Amarillo Floor Data: Houses, Weather, Soil, Rules and Costs for a Coated Slab

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 published numbers that bear on a coated concrete floor in Amarillo and the towns around it, each with its source and vintage. Housing counts are the ACS 2020-2024 five-year estimates; the weather comes from NOAA's 1991-2020 normals and the National Weather Service office in Amarillo; the ground from the USDA's Pullman soil description and the City's foundation manual; the rules from the City of Amarillo, the Texas Comptroller, the EPA and OSHA; the prices from national surveys; and the wages from federal data. Each figure carries its source so you can check it.

Three cautions go with the tables. Station temperatures describe the outdoor air where the instruments sit, not a garage or a slab. Survey prices are national, and no survey in our sources prices Amarillo. Wages are what workers are paid, and a regional price parity is an index of overall consumer prices, not a price for floor work. The Panhandle weather guide explains what the climate figures mean for a coating, and the cost page works through the survey prices by floor size.

Houses: age, type, ownership and vehicles across the area

Amarillo's median housing unit was built in 1973, Potter County's in 1963 and Randall County's in 1986, by the American Community Survey's 2020-2024 estimates. The shares below are our arithmetic on the Census counts. In Amarillo more of today's units date from the 1950s, 15,183, than from any other decade, and the rows before 1980 sum to 53,821 of the city's 89,188 units, or 60.3 percent. The newest stock is in Bushland, a Census-designated place whose median is 2014, where 628 of 934 units, 67.2 percent, were built in 2010 or later; the oldest is in Panhandle, a median of 1958, where 376 of 1,286 units date from 1939 or earlier. Detached single-family homes make up 70.0 percent of Amarillo's units, and 58.0 percent of its households have two or more vehicles.

For a floor, age matters because of what lies under an old slab. Stonhard warns that with slabs "over 25 years old, there is a risk that a moisture barrier was not installed," and Sherwin-Williams says older slabs "may experience vapor transmission or delamination" when coated without moisture testing. In every place in the table but Bushland, the median home is older than that. So we test every slab for moisture, by the method the coating's data sheet names, before a system is chosen; our garage floor epoxy page covers that preparation. Among the towns QuickFacts covers, owner-occupied shares run from 54.1 percent in Canyon to 79.1 percent in Borger.

Source: ACS 2020-2024 five-year estimates (U.S. Census Bureau), tables B25035, B25034, B25024 and B25044; owner rates from QuickFacts, except Panhandle and Bushland (B25044). Shares other than the QuickFacts rates are computed from the tables. Small places carry wide margins of error.

Climate: Amarillo airport normals, freeze dates and dew point

In an average year, by NOAA's 1991-2020 normals, the airport station logs 107.9 days when the low gets down to 32 degrees F or lower and 72.4 days when the high reaches 90 degrees F or higher; the table breaks both out by month, with the National Weather Service's wind normals in the last column. Freeze dates depend on the source. NCEI's 1991-2020 normals give a median last spring freeze of April 13 and a median first fall freeze of October 27. The NWS records page lists April 18 and October 20 as its average dates, without a period, and its climate guide, built on the older 1981-2010 normals, prints "First/Last Freeze Oct 19/ Apr 17". The NWS freeze study for 1892 to 2025 finds half of last spring freezes by April 15 and 49 percent of first fall freezes by October 26.

For January 15 the hourly normals give the airport 29.5 degrees F with a 19.7 degrees F dew point at 06:00, and 49.7 and 21.0 degrees F at 15:00; on July 15, by our subtraction, the dawn gap is 8.9 degrees F and the mid-afternoon gap 34.2 degrees F. NCEI's Canyon station runs colder at night, with a January low of 22.6 degrees F against the airport's 24.9 degrees F. Its yearly counts are 107.0 days with a low at or below 32 degrees F and 83.5 days at 90 degrees F or more, the most hot days of the seven town stations, and its median freezes fall on April 15 and October 25. Canyon's own conditions are on our Canyon town page. Of the town stations, Bushland 1 WSW counts the most days at or below freezing, 128.4 a year.

NOAA NCEI U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00023047 (Amarillo airport): average high and low, day counts and snowfall. Wind: NWS Amarillo Records and Normals, 1991-2020 average. Outdoor air temperatures at the station, in degrees F.

Ground: the Pullman clay and the City's foundation manual

The Pullman series is a clay soil the NRCS established in Potter County in 1929, with its type location in Deaf Smith County near Hereford, and its description puts numbers on shrink and swell: the subsoil is 35 to 50 percent clay, the top meter's linear extensibility runs 6 to 9 cm, and cracks at least 5 mm wide open as deep as 84 cm. At Bushland, the USDA research farm's Pullman clay loam lies over what the laboratory calls "a dense, very slowly permeable clay soil." Inside city limits, a new house foundation on ground like this is designed by a "registered design professional" or built to the City's Panhandle Residential Foundation Manual, April 2017 edition.

For a floor, the manual's figures describe how new slabs are built, not how an older one was. It treats soil as expansive when the weighted plasticity index tops 15 or the potential volume change tops 1 percent, and it assumes an effective index of 21-25 when the soil survey gives no AASHTO value. A slab that rides on clay moves with it. That is why we fill and patch cracks before the primer and tell you which repairs will still show through the coating.

USDA NRCS Official Series Description, Pullman series (Rev. FBP-WMR-TCB, 09/2022). City of Amarillo, Panhandle Residential Foundation Manual, April 2017 edition, which applies within Amarillo city limits, and the City's Residential Permits page.

Rules in numbers: City codes, Texas tax, EPA and OSHA limits

The City of Amarillo adopted the 2021 International codes in October 2023, effective January 2024, alongside the 2015 Energy Conservation Code. Its exempt list names "Painting, papering, tiling, carpeting, cabinets, countertops, and similar finish work" but not floor coatings, so owners ask Building Safety when unsure. Where a permit is required, work started without one carries a late fee of $250.00 plus the permit fee for a first occurrence. The Texas Comptroller prints a 6.25 percent state sales tax, local taxes of up to 2 percent and an 8.25 percent total for Amarillo; its publication 94-116 calls residential repair labor not taxable and nonresidential repair taxable on the total charge. The tax line on your written quote shows how the job is being treated; the Comptroller, or a tax adviser, gives the final answer.

The federal limits are national. EPA's architectural coatings rule, 40 CFR Part 59 Subpart D, has each manufacturer and importer hold floor coatings to 400 grams of VOC per liter, the Table 1 figure, which the table also prints as 3.3 in its pounds-per-gallon column. OSHA's construction silica rule, 29 CFR 1926.1153, sets a permissible exposure limit of 50 ug/m3 (micrograms per cubic meter) and an action level of 25 ug/m3, each as an 8-hour time-weighted average. For walk-behind floor grinders its Table 1 allows a water-fed machine or a dust collection system whose filter is rated at 99% or greater efficiency and, for indoor work, calls for vacuuming between passes with a HEPA-filtered unit. Our grinding rigs are set up to that entry.

City of Amarillo Building Safety page (modified 14 Oct 2026) and Work Exempt page; Texas Comptroller Sales and Use Tax page and City Sales and Use Tax table; U.S. EPA, 40 CFR Part 59 Subpart D, Table 1, on eCFR current to 10/16/2026; OSHA, 29 CFR 1926.1153.

Costs and wages: national surveys, Amarillo wages, price parity

No survey in our sources publishes a price for Amarillo, so every price row below is national. HomeGuide's national figure (February 2026) is $4 to $10 a square foot installed, or $1,600 to $5,800 for a 2-car garage; Angi (August 2026) puts it at $2 to $12 a square foot; HomeAdvisor (June 2026) gives $1,650 to $3,494 as its normal project range. The wage rows come from O*NET OnLine's local wage pages for the Amarillo, TX area, which cite Bureau of Labor Statistics 2025 wage data. They are wages paid to workers, they leave out benefits, and they say nothing about what a job is priced at.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis set the Amarillo metro's all-items regional price parity at 90.8 for 2023, compared with 100.0 for the nation and 97.2 for Texas, and the metro's housing parity at 77.4, where the national row reads 100.7. BEA describes regional price parities as price levels "expressed as a percentage of the overall national price level"; the all-items figure covers consumer goods and services, rents included. It is not a price for floor work, and we do not use it to turn a national survey figure into a local one. Those 2023 figures come from BEA's December 12, 2024 release, which its own page now marks as superseded; the February 19, 2026 release text names state figures and points to BEA's website for metropolitan ones.

Prices: national survey pages as dated (HomeGuide, Angi, HomeAdvisor); none prices Amarillo. Wages: O*NET OnLine local wage pages for ZIP 79101, built on BLS 2025 wage data; these are pay to workers, not prices. Price parities: BEA release of December 12, 2024, Tables 2 and 4, data year 2023; BEA's page now marks that release 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, Amarillo city
2. NOAA NCEI, 1991-2020 monthly normals, Amarillo airport
3. National Weather Service Amarillo, Records and Normals for Amarillo
4. National Weather Service Amarillo, Amarillo's Freezes
5. USDA NRCS, Official Series Description, Pullman series
6. City of Amarillo, Panhandle Residential Foundation Manual (2017)
7. City of Amarillo, Building Safety
8. Texas Comptroller, City Sales and Use Tax table
9. Texas Comptroller, publication 94-116, Real Property Repair and Remodeling
10. U.S. EPA, 40 CFR Part 59 Subpart D, on eCFR
11. OSHA, 29 CFR 1926.1153, respirable crystalline silica
12. HomeGuide, epoxy flooring cost (February 2026)
13. O*NET OnLine, local wages, painters, Amarillo
14. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, regional price parities release (December 12, 2024; now marked superseded)