The Numbers Behind a Garage Floor in Austin, TX

Last reviewed 2026-10-20. Journalists, researchers, and community groups are welcome to cite any figure on this page with attribution and a link.

This page gathers the public numbers that shape how a coated garage floor behaves in Austin, each tied to the agency or document that published it and its date. Five tables follow: the age and type of the housing (U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020-2024), the climate a slab sits in (NOAA's 1991-2020 normals for Camp Mabry and Austin-Bergstrom), the soil series on both sides of the Balcones Escarpment (USDA NRCS), the rules that apply to the work, and the national price surveys with local wages beside them.

Two cautions apply to every table. The temperatures are outdoor air at weather stations, not slab or garage readings, which is why we still measure the slab on the day. And no price survey prints an Austin figure: the cost rows are national, and the wages are pay to workers, not the price of a job. Our epoxy garage floor pros and cons guide works through what these numbers mean for an epoxy floor, one downside at a time.

The houses: age, type and tenure in the city and three counties

The suburban counties hold the newest housing. In the Census Bureau's ACS 2020-2024, the median year built is 1994 inside the City of Austin and later in each county around it: 1999 in Travis, 2006 in Williamson, 2007 in Hays. Dividing the year-built counts in table B25034, 64.3 percent of Williamson County's units and 66.2 percent of Hays County's went up in 2000 or later. By the same arithmetic on table B25024, one-unit detached houses are 43.4 percent of the city's housing units but 72.5 percent of Williamson's, and QuickFacts prints the owner-occupied rate at 43.4 percent in the city against 66.4 percent in Williamson. What a flake system on a house garage involves, layer by layer, is on our flake epoxy floors page.

An older slab brings its history to the job. Sherwin-Williams' prep guide lists oils, grease, wax, sealers, curing compounds, laitance and salts among what must come off before a resin floor goes down, and an H&C Decorative Concrete Products representative, writing in For Construction Pros in 2012, says paraffin from hot tires turns into a bond breaker in the concrete but reaches "only 1/16 or 1/8 inch deep." Car counts matter too: computed from the counts in Census table B08201, 48.9 percent of city households and 65.0 percent of Williamson County households keep two or more vehicles.

Census Bureau ACS 5-year data for 2020-2024: tables B25035, B25034, B25024 and B08201, plus the owner-occupied rate as printed in QuickFacts. Every other share is our division of the published counts, rounded to 0.1.

The climate a slab sits in: Camp Mabry and Austin-Bergstrom normals

Austin's two NOAA normals stations, Camp Mabry and Austin-Bergstrom, sit only 10.7 miles apart by the NWS count. Their heat counts are close: counting days that reach 90 degrees F or more, NOAA's 1991-2020 normals give Camp Mabry an average of 122.8 such days a year and Bergstrom 123.5; for 100 degrees F or more the averages are 28.7 and 24.2. Their freeze counts are not: Bergstrom averages 33.0 days a year with a low of 32 degrees F or less, Camp Mabry 11.9, and the NWS Austin climate summary says it "can sometimes be 10 degrees colder at Austin Bergstrom compared to Austin Camp Mabry."

Read across the monthly normals in the table, May is Camp Mabry's wettest month, at 5.04, and October its second wettest, at 3.91, out of 36.25 inches a year; Bergstrom's yearly normal is 35.57. For a coating, the useful test is a data sheet's window held against the highs. Sikafloor-264, for one, lists ambient limits of 50 to 85 degrees F, and by the same table Camp Mabry's normal high is above 85 degrees F in each month from May through September. These normals describe outdoor air, not a slab. Faster-curing, UV-stable alternatives are set out on our polyaspartic floor coating page.

NOAA NCEI U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, stations USW00013958 (Austin Camp Mabry) and USW00013904 (Austin Bergstrom AP): normal daily highs and lows of outdoor air in degrees F, normal rain in inches and, in the last column, the mean count of days per month whose maximum hit 90 degrees F or higher.

The ground: soil series on both sides of the Balcones Escarpment

The Handbook of Texas describes the Balcones Escarpment as a fault zone several miles wide that cuts across Travis County and rises about 300 feet at Austin. On its west side the University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology maps the Edwards Plateau, "capped by hard Cretaceous limestones"; on its east side lie the Blackland Prairies, where chalks and marls weather into deep black clay. Inside the city limits the NWS gives a range of elevation from 400 feet in the east and southeast to just above 1000 feet in the northwest. The table quotes the NRCS on the soil series found on each side.

Support is why the table matters to a slab. NRMCA's CIP 4 says concrete "contracts and expands with changes in moisture and temperature, and deflects depending on load and support conditions," and names improper subgrade preparation as one cause of cracking. The NRCS writes about the soil, not the slabs on it, so we judge each crack on the floor itself and sort the moving ones from the dormant ones before any coating goes down. Slabs that have moved past crack repair are covered on our concrete resurfacing page.

USDA NRCS Official Series Descriptions, revisions dated 08/2017 (Houston Black, Heiden, Austin, Burleson), 08/2018 (Eckrant), 10/2016 (Tarrant) and 07/2010 (Brackett). Widths and depths are the inch figures the NRCS prints beside its centimeters.

The rules in numbers: codes, sales tax, VOC and silica limits

Each row names the body behind the rule. The City of Austin's 2024 residential and building codes, with local amendments, took effect July 10, 2025, under Ordinances 20250410-040 and 20250410-045. The City's exempt-work list covers "Painting, papering, tiling, carpeting, cabinets, countertops, and similar finish work" and says exempt work "must still comply with applicable Building Codes, City Codes, and all other applicable ordinances." Floor coatings are not named on that list, so an owner in doubt checks with Austin Development Services first. Federal agencies set the last rows: the U.S. EPA caps the VOC content, VOC being volatile organic compounds, of floor coatings, and OSHA sets the silica limits for grinding.

Sales tax turns on the type of property. Comptroller publication 94-116 treats labor on residential real property as not taxable and taxes the full charge on nonresidential work; its examples include restaurants, retail shops and warehouses. Under publication 94-105, the local share of tax on nonresidential work is set by where the job sits. Neither document names floor coatings. Our written quote says which treatment we apply, and the final call on any one job rests with the Comptroller or a tax professional. Floors for businesses are covered on our commercial epoxy flooring page.

City of Austin Development Services pages and ordinances (no page dates shown); Texas Comptroller sales tax pages and publications 94-116 (03/2007) and 94-105 (04/2022); eCFR text of 40 CFR Part 59 up to date as of 10/16/2026 and of 29 CFR 1926.1153 up to date as of 9/30/2026.

Cost and wage benchmarks, and what they do not say about Austin

Every price row here is national, printed under its survey's name and date, because none of the surveys we read lists Austin. On HomeGuide's epoxy page of February 3, 2026, an installed square foot runs $4 to $10 on average and a 2-car garage costs $1,600 to $5,800 on its 400 to 576 square foot sizing; Angi's page, updated Aug 3, 2026, prints $2 to $12 a square foot. The wage rows measure something else: O*NET's medians from Bureau of Labor Statistics 2025 wage data, the hourly pay of workers in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro, not a price for a floor. The full price table, with add-ons and other systems, is on our epoxy flooring cost page.

The BEA's regional price parity measures something else again: the general price level of all consumer goods and services, scored against a national 100. In Table 4 of BEA's December 12, 2024 release, which BEA's own page now marks superseded, the Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown metro stood at 97.6 for all items in 2023 and 126.4 for housing. Put plainly, prices there ran close to the national level while rents ran well above it, and neither number prices a floor. BEA's February 19, 2026 release prints no tables, so these superseded 2023 figures are the newest metro values in our sources.

Price rows are national survey figures, not Austin prices: HomeGuide's epoxy (February 3, 2026), polyaspartic (November 18, 2024), polyurea (September 24, 2025) and concrete coating (November 25, 2024) pages, and Angi's epoxy page (updated Aug 3, 2026). Wages are O*NET OnLine medians for the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro from Bureau of Labor Statistics 2025 wage data, paid to workers. Price parities are BEA Table 4 index values for the Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown metro (all items covers all consumer goods and services; housing covers rents), from a release BEA now marks superseded.

Sources & Methodology

Every figure above was taken from the primary sources below (accessed 2026-10-20). Where a number is derived (arithmetic on published figures) or covers a broader period or area, the text says so.

1. U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020-2024, table B25035, Austin city
2. U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts, Austin city, Texas
3. NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 monthly normals, Austin Camp Mabry
4. NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 monthly normals, Austin Bergstrom AP
5. USDA NRCS Official Series Description, Houston Black
6. Handbook of Texas, Balcones Escarpment
7. City of Austin, Building Technical Codes
8. City of Austin, Work Exempt from Building Permits
9. Texas Comptroller, publication 94-116
10. eCFR, 40 CFR Part 59 Subpart D
11. OSHA, 29 CFR 1926.1153, respirable crystalline silica
12. HomeGuide, epoxy flooring cost (February 3, 2026)
13. O*NET OnLine, local wages 47-2141.00, Austin
14. BEA, regional price parities release, December 2024 (superseded)