Bolingbrook Epoxy Flooring brings more than 20 years of epoxy flooring work to Forest Park, and this page is about the hardest floors we are asked to think through: surfaces that stay wet, get walked barefoot and sit in treated water day after day. A garage floor forgives a lot. A wet floor under bare feet forgives very little, and the order of decisions changes because of it.
On a wet floor, we settle traction and chemical exposure before anyone picks a color chip. That means talking about the broadcast aggregate, the topcoat chemistry, how water leaves the surface and which cleaner will be used on it every week. Color still matters, but it is the last decision on the list rather than the first.
We also put the whole system in writing. Our proposal names the product, the build of each coat and the finished thickness, so a homeowner, a building manager or a board can check what went down against what was quoted. That habit matters here because some of the most visible wet floors in the village are bought exactly that way, on paper first.
A Pool Repainted on a Public Bid
The clearest example of a wet surface bought in writing sits at the Park District of Forest Park Aquatic Center, 7501 West Harrison Street. In December 2025 the district posted a bid invitation for the “Aquatic Center - Main Pool Painting and Repairs Project,” with bid documents dated December 10. We did not bid that job and have no part in it; we follow it because it shows how a public body buys a coated wet surface.
The calendar was fixed in advance
The invitation set a pre-bid meeting for 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday, December 16, 2025. Sealed bids were due for opening at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, January 8, 2026, at the district’s Administration Building, and late bids were to be rejected. Nobody walks the deck, shakes a hand and names a number; every contractor prices the same written documents and hands them in sealed.
Prevailing wage sets the labor floor
The invitation states that the work is subject to the Illinois Prevailing Wage Act, paid at Illinois Department of Labor rates for Cook County. That changes the arithmetic of a bid before materials enter it. A crew that prices private work one way has to price public work at the published rates, keep the required records and carry that cost through the whole job.
What the notice does not say
The invitation text does not name the coating system or the surface preparation; those details sit in the full bid documents, which we have not read. We will not guess at them here. The district also posted separate bids for the Aquatic Center’s sand filters and laterals and, later, for pool heater replacement, which tells you a pool is maintained as a set of distinct systems rather than one job.
For anyone outside the public sector, the lesson is simple. A written specification, a meeting where questions get answered in front of every bidder, and a sealed price produce bids that can actually be compared. We try to give private clients the same thing in a smaller package: one document that says what we will do, in what order, with which materials.
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Traction and Chlorine Before Color
A pool surround or splash area asks two things of a floor before it asks anything about looks. It has to give bare, wet feet something to grip, and it has to hold up to chlorinated water that sits on it, dries and leaves residue behind. Those two demands pull in different directions, because the texture that grips also collects grime and has to survive scrubbing.
Texture is built, not painted on
On a resinous floor, traction usually comes from aggregate. We broadcast quartz aggregate into a wet coat, lock it in, and then decide how much of the profile to leave standing after the topcoat. More texture grips better and cleans harder, while less cleans easily and grips less. We show samples of both and let the owner feel them wet, and we never promise a floor that stops falls, because no coating can.
Chemistry that tolerates treated water
Chlorinated water, pool chemicals and the cleaners used around them are hard on some topcoats. For wet areas we lean toward polyaspartic and polyurea topcoats over a 100% solids epoxy base, because the topcoat takes the wear and the base carries the build. Outdoors, the topcoat also has to stand up to sun, which ordinary epoxy on its own handles poorly.
The splash pads show a different answer
In January 2023 the Aquatic Center’s three themed splash pads were surfaced with a textured product its supplier lists as 3/8 inch thick, covering 3,268 square feet in seven colors. That is a cushioned play surface, not a coating, and it shows that a wet area can call for a different material altogether. Part of our job is saying so when a client’s wet floor would be better served by something we do not install.
Drainage belongs in the same conversation. A coating follows the slab it sits on, so water that ponded on bare concrete will pond on a finished floor too. When a slab is flat where it should slope, we say that before quoting, because no topcoat fixes a puddle.
What a Park-District Spec Asks of a Coating Contractor
We have not read the Forest Park pool documents, but public wet-area specifications for coatings tend to cover the same ground, and it is ground a careful private job should cover too. A good spec leaves very little to the installer’s taste. It defines the preparation, the materials, the conditions for applying them and the proof that each step happened.
Surface preparation in measurable terms
Specs usually name a surface profile on the ICRI CSP 1-10 scale rather than saying “clean and roughen.” We meet that by opening every slab mechanically with diamond grinding or shot blasting, and we do not acid etch. The grinding dust is captured at the machine and never rinsed toward a floor drain, which matters on a pool deck where every drain leads somewhere it should not.
Moisture and curing conditions
Coatings fail from below as often as from above, so moisture testing is a line item in our scope. Depending on the slab we use ASTM F2170 relative humidity probes, ASTM F1869 calcium chloride tests or a quick ASTM D4263 plastic sheet check, and we compare the results with the product’s limits. We schedule application against slab temperature and the dew point spread at the surface, because a coat laid on a damp, cool slab can blush and lose adhesion.
Products, VOC limits and paperwork
A written spec names products, and so do we: the proposal lists each product, the system build and the finished thickness. Coatings applied here must meet the Illinois VOC limits in 35 Ill. Adm. Code Part 223 Subpart C, which bind the installer as well as the maker, so we choose within them from the start. Warranty exclusions get read out before anything is signed, with moisture named first.
Illinois issues no state license for flooring or coatings contractors, so no contractor can point to one. What we can do is confirm whatever registration, bond and insurance rules the Village of Forest Park’s Building Department sets before a job goes on the calendar, and carry those documents with us.
Bringing the Pool Standard to a Home Wet Area
The pool at 7501 Harrison Street is a public facility in Proviso Township, Cook County, but the questions behind its bid apply just as well to a private pool deck, a basement bathroom or a laundry floor that sees standing water. A homeowner will not run a sealed bid. They can still ask for the same three things: a written scope, a stated system and an honest read of the slab.
Home pool decks and patios
An outdoor concrete deck around a home pool lives with sun, chlorine and bare feet. We check slope, cracks, joints and any old coating first, and we say plainly when a slab needs repair or replacement before a coating makes sense. Where it does make sense, we build traction with broadcast aggregate under a UV-stable topcoat and schedule the work for a dry stretch with the slab warm enough to cure.
Basement baths and shower rooms
The village’s housing skews old: 3,653 of its 7,649 housing units were built in 1939 or earlier. A basement bath in a house of that age can sit on a slab poured before under-slab vapor retarders were routine, so moisture may come from below while water comes from above. We test before quoting, use a moisture-mitigation primer when the numbers call for it, and keep the most textured finish in the shower zone and around the drain.
What the written job looks like
Every home job gets a written contract and the Home Repair: Know Your Consumer Rights pamphlet before work begins, as the Illinois Home Repair and Remodeling Act requires. We quote per square foot for the system we are actually proposing, not from a national average. We also do not sell any floor coating as radon reduction, because in Illinois that work takes an IEMA radon mitigation license.
That is the standard the Park District’s bid makes visible: decide traction and chemistry first, write the system down, and let the paper be what gets checked. We bring the same order to a single shower room or a backyard deck, at the scale the job actually is.
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