How to deal with water on the garage floor

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Here's the situation....we've gotten our share of snow here lately and it likes to collect on the vehicle, and since our garage stays warm enough to melt the snow, I kick the icebergs off before putting the van in the garage, but it still has enough snow in the wheel wells, on the tires, along the rocker panels, etc, that it melts and leaves giant, filthy dirt puddles on the garage floor, then it gets tracked into the house. I bought a squeegee to push the water out, but with the dirt and little pebbles on the floor, the rubber blade won't seal to the floor, so it doesn't work very well. I cleaned it up today using a shop vac, but that's time consuming, and not something my wife can do over the two weeks I'm away for work. Our garage floor doesn't have a drain, and I'm concerned all of the stuff we have sitting on the floor against the walls is going to get wet. Some of it is too heavy to lift onto pallets. Any ideas?
 
I don't think theres much you can do other than what your doing. Thursday was warm here and I got the hose out and rinsed the floor and squeegeed out the water. But it snowed the next day and the melted dirty snow/water is back and I'll have to live with it until it gets warm again.
 
I also try to kick off big chunks in the driveway, but here is always some leftover that melts onto the floor.

When wife leaves for work and the garage is empty i take a simple push broom and push the water/slush outside

no way am i "cleaning" the floor every day
 
Originally Posted By: Brybo86
I also try to kick off big chunks in the driveway, but here is always some leftover that melts onto the floor.

When wife leaves for work and the garage is empty i take a simple push broom and push the water/slush outside

no way am i "cleaning" the floor every day


My wife and both try to get as much of the removable stuff off before we pull it in the garage, but we still end up with a lake...
 
One downside of not keeping that pool of standing salt water mix off your garage floor as it will eventually start to to eat into the surface. I would either put protective coat down, at least in the important area, or even put plastic down during the winter. You could put a plastic layer under a cheap carpet, and toss them both out at the end of winter.
 
Shop broom is a good idea. I also have a couple $45 high velocity 20” fans that I use sometimes when the floors gets really wet. Aim both from front of car to back directed toward door. Doesn’t really flow the water but the air helps it dry out faster I think
 
1) Get cars out of garage
2) Sweep debris out as best you can
3) Couple of 5 gallon buckets of hot water dumped on garage floor
4) Sweep out water mixture
5) Finish drying with leaf blower.

Gotta love winter!
 
I think in the spring I will rent a floor cleaner. Do the inside floors first then finish up by using it in the garage. They rent for $44 for 4 hrs.
 
A drain would not work unless the floor had a pitch towards the drain. Just consider it a fact of life for your situation
 
The squeegee I use is a double blade hard foam material, the rubber ones dont work well. Its the same style we used at work when we had about 2500sf of floor to cleanup daily. I do plan on painting my floor next year, I was going to do it this fall but I ran out of time before it got really cold. The concrete holds the moisture and creates frost on the door and window because of the humidity.
 
According to the OP, manual removal is not ideal and he needs something his wife can handle while he is away for weeks at a time. It's the old conundrum - you can do something cheap (broom) or do something is easy to maintain, but not both.

A garage floor containment mat would keep the goo from spreading out to the wall areas. There is no way to avoid not moving the liquid goo out of the garage on a regular basis. Either you evaporate it away (lots of added moisture to the building), push it out, or have a shallow pump of some sort to pump it out. The Wayne Water Bug pump goes down less than 1/8" liquid level: https://www.waynepumps.com/product/wwb/ . With a little ingenuity, you could build a winter containment mat system on a tiny grade so that the liquid collected on one side to be drained off by the pump.
 
I agree on the containment idea. That could keep water away from the walls and any appliances or equipment in there. If the floor is standard concrete, I wonder if a epoxy floor coating would help in getting the water away with the squeegee? The mat idea would be simpler. I didn’t know of such a thing
 
https://www.google.com/search?q=garage+f...ent=firefox-b-1

CleanPark-Grey.jpg


It would be very easy to make one with ribbed garage floor mat and a 2 x 4 frame around the edge.
 
A foam squeegee is the ticket. The rubber ones don't work well. The dirt will need water and a little soap to get rid of it.
 
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