Every winter in Uniondale, apparatus rolling back from Hempstead Turnpike brings road salt, slush, and de-icing chemicals straight into the bay. That cycle salt soaking into bare or poorly sealed concrete, freezing, expanding, cracking is the reason so many Nassau County apparatus bays look the way they do. It is not age. It is the wrong floor for the environment.
The right system stops that entirely. A properly installed, multi-layer resinous floor creates a continuous barrier that salt, moisture, and chemical runoff cannot penetrate. Spills sit on top instead of soaking in. Cleanup is a squeegee and a mop. Decontamination after a structure fire becomes a real protocol instead of a guessing game which matters directly for the health of every volunteer in the building.
Hot-tire pickup is the other failure mode departments rarely see coming until it is too late. When apparatus returns from a call through dense suburban traffic and hot tires cool on a standard epoxy surface, the coating bonds to the tire and peels off the floor the next time the truck pulls out. The polyaspartic topcoat systems we install are thermally stable and engineered specifically to prevent that. You get a floor that looks right, performs right, and does not need to be ripped up and redone in five years.
We are based in Bohemia, NY about 35 miles east of Uniondale on the Southern State Parkway. That proximity is not a footnote. It means the crew showing up at your station understands Nassau County winters, knows what Long Island road salt does to post-WWII concrete slabs, and is not approximating local conditions from a product guide written somewhere else.
Danny Harmer, our founder and CEO, has over 40 years of hands-on installation experience. Our field supervisors Javier, Eduardo, and Fredith bring a combined 40-plus years between them, and most of our installation crew has been with us for more than a decade. This is not a rotating cast of subcontractors. The same experienced team that has worked in aircraft hangars, healthcare facilities, and commercial kitchens across Long Island will be the team working in your apparatus bay.
We hold the Sherwin-Williams High Performance Flooring certification and Res Tech certification two of the most rigorous applicator credentials in the industry. Every field installer is OSHA 40 certified, which matters when you are working inside an active fire station where members are present and apparatus may be partially staged nearby.
The first thing that happens on any apparatus bay project is moisture testing. Long Island’s coastal proximity means concrete slabs here carry real moisture vapor pressure especially in the humid summer months. Any coating applied without testing and a proper penetrating primer will delaminate, often within the first year. That is not a material failure. It is a preparation failure, and it is entirely preventable.
After moisture testing, we diamond-grind the slab not acid etch. Multi-head diamond grinding opens the concrete capillaries and creates a genuine mechanical bond between the substrate and the primer. Acid etching introduces moisture into the surface right before you seal it, which is one of the most reliable ways to create the delamination bubbles that end up costing a fire district a second renovation. Once the surface is properly prepared, we apply a penetrating primer, followed by a high-build epoxy base coat with aggregate broadcast for compressive strength, and then the rapid-cure polyaspartic topcoat.
That topcoat cures in 24 to 48 hours for apparatus traffic. For a department like the Uniondale Fire Department running three stations, 110-plus volunteer members, and a fleet that includes Pierce Velocity pumpers and a 2020 Seagrave Marauder aerial parking trucks outside on Uniondale Avenue for a week is not a realistic option. The 24-hour return-to-service window is not a selling point. It is an engineering requirement, and it is built into the system from the start.
Ready to get started?
The apparatus bay takes the most abuse, but it is not the only floor in the building that matters. Decontamination zones, living quarters, kitchens, and locker rooms all benefit from the same seamless, non-porous resinous flooring that makes the bay safe and cleanable. NFPA 1500 and 1585 contamination control requirements apply to the whole station and a seamless floor that supports real decontamination protocols is a direct line to firefighter health protection. For a volunteer department serving a community that is home to the Nassau County Firefighters Museum on Charles Lindbergh Boulevard an institution that exists specifically to honor Nassau County’s fire service, including those lost to occupational illness that is not an abstract concern.
We cover the full station floor plan. Using one certified contractor for all three Uniondale stations Sherman Van Ness, Brookside Engine Company, and Manor Station means consistent system compatibility, no mismatched products between zones, and one point of accountability if anything ever needs attention. We work with fire district purchasing timelines, which in Uniondale means capital expenditures go through the board of fire commissioners on an annual budget cycle. If you are planning a renovation for next spring, the time to start the conversation is fall and a site visit and moisture assessment is always where the quote process begins, not a per-square-foot number over the phone.
A properly installed polyaspartic system diamond-ground substrate, penetrating primer, high-build epoxy base coat, polyaspartic topcoat carries an expected lifespan of 20-plus years under normal apparatus bay conditions. The key phrase there is “properly installed.” The same system applied over a surface that was acid-etched instead of diamond-ground, or applied without moisture testing on a Nassau County concrete slab, can fail within a year or two. The installation process is what determines the lifespan, not the product label.
For context, a standard epoxy system that fails in five to seven years and requires full removal, grinding, and reinstallation costs more over a 20-year period than doing it right the first time. For a Uniondale fire district spending public money and justifying expenditures to elected commissioners, total cost of ownership is the right frame not the lowest upfront number.
The two most common causes are hot-tire pickup and moisture delamination, and both are entirely preventable with the right process. Hot-tire pickup happens when apparatus returns from a call with heated tires common after navigating Hempstead Turnpike traffic or responding near the Coliseum area and those tires cool on a standard epoxy surface. The coating bonds to the tire and pulls off the floor the next time the truck moves. Polyaspartic topcoats are thermally stable and do not do this.
Moisture delamination happens when a coating is applied over concrete without proper moisture testing or when acid etching introduces water into the surface before sealing. Long Island’s coastal humidity and the hydrostatic pressure common in older Nassau County concrete slabs make moisture testing non-negotiable here. If a contractor cannot walk you through their moisture testing protocol before they start, that is a problem worth taking seriously before you sign anything.
With a polyaspartic topcoat system, yes apparatus can typically return to the bay within 24 to 48 hours. That is one of the primary reasons polyaspartic is specified for firehouse applications over standard epoxy, which requires three to seven days of cure time before heavy vehicle traffic. For a volunteer department running around-the-clock response coverage in Uniondale, a week of displaced apparatus is an operational and liability problem, not a minor inconvenience.
The 24-hour window assumes proper ambient conditions most polyaspartic systems require temperatures above 50 degrees Fahrenheit during application and cure. Spring installations in Uniondale are ideal for this reason. If you are planning a renovation for the winter months, the installation schedule needs to account for bay temperature management, which is something worth discussing during the site visit before any work is scoped.
Uniondale is an unincorporated hamlet in the Town of Hempstead, so building permits and code enforcement fall under the Town of Hempstead’s Department of Buildings. Surface-applied floor coating work meaning work that does not alter the structural slab generally falls below the permit threshold in most municipalities, but the specific scope of your project should be confirmed with the Town of Hempstead before work begins. This is a straightforward conversation and typically not a barrier, but it is worth having upfront rather than after the job starts.
Because the Uniondale Fire Department operates as a fire district under New York State Town Law, capital expenditures for facility improvements also require approval from the board of fire commissioners. That approval process runs on an annual budget cycle, typically set in the fall for the following year. If you are planning a spring installation at Sherman Van Ness or one of the other stations, having the board conversation in the fall gives you the lead time to move quickly when the weather cooperates.
Road salt is one of the most consistent and underappreciated threats to apparatus bay concrete on Long Island. Every time apparatus responds to a call in winter and returns to the bay, it brings salt, slush, and de-icing chemicals in on the tires and undercarriage. That salt penetrates the micro-cracks in bare or unsealed concrete, and when temperatures drop below freezing which happens regularly in Uniondale, with winter lows around 31 degrees Fahrenheit the absorbed moisture freezes, expands, and widens those cracks. Over multiple seasons, this produces progressive spalling and deterioration that gets more expensive to remediate every year it is deferred.
A sealed, bonded resinous floor stops that cycle entirely. The coating creates a continuous barrier between the salt and the concrete substrate. Spills and slush sit on top of the surface and get mopped off rather than soaking in. The concrete underneath stays intact, which matters especially for older post-WWII slabs common in Nassau County fire stations that were not built with modern moisture and chemical resistance in mind.
A 2020 Seagrave Marauder 95-foot aerial at full load weighs well over 60,000 pounds. Pierce Velocity pumpers run in the 40,000 to 50,000-pound range fully loaded. The floor system in an apparatus bay is not carrying passenger cars it is carrying some of the heaviest vehicles that operate on public roads. Standard residential epoxy kits sold at home improvement stores are not engineered for this load class. They are designed for light vehicles and will crack, delaminate, or compress under sustained heavy apparatus traffic regardless of how well they are applied.
The multi-layer system we install diamond-ground substrate, high-build epoxy base coat with aggregate broadcast, polyaspartic topcoat is engineered specifically for this weight profile. The aggregate broadcast in the base coat dramatically increases compressive strength, and the 15-mil total system thickness provides the structural depth needed to distribute load without cracking. For a department operating the apparatus the Uniondale Fire Department runs, the floor specification has to start with the actual vehicles using it not a generic commercial product that happens to be available locally.
Local Resources
Useful Links
