Setting: Service drive, Richmond Auto Mall
Work: Crack filling and traffic coating
Completed: 2014

More workshop floors

Hyundai and Finning workshops

Two more floors that take vehicles and heavy equipment every day: an epoxy floor in a Hyundai dealership workshop, and a ResinTech EWS floor in a Finning heavy-equipment workshop.

Glossy epoxy floor coating in a Hyundai dealership workshop — An epoxy floor coating in a Hyundai dealership workshop. More on the projects page.

Finished grey ResinTech EWS floor in a Finning heavy-equipment workshop, with open roller doors — 7,000 square feet of ResinTech EWS in a Finning heavy-equipment workshop. More on the projects page.

Questions we get asked

Automotive flooring FAQs

What does brake fluid do to an epoxy floor?

Brake fluid is one of the harshest common chemicals a shop floor sees — it softens many coatings on contact and stains almost everything if left. Motor oil, coolant and fuel are easier but still real. Chemical resistance is published per system by the manufacturer, and a service bay specification is checked against that list, not against a general claim of chemical resistance.

Can service bays be coated without stopping the service department?

Bays are done in groups — typically evenings and weekends for the prep and coating, with each group back in service after cure. A service department loses some capacity for a period; it does not close. The rotation is planned with the service manager around booked work.

What finish works for a showroom?

Showrooms want light-reflective, seamless floors that photograph well and survive tyre contact and daily cleaning. High-build epoxy or polished concrete both serve, with UV-stable topcoats where daylight floods the glass line. The trade-offs — gloss retention, repairability, slip resistance — are walked through at assessment with samples, not decided from a catalogue.

Do you coat wash bays and detail bays?

Yes, and they are specified differently from dry bays: constant water, warm detergents and pressure-washing point at systems with hot-water tolerance and at falls that actually deliver water to the drains, with coving where walls take spray. A wash bay coated like a dry bay peels early — the conditions, not the room name, set the system.

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