A floor in a dairy, a clean room and a distribution shed are three different specifications, and the reason is never the industry itself. It is what reaches the surface, what the audit asks for and how long the area can be closed. This page sets out what drives the specification in each sector we work in, and which system usually answers it.
Naming your industry is a useful shortcut, but it is not what we specify from. Three things underneath it do the actual work.
Hot water, caustic cleaners, engine oil, solvent, flour dust or nothing worse than tyres. The contamination on the surface narrows the chemistry before anything else.
A food audit, a GMP inspection and a school governors’ walk-through look for different things. The floor has to satisfy whichever one applies to you.
Six weeks of school holiday, a weekend, or a four-hour overnight window. The time available often decides the system more firmly than the duty does.
The system named against each sector is the one most often specified there, not a rule. The survey decides it.
Hot wash-down, CIP acids and caustic cleaners, thermal shock from boiling discharge, falls to drain and coved skirting for hygiene audit.
Typical system: Polyurethane screed
Zero dust tolerance, validated cleaning regimes, seamless surfaces with no joints to harbour contaminants, ESD where product demands it.
Typical system: Self-smoothing resin
Infection control through a seamless non-porous surface, resistance to clinical disinfectants, and colour contrast at thresholds under the Equality Act.
Typical system: Self-smoothing resin
Joint arris spalling on forklift desire lines, racking baseplate point loads, dock-edge impact and thermal cycling at the door line.
Typical system: High build epoxy
Engine oil, brake fluid, diesel and battery acid, dropped tools and jacks, and marked inspection zones for MOT bays and vehicle positioning.
Typical system: Multi-layer flooring
Machine bases and point loading, dropped tooling, coolant and cutting oil, and flatness tolerances tighter than a warehouse will ever need.
Typical system: Heavy duty flowable
Static dissipation tied into earth and measured to EN 1081, because an electrostatic discharge event costs more than the floor under it.
Typical system: ESD build-up
Sub-zero installation, condensation and ice at door lines, and thermal cycling between chilled space and ambient loading areas.
Typical system: MMA resin flooring
Bunded containment to 110 per cent of the largest vessel, acid and solvent attack, and resistance verified against the substances actually stored.
Typical system: Polyurethane screed
A six-week summer window, heavy foot traffic in corridors and halls, slip risk at wet entrances, and low odour where work runs near term time.
Typical system: Polyaspartic resin
A floor that is looked at as well as walked on, with back of house slip risk at kitchens and goods-in, and work fitted around trading hours.
Typical system: Epoxy and PU coating
Seamless surfaces with no grout lines to harbour pathogens that survive for months, and resistance to the disinfectants used against them.
Typical system: Self-smoothing resin
Three requirements turn up in almost every building we work in, regardless of what is made or stored there.
Resin demarcation is laid into the floor, not stuck on top, so it survives forklift traffic. Required under the Workplace Regulations and HSE guidance L24.
Bunded areas must hold 110 per cent of the largest container under the oil storage and permitting regulations, with the floor specified against what is stored.
The highest stress zone in any building. Point loading, impact and thermal cycling at the door line all arrive in the same few square metres of floor.
Every completed project on this site is filed by sector. Open the sector closest to yours to see the condition we found, what we specified and why.
We attend site, test the substrate, and record what reaches the floor, what your audit asks for and how long the area can be out of use. The specification follows from that, whatever sector you are in.
