Well it's is simple, as we will now have concrete floor that get huge amount of winter sunlight in that main living room area our thermal mass figure went up. with the use of phase change material in the roof it to give a thermal mass effect but lot less weight. What it does is stores the energy/heat and transfers it back into room a night. You must realise that this is a very exposed site and we had to get min 6 star rating. Our insulation goes like this from roof down 1, R7 Rock wool batts 2. 90mm Phase change Material 3. to support pcm you have to use 12mm ply sheeting in place of plasterboard 4. Float concrete 5. Electric in slab heating 6. Precast tilt, but played down slabs Underslab 7. R7 Rock wool again 8. 75mm foam batts 9. Reflective foil 10. Box in around steel and make air tight as possible Also all the glass is double glazed, argon filled and thermal shield. We had all that minus pcm and failed because standard way of accessing doesn't have it in calulations. i had to go and show council a sample of the stuff an how it works. This is not cheap but we can just about say that room will sit at a constant 21 to 24 degrees all year around without need for air conditioning . Phase change article

Hello I can't count the number of times we have been asked to come in to grind off painted concrete surfaces. There is a reason that no professional coating company opts for these products. They dont work long term. They are prone to flaking, scratching and peeling. Firstly for a coating to stick to your surface, the surface needs to prepared properly. The best way to do this is with grinding. There are plenty of low Voc Epoxy's and polyurethane's products on the market. I really believe its worth getting it done at the start.. There is nothing more annoying than having to content with concrete grinding to remove your paint once your whole house is furnished and lived in. Cheers Elle

Look into terrazzo, it's basically polished concrete with style. Terrazzo is a poured coloured concrete with glass or stone chips in it to give it a variety of looks. It's then polished to a high lustre. It comes in any colour like from bright whites to black and you can choose the mix of aggregates to make your own custom flooring. Commonly seen in tiles, it can be poured as well to avoid the tiled look. A similar colouring to sandstone would be easy to achieve this way with a more durable finish. Terrazo's can also use interesting agregates like sea shells and limestone fossils to create a complete custom look. An alternative to a high thermal mass flooring would actually be the installation of phase change material mats in area's subject to direct light. Phase change material is a polymer used in the transport industry that either consumes or gives off heat as it moves from a solid to liquid state. The material is know to radiate either heat or cold back into the environment for many hours in a controlled release after several hours of charging through exposure to heat or cold. It's an inert technology that never wears out and innovative architects are beginning to incorporate it into passive housing design. The panels are manufactured to be quite thin so you could hang a pcm mat on a wall for example and easily cover it with something innocuous but it would passively heat the house.

Thanks for your reply, yes I have two cars to park in this space. I was told today to try to paint the garage and then add the Decorative colour Flake and that will be nice, cut cost and can be repeated in the future in case more cracks appears, so do you think that works?