CleanPrime bonds to an exceptionally wide variety of properly prepared surfaces. However, I have seen it defeated by 2 things in my career:

1.) Concrete treated with DryCrete Moisture Stop (colloidal silicate sold as a MVB).

2.) Highly contaminated concrete. CleanPrime bonds astonishingly well to highly contaminated surface, but contamination may still be a problem when applying the system specified. That is, this penetrating primer can mobilize contaminants that then resurface and defeat the topcoat. In response to that failure, I’ve put together the most comprehensive guide to removing contaminents from concrete I have seen online. If you find anything better, for goodness’ sake please share it.

Do not even attempt to bond sustainably to vinyl flooring:

• LVP (Luxury Vinyl Plank),

• WPC

• Sheet vinyl

• Vinyl tile

The problem isn't getting epoxy to stick to vinyl today; the problem is keeping it stuck after years of movement, heat cycles, and plasticizer migration.

Also, avoid attempting to coat silicone-containing materials, fluoropolymers (such as Teflon®), polyethylene, polypropylene, waxes, oils, release agents, and other low-surface-energy contaminants may prevent adhesion.

This widens the margin of success more than any material known. However, crap is crap and you need to get it out of there before coating.

When working with unfamiliar substrates, always perform a test area before full application.

The most important part of any coating project is removing contaminants from the bond line. Below are all the best practices we have found for various substrates.

CleanPrime probably isn't more toxic than any other industrial floor coating. But I love you too much not to go pretty hard on the safety stuff. You only got one body, bruh.

Here's the part professional installers really need to hear: epoxy accidents are rare. Epoxy sensitization isn't. The thing that gets people isn't one bad day — it's a thousand careless little ones. Epoxy resin and amine hardeners are some of the most sensitizing materials in the trades. Let them touch your skin enough times and your own immune system flips a switch it can't flip back. After that, you're allergic to all epoxy, everywhere, for good — and your career in this industry is finished. I've watched guys with real talent get chased out of the trade by a rash they couldn't shake. So understand the goal here: we're not protecting you from this afternoon. We're protecting the next twenty years.

Three fronts — the air you breathe, the skin you touch it with, and the mess you leave behind.

1. Own the air

Make the room move air in one direction: clean in, dirty out, never the same air twice. Three pieces do that.

• Makeup air in. Open something on one side of the room so fresh air has a way in. Pull air out with no way for new air to enter and you choke the whole system — the machine just hums and moves nothing.

• Directional flow across the work. Set it so the air travels past you and the wet coating and keeps going, instead of swirling around your head.

• Vapor out, outdoors. A negative-air machine pushes the fumes through a duct to the outside — not back into the room. Recirculating cuts the smell but leaves the vapor. That's lipstick on a problem.

Run the room at slight negative pressure so vapor sneaks out the cracks instead of into the rest of the house, and put the exhaust well clear of doors, windows, HVAC intakes, and people. You haven't solved anything if you're just feeding the fumes to the family in the living room.

For the machine: you want a negative-air scrubber with a HEPA stage and an activated-carbon stage ahead of it — HEPA grabs particulate, carbon adsorbs the solvent vapor and odor. I ran Lavina scrubbers as a contractor (mine took 16x20 filters); there are better deals out there now, so shop it. What matters is that it takes a carbon pre-filter sized to fit and moves enough air for the room. Again, this is up to you, but here’s my best recommendation as of June 2026: get some of these, outfit them with filters like these and get enough ductwork like this to get the fume out of there. Double check and do the job like a true professional.

One honest limit on carbon: it adsorbs vapor until it's full, then quietly quits on you. It's a helper, not a hero. When the odor starts climbing back, the carbon's spent — swap it.

Keep the ducting short — 20 to 25 feet of flex, insulated or reinforced if you've got it, and few bends. Every elbow steals airflow.

And remember this stuff is flammable — the acetone in it flashes well below freezing. Solvent vapor is heavier than air, so it sinks and pools down low where your nose never finds it. Before you open a kit, kill every ignition source in the space: pilot lights, water heaters, space heaters, anything that throws a spark when it cycles. Good directional airflow is also what keeps vapor from ever building to the point where a stray spark matters.

2. Protect your lungs

Air first, respirator second. In a well-scrubbed open room, a properly fit-tested respirator with organic-vapor cartridges carries you. In a tight basement, an occupied house, or anywhere the air just won't move, step up to a PAPR.

Your nose is the gauge. Smell solvent inside the mask and the cartridge has broken through — change it right then, not at lunch. Cartridges keep drinking in contaminants on the shelf too, so store them sealed in a bag or they'll be half-dead before you strap them on. And a fit test is worthless through a beard — stubble breaks the seal, and a broken seal is just theater.

3. Protect your skin — this is the one that ends careers

Everything above keeps you comfortable today. This part decides whether you're still doing this work at sixty.

Gloves always — but thin nitrile is not a force field. Epoxy, amine, and solvent all work their way through cheap gloves given time. Wear a real chemical-resistant glove, swap them the second they're contaminated, and quit touching your phone, the doorknob, your face, and your coffee with product on your fingers. You'll smear it everywhere you didn't mean to and dose yourself all day long.

Here's the trap nearly everybody falls into: get epoxy on your skin, reach for acetone to wipe it off. Don't. Solvent strips your skin's natural barrier and drives the epoxy deeper — you're not cleaning it off, you're pushing it in. Soap, water, and a real hand cleaner, nothing else. Better yet, set up so it never lands on you in the first place.

Eyes too — wraparound glasses at a minimum, a face shield when you're mixing or pouring anywhere near overhead. A splash of amine in the eye is a day you'll remember.

4. Handle the waste like it can still bite

Two things in this product bite after you've stopped paying attention.

First, heat. Mixed epoxy doesn't just sit quietly — it reacts, and a leftover mass in a bucket can build enough heat to smoke or scorch. Solvent-soaked rags are their own fire. Don't pile either in a corner and walk off: spread thin scraps so they cure out, and drop solvent rags in a sealed metal can. Once epoxy is fully cured it's inert and harmless — it's the wet, reacting, and solvent-wet stuff that's dangerous.

Second, water. CleanPrime is toxic to aquatic life, so it never goes down a drain, a storm sewer, the dirt, or a creek — not the product, not the rinse, not the tool water. Let it all cure solid, then dispose of the cured material and your spent cartridges by your local hazardous-waste rules.

The whole thing in one breath

Never trust a carbon filter more than a respirator. Never trust a respirator more than fresh air. Use all three — in that order of faith.

Before you crack the first kit, run the list:

• ☐ Room ventilated, exhaust ducted outdoors, makeup air open

• ☐ Negative pressure holding, HVAC protected, occupants out

• ☐ Respirator fit-checked, fresh cartridges in

• ☐ Right gloves on, real hand cleaner staged (not solvent)

• ☐ Every ignition source killed

• ☐ Metal can ready for the rags

Do this every time, and epoxy will give you a long, good career instead of taking one.

It's hard to overdo this. Pour acetone liberally on the concrete and mop up with a flat mop. This one from Uline is outstanding.

Put equal parts of resin and hardener in. Mix for two minutes with a Jiffy mixer.

Use a non-shedding roller with a nap of at least three-eighths of an inch. Three-quarter or one inch is even better. Using light pressure, apply a thin even coat, re-rolling every square foot at least ten times.

Chemical bonding is generally preferable to mechanical bonding, so re-coat sooner rather than later. If the coating has cured for more than 24 hours at 70°F, aggressively sand and solvent wipe before applying another coat.

Completely React Hardener and Resin to create inert solid waste rather than ever dumping this down any drain or putting it in a landfill.