Janesville Epoxy Flooring has spent more than 20 years on epoxy flooring in Delavan and the rest of our corner of southern Wisconsin, and a good share of the calls from this area come from people who do not live in the house they want coated. They own it, they visit it, and often they rent it out. That changes how a floor job has to be planned.

A garage or lower-level floor in a house that sits empty between guests cannot be handled like one in a house with a family upstairs every night. Someone has to let the crew in, someone has to keep the heat on, and the work has to finish before the next arrival. We plan around all three before we quote a date.

The method itself does not change. Every slab is opened with a diamond grinder or a shot blaster rather than acid, moisture testing is written into the scope as its own line, and the proposal names the product, the system build and the finished thickness. What changes here is the calendar, and this page is mostly about that.

Second Homes Around Delavan Lake

A newly coated garage floor curing in a closed-up Delavan Lake second home between bookings.

Where the Seasonal Houses Actually Are

People sometimes picture all of Delavan as a vacation town, and the census says otherwise. The City of Delavan, home to about 8,500 people, counts just 37 homes held for seasonal use. The second homes sit out around Delavan Lake, in the Town of Delavan, which is a separate government from the city even though the two share a name.

In the Delavan Lake census area, 1,636 of 2,857 homes are held for seasonal, recreational or occasional use. That is well over half of the housing there, against a small fraction in the city. When we talk about lake houses and rentals on this page, we mean those properties around the water, not the older neighborhoods in town, where nearly a quarter of the homes date from 1939 or earlier.

What Gets Coated in a Lake House

The floors we are asked about in these homes are usually the attached garage and the lower level. A garage takes boat trailers, golf carts, wet gear and sandy tires all season, and a lower level is often where guests sleep, store kayaks or come in from the lake. Both are concrete, and both get used harder than the owner sees from a distance.

For a garage we typically build a 100% solids epoxy base with a vinyl flake broadcast and a polyaspartic topcoat, which hides tracked-in grit and cleans with a hose and a squeegee. For a lower level we look harder at moisture first, because a below-grade slab can push vapor that a dry-looking surface hides. The ASTM F2170 in-situ relative humidity probe tells us more than the eye can.

Looking for epoxy-flooring closer to Machesney Park? See Machesney Park Epoxy-Flooring.

Three Licenses for a Lake House That Rents

The State Tourist Rooming House License

A lake house in the Town of Delavan that is rented by the night carries three annual licenses, and the first comes from the state. The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection issues the Tourist Rooming House license, which the Town lists at $300 new and $110 to renew. Rooming houses fall under Wisconsin Administrative Code ATCP 72, and they are inspected every year.

The inspection checklist covers things like slip-resistant flooring in shower and tub basins, a carbon monoxide detector wherever there is a fuel-burning appliance or an attached garage, and furnishings kept clean and in good repair. None of that names a garage floor coating, and we want to be plain about it: a coated floor is not a license requirement and does not pass or fail anything on that list.

The County and Town Licenses

The second license is a Walworth County short-term rental license, listed at $500 for a new application and $200 to renew. The third is the Town of Delavan short-term license, $500 new and $250 to renew, with a $50 late fee inside 30 days. The Town also collects room tax quarterly, with returns due April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31.

The Town’s own page says it will not approve or renew a short-term rental until all paperwork and payment are in. We do not file any of this, we hold no rental license, and we have no relationship with the Town, the county, the state or any booking platform. We bring it up only because owners juggling three renewals are the same owners trying to fit a floor into the off weeks.

Why It Matters to a Floor Job

What the licensing tells us is that a rented lake house runs on a schedule someone else is watching. Guests have arrival dates, the room tax has due dates, and the annual inspection has a date of its own. A floor project that runs long does not just inconvenience the owner. It can push into a booking that was sold months ago.

So we quote these jobs with the calendar on the table. Before we commit to a start, we ask for the booking dates on either side of the window, whether a cleaner or property manager will be on site, and when the inspection is expected. A floor that is still curing when guests pull in with a car is the failure we are planning to avoid.

Fitting the Floor Between Bookings

Grinding, Coating and Return to Service

A typical garage system takes a day of preparation, a day or two of coating, and then a wait before vehicles come back in. Grinding comes first, with the dust collected through a vacuum on site rather than swept out the door. Cracks and joints are filled and the old coating, if any, is taken off. Only then does the base coat go down.

The return-to-service window depends on the product, the build and the conditions in the house, and we do not quote a cure time from memory. We give the owner the manufacturer’s numbers for the exact product named in the proposal and build the booking gap around them, with a margin. If the gap between guests is too short for the system, we say so and look for a longer one.

Working With the Owner Away

Many second-home owners are not at the lake when we work. That is fine, but it means the scope has to be settled in writing before anyone drives out. Every Wisconsin home job gets a written contract before a deposit is taken, as the state’s ATCP 110 home improvement rules require.

We send photos of the slab after grinding, before any coating goes down, so an owner who is away can see the cracks, the old patches and anything that changes the plan. If a section of slab needs repair or replacement before it can be coated, that is the moment we say it, not after the topcoat is on. Warranty exclusions are read out before the job is sold, moisture first.

Keeping an Empty House Warm, and Who Inspects

The Thermostat Through the Cure

A lake house that sits empty for weeks is often kept at a low thermostat setting to save on heating. That is reasonable for an empty house and wrong for a fresh coating. Epoxy and polyaspartic products need the slab and the air warm enough for the specific product to cure properly, and a cold slab can leave a soft film, amine blush or a cloudy finish.

We schedule the cure against the slab temperature and the dew point spread at the slab surface, not against the calendar. Before we start, we ask the owner to raise the heat a day or more ahead so the concrete has time to warm, and to hold it there through the cure. We check the slab with a thermometer on arrival and on each coat, and we leave the thermostat where it needs to stay until the coating is ready.

City of Delavan or Town of Delavan

A Delavan mailing address can sit in either government, and which one decides who handles a permit. Inside the city, permits go through the City of Delavan building inspector, who also serves the Village of Darien under an agreement between the two. For one- and two-family work, the permit is started through the state portal first.

Around the lake, in the Town of Delavan, inspection is contracted to Professional Building Inspections Inc. Coating an existing slab and replacing one are different questions, and we ask the right inspector whether the job needs a permit before it goes on the schedule. The same split decides which rental licenses apply, since the three-license setup above is the Town’s, and we found no matching city ordinance.

What We Do Not Promise

A coating on a lake-house floor is a wearing surface. It is not waterproofing, it does not stop water coming up through a slab, and it does not reduce radon, so we never sell it as any of those. A lower level that took water is tested before we coat it, and if the numbers say it is not ready, we say that too.

What we do promise is a floor built the way the proposal says, on a slab that was ground, tested and repaired where it needed it, and cured in a house kept warm enough for the product. For an owner trying to keep a rental on schedule from somewhere else, a plan that holds is the part that matters most.