Waterloo Epoxy Flooring brings more than 20 years of epoxy flooring in Cedar Falls to every quote, and most of what decides a good floor happens before any resin is mixed. We open each slab with a diamond grinder or a shot blaster, never an acid etch, so the primer bites into a real ICRI CSP profile instead of a rinsed, shallow surface. A moisture test is part of the written scope before the price is final.
Our proposals name the product line, the number of coats and the finished thickness, so anyone can hold the finished floor up against the paper. Cracks, spalls and old coatings get mapped first, and when a slab needs repair or replacement before it should be coated, we say that instead of covering it up.
This page covers the side of flooring work that is particular to this city: how public floors on a university campus are bought, what the bid terms look like, how phased renovation changes the schedule, and how cure time and odor have to fit around buildings that never fully close. It ends with the homes and garages that make up most of our work here.
UNI Floors Are Bought by the Iowa Board of Regents
The University of Northern Iowa is a public university, and its capital and renovation work is not purchased the way a business buys a new shop floor. On the 2025 advertisement for Phase 3 of the ITTC Renovation for Nursing, sealed bids were received by the Iowa Board of Regents at the Office of Finance and Operations, Lang Hall Room 122, through bidexpress.com. That project renovates the ground floor of the Innovative Teaching and Technology Center for advanced nursing simulation, and it was let as a stipulated sum.
What that means for a floor
A resinous floor on campus is one line inside a much larger contract. The floor system, its prep and its build are described in the project documents, and the prime bidder prices the whole package. We have not found a published UNI resinous-floor design standard, so the right approach is to read each set of specifications as written rather than assume one product or one build carries over from the last project.
Where floors show up in recent solicitations
UNI’s closed solicitations on Bid Express give a sense of the range. McCollum Science Hall Rooms 173 and 176 were described as minor renovations of two existing laboratories, with casework replaced alongside floor, ceiling and plumbing and electrical updates. Jennings Court Interior Improvements Phase 3 called for interior finishes including flooring in apartment units, and the Gilchrist Hall Pedestrian Bridge Remediation mentions a concrete topping slab.
Each of those is a different substrate question. A lab slab exposed when old casework comes out, an apartment unit that will be lived in again, and a topping slab over structure all call for their own moisture reading, their own profile and their own coating build.
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Sealed Bids, Bonds and Small Business Goals
The bid terms on that 2025 advertisement are worth reading closely, with one caution up front: they come from a single project, and another UNI advertisement can set different terms. On that one, bids closed at 2:00 p.m. on March 13, 2025, and were opened publicly over Zoom. Bid security was held as liquidated damages, and no bidder could withdraw for 45 calendar days.
The performance and payment bond
The successful bidder had to furnish a 100% Contract Performance and Payment Bond within ten days of receiving the Notice of Award. A performance bond protects the owner if the work is not finished as contracted, and a payment bond protects the subcontractors and suppliers who furnish labor and material. For a flooring scope, the practical result is that a price handed to a prime has to hold through the withdrawal window, because the prime carries the bond on the whole contract.
That is also where a written flooring scope earns its keep. A number that names the product line, the coat count and the finished thickness can be checked line by line against the specification before bid day, and a prime comparing several flooring numbers can see quickly which one actually matches the documents and which one quietly substituted a thinner build.
The Targeted Small Business goal
The advertisement set a Targeted Small Business participation goal of 10 percent, in accordance with Chapter 73 of the Code of Iowa. Primes work toward a goal like that through their subcontracting and supply choices across the trades. Whether a particular firm counts toward it depends on that firm’s own certification, which is a question for the prime and the state program, not something a flooring quote can settle. The same advertisement also carried an Iowa products preference.
Exemption certificates on campus materials
The advertisement stated that Iowa Construction Sales Tax Exemption Certificates would be provided on the project. Those certificates are issued by the owner for that specific project and flow to the contractors working on it; a flooring company does not hold one on its own. For resin, primer, broadcast aggregate and topcoat bought for a qualifying public job, the paperwork follows the project, and it has no bearing on a private garage or basement quote across town.
Phased Work in Buildings That Stay Open
Campus renovation rarely gets an empty building. The Applied Engineering Building, formerly known as the Industrial Technology Center, is a 75,600-square-foot building that went through a three-year modernization with OPN Architects as architect and Knutson Construction as construction manager at risk. Phase one demolished part of the existing building and rebuilt and expanded it; once that space was occupied, the phase two area was vacated so its renovation could be completed.
What phasing changes about floor prep
A vacated phase sits next to rooms where people are working, teaching or sitting in class. That is why we capture grinding dust at the machine with a vacuum rather than letting it drift or rinsing it toward a floor drain, and why containment at the phase line matters as much as the floor itself. Shot blasting and diamond grinding are loud, so the noisiest work belongs in the hours a building manager can actually offer.
Testing slabs that were covered for decades
Older buildings often hide adhesive, tile residue or earlier coatings under the finish being removed. We check moisture with ASTM F2170 in-situ relative humidity probes or ASTM F1869 calcium chloride tests, depending on what the specification calls for, and the results go to whoever owns the decision. When a reading says the slab needs a moisture-mitigation primer, that belongs in the price before work starts, not in a change order after the floor fails.
An ASTM D4263 plastic sheet test can flag an obviously wet slab in an afternoon, but it gives no number a specification can accept. We use it as a screen, never as the reading that clears a slab for coating.
Shifts and windows off campus
The same planning carries over to private plants and shops in Cedar Falls. A floor in a working facility is phased around shifts, with overnight and weekend windows when a line cannot stop, so one bay cures while the next stays in production.
Fitting Cure Time and Odor Around the Calendar
On a phased campus job, the floor system has to fit the window, not the other way around. A vacated phase, a semester break or a summer stretch sets the time available, and the product choice follows from it. A 100% solids epoxy body coat, a polyaspartic topcoat and a urethane cement system each carry their own recoat and return-to-service timing, and those times shift with slab temperature.
Odor in an occupied building
Odor travels through return air and stairwells, and a classroom next door does not pause for it. We offer low-odor products wherever people will be close by, and we treat that as a comfort and re-entry choice. Architectural coatings fall under the national VOC rule at 40 CFR 59 Subpart D, but a low-odor product is something we recommend for the people in the building, not a requirement Iowa places on a floor.
Temperature and dew point set the schedule
Cure schedules follow the slab, not the calendar. We read slab temperature and the dew point spread at the surface before mixing, because a cold slab close to its dew point invites amine blush and a weak bond between coats. A winter break can be the right window for a heated interior room and the wrong one for an unheated loading area, and we say which is which before anyone commits to dates.
Texture and wet areas
A slip-resistant texture is specified by the broadcast and topcoat used, not promised as a slogan. A quartz aggregate broadcast locked under the topcoat gives a restroom or a wet corridor real tooth, while a vinyl flake broadcast suits a garage where easy cleaning matters more. Restaurant and grocery floors in Cedar Falls answer to the Black Hawk County Health Department, so we plan those kitchens around the FDA Food Code Iowa adopts, with coved bases at the floor and wall juncture and a texture chosen for the wet zones.
The same discipline in a Cedar Falls garage
Most of the floors we see here are still residential. Cedar Falls is 64.0 percent owner-occupied, with 8,597 owner-occupied detached houses, and many of those garages take brine and rock salt on tires from November through March. We choose garage systems for that salt exposure, test the slab whatever year the house was built, and explain before the job is sold what a coating warranty leaves out, starting with moisture.
Basements get the same caution. We read the floor for past water first, check the sump pit and floor drain, and tell the homeowner when seepage has to be solved before any coating goes down, because a coating does not stop water coming through a slab. And because radon testing and mitigation in Iowa take a state credential, a floor coating from us is never sold as radon work.
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