From the ground up

Install a poor quality floor and it will not only impact on your production output and potentially damage machinery and equipment but it will also put the health and safety of your employees at risk. Whatever your requirements, from traffic and mechanical wear to chemical resistance and temperature or fire resistance and rapid curing to name but a few, finding a solution that can meet each element of the specification can be a daunting task.

According to the HSE, slips, trips and falls accounted for a fifth of employee injuries in 2015-2016 – equating to an estimated 118,000 self-reported non-fatal injuries in total. By providing a tough, resilient and anti-slip flooring system, which can withstand the day-to-day demands of an industrial environment, building owners and tenants will be able to maintain the safety of the workplace and increase productivity.

Sika provides a one-stop-shop flooring solution. The range utilises the best available technologies, including liquid applied soft resin flooring systems, SikaFloor epoxy and polyurethane systems, PU mortars of the PurCem range and PMMA resins out of the Pronto range; and is said to set industry standards for quality and durability.

Matalan

A highly-complex Sikafloor refurbishment helped transform a derelict Matalan distribution centre into highly-marketable business premises.

Concrete flooring at the warehouse in Skelmersdale, west Lancashire, had fallen into disrepair and required urgent attention to enable the building’s owner to re-let the site. Flooring which offered durability, a seamless, aesthetically-pleasing finish and a five-year warranty was a prerequisite of the refurbishment.

A high-performance, two-part, economic  epoxy resin, Sikafloor-264, provides a roller and seal coat for concrete and cement screeds which need to withstand heavy wear. In total, 30,000m2 of product was applied to two units at the distribution centre. Before the Sika system could be applied, contractors, IRL Group, had to repair sections of the original concrete substrate where racking had been removed.

Temporary heating was also installed. The ideal substrate temperature for the application of Sikafloor-264 is between 10°C and 30°C. With the distribution centre having remained empty for a considerable time, warmer internal conditions were required to maximise the new flooring’s performance. Members of Sika’s technical team were on site during the project to assist contractors and ensure manufacturing methods were properly applied as a condition of the warranty. 

Once the surface had been smoothed, a coat of Sikafloor-264 was installed. This was followed by Sikafloor-264 Thixo, a two-part, epoxy resin. The coloured roller coat is textured, an ideal constituent for the provision of a hard-wearing, non-slip, easy-apply, high-gloss finish.

The distribution centre refurbishment was carried out in two phases over a five-month period. The badly-damaged, unsafe flooring has been replaced by a smooth, uniform, light-grey surface built to stand the test of time.