The Right Materials For The Job

Safety flooring cannot perform to its full potential if not properly maintained. It’s vital that such requirements are not forgotten when specifying flooring to ensure it remains in prime condition and, more importantly, safe.

It would be unfair to say that maintenance problems are always due to cleaners’ lack of ability or diligence. Problems often start with the specification of the flooring by an architect or contractor who, unsure of which product to use, may err on the side of caution and install flooring which is too abrasive for the area. Or worse, to save money, a low performance material may be used where really a heavier duty, more slip resistant safety flooring is required.

One recent case involved children in a nursery who had been slipping on standard vinyl flooring in the wet play area. As the architect had just specified Altro Stronghold 30 for a busy hotel kitchen where staff had been slipping on the old quarry tiled floor, he thought the same product would sort out the nursery’s problem.

Altro Stronghold 30 is designed to cope with frequent spillage of foodstuffs and provides excellent underfoot safety in kitchens. However, in the nursery where the only spillage was water, perhaps it wasn’t the best choice. Although the kids were now safe from slip hazards, it soon became clear to the staff that cleaning the new floor wasn’t going to be quite as easy as maintaining the old one had been.

We visited the school, met the caretaking staff and carried out a demonstration with their own equipment and chemicals to ensure everybody was conversant with the characteristics of the new floor. To the best of my knowledge nobody slipped again, but I bet they’ve gone through a few mops.

Altro manufactures different types of safety flooring to suit the many different situations where such a floor might be needed. We’ve also introduced Maxis technology which makes our safety flooring easier to maintain and resists traffic staining which is all too often a feature of some earlier slip resistant floorings.

Recently, we worked with a contractor and successfully installed a new Altro Timbersafe safety floor in oak, which incorporates Maxis technology. The material was coved to a height of 100mm with all the mitres wrapped round the externals for added strength and aesthetic effect. Large circles of other Altro Timbersafe colours were set into the main floor area. With the right product, a bit of imagination by the designer and the skill of a decent fitter, the flooring looks great, is slip resistant and easy to maintain.

To help keep an Altro safety floor in pristine condition proceed as follows:

1. Sweep up any loose debris.
2. For light soiling, mop with a solution of water and Altro 44 cleaner, leave for a few minutes then rinse with clean water.
3. For heavily soiled areas, apply the above solution, wait a few moments then use a standard speed rotary scrubbing machine with a green pad and rinse with clean water.  A deck scrubber and elbow grease are also useful for small areas.

This article first appeared in the May 2007 edition of the CFJ.