Worked examples
Two floors, run through the same calculators
Two floors, run end to end through the same calculators the tool pages use: what the floor has to survive, how much material that takes, what preparation it needs, and what the moisture reading says about whether to proceed at all. Each result below is produced by those calculators from the inputs listed with each example; some of them rely on this site's own planning allowances — grinding and hand-edging productivity, material loss shares, the flake rate, the cure rule of thumb, the film-thickness bands and the thickness-to-profile mapping — which the methodology page lists as assumptions rather than sourced facts. The preparation hours also include the calculator's own allowances for clean-down between passes and, in Example B, for awkward access.
Both scenarios are deliberately small and domestic. A commercial floor runs the identical chain with different inputs — a heavier traffic class, a larger area, more obstructions and a deeper required profile — and nothing about the method changes; only the numbers that come out of it do.
Example A — a two-car garage, bare concrete, going to flake
Inputs: a 20-by-24-foot garage (480 sq ft), bare broom-finished concrete with one obstruction, a domestic car with automotive chemical exposure, light slip aggregate, broadcast flake finish with a penetrating primer. Product (illustrative, not a real data sheet): 100-percent-solids, 3-gallon kits, a calcium-chloride moisture limit of 5 lb per 1,000 sq ft per 24 hours, a 40-minute pot life, a 10-to-24-hour recoat window, 24 hours to foot traffic and 72 hours to vehicle traffic, all stated at 77°F. Readings in this example: a 2.8 lb per 1,000 sq ft per 24 hour reading at 3 test locations, a vapour retarder under the slab, a slab 400 days old on grade, a 68°F slab surface, and an 8-hour working day.
Moisture verdict: Clear to coat on moisture — Under your product's published limit by 2.2 lb per 1,000 sq ft per 24 h.
Elapsed cure to vehicle traffic across 3 coats: 130.1 hours (5.4 days). What the cure schedule flags: Your slab is 9 Fahrenheit degrees below the temperature the data sheet quotes, so each window has been stretched by a factor of 1.41 using our rule of thumb rather than your product's chemistry. The recoat interval is longer than a working day, so this build cannot be finished in one visit. Plan the room to be out of use overnight between coats.
Reading the chain: a sound bare slab at this size needs one grinding pass (3.7 preparation hours total), a clear moisture result, and about 5.4 days before the garage carries a vehicle again. Nothing here flags a reason to stop — this is the shape of floor the DIY comparison calls a genuinely either-way decision.
Example B — a basement floor with an old sealer, and a moisture reading over the limit
Inputs: a 14-by-18-foot basement room (252 sq ft) with two obstructions and awkward access, an existing cure-and-seal already on the slab, foot traffic only with household chemical exposure, light slip aggregate, a solid-colour finish with no primer. Product (illustrative, not a real data sheet): 67-percent-solids, 2-gallon kits, an in-situ relative-humidity moisture limit of 80 percent. Readings in this example: an 82 percent reading at 1 test location, an unknown vapour retarder, and a slab 9,000 days old, on grade.
Moisture verdict: Mitigation layer required — Over your product's published limit by 2.0 percent relative humidity. The calculator also notes that nobody knows whether a vapour retarder is under this slab, and that 3 test locations are expected for this floor size where one was run — a counting rule this site applies, not a measured figure.
The preparation total includes 1.5 hours this site adds for getting the machine in and out through awkward access — our own allowance, not a measured figure.
Reading the chain: the sealer already on this slab adds a removal pass before any profile means anything (2 passes against 1 for Example A, even though Example A's floor is larger), and the moisture reading comes back over this product's published limit. The calculator's own verdict is not an outright stop — it is "Mitigation layer required," meaning the job can proceed only with a moisture-mitigating layer added to the build and the job re-priced with that layer included. This is exactly the condition the guide to when not to coat a floor lists first.
What decided each outcome
Between the two examples, the surface condition alone (bare concrete versus an existing sealer) changed the required pass count, and the moisture reading alone — not the floor size, not the finish — was what decided the outcome: one clears to proceed; the other cannot be coated as specified and needs a moisture-mitigating layer, and a re-priced job, first.
Notice what did NOT decide the outcome in Example B. The floor is small, the finish is the thinnest of the four systems, and the traffic is only foot traffic — each input a person might guess would make a project "easy" is present, and the job still cannot proceed as specified. A moisture reading two points over the product's own published limit outweighs all three of those, which is exactly why the moisture tool runs the comparison against a specific product rather than a rule of thumb.
Using these two as a starting point for a real floor
Neither example is meant to be read as "my garage is like Example A, so my numbers will match." The value in working through them is in the chain, not the figures: build spec, then takeoff, then preparation, then moisture, each step depending on the one before it. Changing a single input anywhere in that chain — a different finish, a different existing surface, a colder slab — propagates through each step after it, which is exactly why the tools recompute live rather than offering a table of precomputed answers.
A practical way to use these two scenarios: find whichever one is closer to a real floor on existing surface and finish, then open the takeoff tool and change one input at a time toward the real dimensions and conditions, watching which outputs move and by how much. That is a more honest way to build intuition for a specific project than reading a bigger table of other people's floors would be.