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Hangar flooring options

MacCool

Well Known Member
I have a roomy older T-hangar that I rent here for a pretty reasonable $163/month. It's nice enough, but the floor (old asphalt) is absolutely trashed in the immediate area where the plane parks. There are a couple of 10 inch diameter 4 inch deep holes down to dirt about where the main wheels park. The area under the nose is eroded and deeply pitted.

I'm kind of making a nuisance of myself with the airport manager, but let them know that I'm OK with getting some cold-patch asphalt and doing it myself.

But after that...what? I'm contemplating a 12x18 piece of outdoor carpeting to park the plane on after patching. Does that make sense?
 
Give one the garage upfit guys a call... not sure an epoxy floor finish will work, but they might have a good suggestion...
 
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Horse stall rubber mats would work well for floor surface. There about 4'x6' and around 5/8"-3/4" thick and heavy enough to stay in place
 
I don't know that you really need to add any sort of floor covering once you're all repaired. Here's what I did in 2 hangars:

1 hangar had severe pitting like you describe, under the whole front engine area and wheel area of the airplane. I cut out 3 large squares of asphalt with a heavy duty circular saw with diamond blade on it. Then poured concrete, leveled with a board, and then troweled and sealed.

The other hangar had a bad slope at the door. The threshold was too low, and then it sloped down into the hangar. When it rained, water would run in and puddle up in the hangar. I did the same as above, but more drastic. I cut a 3' wide swath, all 40' of the door, and then also cut a large maybe 12x12' square out where the airplane rolls and sits. So it was a big fat T shape. Then poured that, I staked out up to the door seal area and sloped up the concrete so that the door would sit nicely and compress the seal. I also kept the inside a little higher as well, for the first couple inches, so that any water that did make it in, would not run further in. Then leveled it out with the asphalt, and sealed it.

I find concrete to be a much nicer surface for the airplane than asphalt. It's smoother, and easier to sweep and when sealed it stays cleaner from oil.

Now, more recently, I got a couple of rubber backed carpet mats for each plane, and throw them under the airplane so that when I lay on the ground for maintenance, I have something other than bare concrete to lay on. I keep an old household vacuum in the hangar to clean them, as it works better than the shop vac for cleaning carpet.

In my ideal world, I'd have some really nice, solid color, epoxy or vinyl floor, but I'm not rich. Solid color, I say, because those fleck type colored epoxy floors, while nice looking, would make it impossible to spot a screw that drops on the ground.

Anyway, I don't think I'd want a large carpet area. It would just attract moisture. But a couple mats are nice to have.
 
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