Epoxy flooring in Auburn, Maine

Some of the oldest homes we work in

Auburn, in Androscoggin County, counted 24,061 residents in 2020, and its housing is older than anywhere else in our service area except Portland. Current ACS estimates put 38 percent of homes before 1940 and 63 percent before 1970, with a median year built of 1954. Much of it dates from Auburn's shoe-manufacturing era — in 1917 a single Auburn factory produced three-quarters of the world's white canvas shoes.

Houses that old usually have basements with thin, cracked or patched concrete, old paint and a lot of dust. Those floors need the most work — grinding, crack and spall repair, flattening — and gain the most from it. After a moisture test, a sealed basement floor coating turns a dusty cellar into usable space. About 41 percent of Auburn homes are rented, and landlords often coat basement laundries and storage areas so they are easy to clean between tenants.

River valley winters

Auburn sits in the Androscoggin River valley, with Lake Auburn supplying drinking water to Auburn and Lewiston. Inland winters are colder than on the coast, and the city's roads — I-95, Route 4, Route 11 and Minot Avenue — are salted all season. Brine and sand carried into garages pit and scale bare concrete, starting at the door line.

A diamond-ground garage floor coating with a chemical-resistant topcoat keeps salt on the surface where it hoses off, and a flake epoxy floor hides sand between cleanings. There are very few seasonal homes in Auburn, so most of the garages we see are used every day of the winter.

Commercial and industrial floors

Auburn and Lewiston have a long industrial history and plenty of working buildings today — warehouses, shops, service bays and downtown commercial space. Those floors get the high-build systems, safety striping and after-hours scheduling in our commercial and industrial coatings, specified for the traffic and chemicals the floor actually sees.

Downtown, the Main Street Historic District is on the National Register, and older mixed-use buildings along the river often have concrete floors that have been patched for generations. The Little Androscoggin and the Androscoggin both run through the city, and low-lying basements near them are where a moisture test before coating matters most.

Permits in Auburn go through the city's Planning, Permitting and Code department. Auburn is further from our Casco shop than our Cumberland County towns, but we work the Auburn–Lewiston area regularly. See all of our service areas, or the lake towns closest to our shop in Casco and Raymond.