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What Is Safety Flooring?
Safety flooring is a vital component of many interiors and industrial floors all have different safety requirement. Workplaces and educational establishments frequently require safety flooring in corridors, entryways, in canteens. Healthcare facilities need to ensure that public areas are hygienic and have very low slip-risk potential. Hospitality and leisure establishments need anti-slip flooring to avoid a potentially disastrous user-based outcome.
Slip-Resistance flooring
There are two significant indicators that assess the anti-slip properties of an anti-slip flooring – the ramp and pendulum tests.
In the UK the HSE’s preference to assess a floor’s slip resistance is for the pendulum slip test.
The ramp test, on the other hand, indicates the level of a floor’s slip resistance in a somewhat different way. A Ramp or ‘R’ rating is recognised throughout Europe to obtain a measure of slip resistance.
As a business owner, an employer, or as a manager, in the UK, there is a law that mandates floor testing be conducted typically on an annual basis. From factories to schools, offices to shops, airports to hospitals, all flooring must be proven safe by way of the pendulum slip test. The pendulum slip test is the only fully recognised floor slip test in a UK court of law.
Surface coarseness
All safety flooring will have some degree of coarseness on the surface. This can either be through the introduction of steel tread plate flooring on stairwells or, somewhat more common in the UK, a micro-roughness which is where particulates have been added within or on top of the flooring surface.
Do note that a surface roughness treatment for slip resistance can wear over time. As such, it’s wise to look for flooring that comes with an integral slip resistance that’s sustainable.
Flooring that comes with particulates that have been added to and throughout the wear layer is the advisable choice.
Hygiene and cleaning regimes
All types of safety flooring will be installed in areas that require regular cleaning. In restaurants and in bars where there’s frequently a sizeable front-of-house space, building, and retail entryways, they will all need to be cleaned regularly in order to function correctly. Not only that, but these floorings also must make a good impression.
Enhancing the protection of hygiene ought to be an option for more sensitive spaces. Care homes and schools are valid examples where bacterial cross-contamination must be controlled.
An additional level of safety for users is an incredibly easy to clean flooring system. This can make a project that much more attractive to healthcare management, building developers, and to prospective employees of a business that is office-based.
Anti-static flooring systems
There are a number of establishments that will have the requirement of an anti-static flooring system. In many industrial and manufacturing processes that involve a build-up of static electricity it can lead to electrostatic discharge (ESD). ESD occurs when electricity migrates from a surface of a conductive nature to another of a similar nature.
ESD can cause fires, it can create heat, and sometimes it may result in a small explosion.
A statically controlled flooring system decreases risk to workers and of machinery being damaged.
If you want to learn more about our industrial flooring services, then please get in touch and we will be sure to get back to you as soon as possible!