Epoxy Garage Floors in Carrollwood

Grove land around Lake Carroll

Carrollwood began in 1959, when Matt Jetton’s Sun State Homes started building on 310 acres of Ingram Fruit Company orange groves beside Lake Carroll. The streets were laid out in curves instead of a grid, the subdivision was named Subdivision of the Year by the National Association of Home Builders in 1961, and more than 900 homes were finished by 1970.

That makes most original Carrollwood garage slabs well past 55 years old. Concrete from that era was not always poured over a plastic moisture barrier, and a floor that old has usually been painted, sealed or patched at least once. A slab that looks dry can still push moisture up into a coating. We run a moisture test first, then take the surface down to clean concrete with diamond grinding so nothing old is left for the new coat to peel off with.

Carrollwood Village, a decade younger

In the early 1970s Jetton bought roughly 1,900 more acres west of Dale Mabry Highway and built Carrollwood Village, with its country club opening in 1972. The Village runs between Dale Mabry, Gunn Highway and Ehrlich Road and mixes detached homes with townhouses, garden villas and mid-rise buildings. Building in the Village went on for years after the first homes, so garage floors here are not all the same age. Ask for a moisture reading on yours rather than assuming it matches the house next door.

If your garage has a painted floor that is lifting in sheets where the tires sit, that is common on slabs that were coated without grinding. Removing the failed coating down to bare concrete is the only reliable base for a new one.

Cracks, karst and a hole on Turner Road

Hillsborough is one of the three counties, with Hernando and Pasco, that account for about two-thirds of Florida’s sinkhole insurance claims. Like the rest of the county, Carrollwood sits over limestone. Most cracks in an old garage slab are ordinary shrinkage cracks, and those can be routed out and filled before coating. A crack that keeps widening, or one side that sits higher than the other, needs an engineer to look at it first. A coating will not hold a moving slab together.

Not every hole is a sinkhole, either. In May 2013 an eight-by-eight-foot hole opened at Turner Road and Arbor Hills Road, and it turned out to be erosion from a fire hydrant a vehicle had broken. Get the cause confirmed before you decide what the floor needs. Carrollwood is unincorporated, so any structural slab work is permitted through Hillsborough County.

Nearby areas

Westchase is a short drive west of Carrollwood, and Lutz lies to the north past Lake Magdalene.

Carrollwood garage floor questions