Epoxy flooring in Westbrook, Maine

A mill city with old basements

Westbrook grew around the Presumpscot River and the paper mill at Cumberland Mills, the former S.D. Warren mill that dates to 1867 and once employed more than 3,000 people. The 2020 Census counted 20,400 residents, and the city was the fastest-growing in Maine over the previous decade. Its housing is a mix: about a quarter of homes were built before 1940 and about 44 percent before 1970, alongside new apartments and subdivisions.

Older Westbrook homes often have basements with rough, cracked or dusting concrete, sometimes several patches deep. Those floors need the most preparation — grinding, filling and flattening — before a coating goes on, and they benefit most from it. A sealed basement floor coating turns a dusty cellar into a usable laundry, storage or workshop space.

Clay soils and moisture near the river

Soils along the Presumpscot River corridor are fine-grained and landslide-prone enough that the city and the Maine Geological Survey are studying them; the Survey still documents the Great Landslide of 1868 in Westbrook. Fine, clay-rich soils hold water, and basements on it can see steady moisture moving up through the slab. We test moisture before quoting and use a vapor-mitigating base coat when the readings call for it; if a slab is not a candidate, we say so.

About 61 percent of homes are owner-occupied, and there are very few seasonal homes. For homeowners' garages, a garage floor coating or a flake epoxy floor handles salt and sand from Route 302, Route 25 and the Maine Turnpike's Exit 48.

Industry, labs and warehouses

Westbrook still has a working industrial base — the mill still operates, and IDEXX Laboratories' headquarters is now the city's largest taxpayer — plus warehouses and shops close to I-95. Those floors are where our commercial and industrial coatings apply: high-build systems specified for forklifts, carts and cleaning chemicals, with aisle and safety striping, installed in phases or after hours.

Neighborhoods like the Cumberland Mills Historic District, downtown and Prides Corner hold much of the older housing, and the city counts only about 50 seasonal homes, so nearly every garage is in daily use through the winter. That is the case for a coating that is ground in rather than painted on: it has to handle wet tires every day from November to April, not a few weekends a year.

Permits run through Westbrook's code enforcement department on York Street. Westbrook sits between Portland, Gorham and Windham, all on our regular route from Casco.