When specifying a functional, hard-wearing floor surface for plant maintenance or renovation projects, facilities managers face a number of choices. Flooring materials must meet the service criteria of the building where they will be used, must be installed on schedule and within budget, and offer long-term durability, quality, and cost-efficiencies.
Choosing poor quality or low-cost flooring materials can result in costly failures down the line, including disintegration, acid corrosion, thermal shock cracking, discoloration, a slippery, unsafe surface, or even contamination risks.
Similarly, a floor that takes too long to install could delay the building’s maintenance program, leading to a domino effect of problems, including increased downtime and loss of revenue.
FLOORING SOLUTION
Fast cure flooring solutions, such as Flowcrete Americas’ Flowfast Methyl Methacrylate (MMA) range, provide industrial manufacturing and processing clients with a hard-wearing, durable floor that has a significantly accelerated speed of cure—eliminating any need to compromise on quality in renovation scenarios.
Flowfast floor solutions contain a catalyst designed to deliver a fully trafficable and operational surface just 60 minutes from application.
Flowfast can be installed on old or new concrete, as well as asphalt, resin, tiles, metal, wood, and marine ply. This versatility saves hours in surface preparation—particularly in maintenance shutdown scenarios, as Flowfast can be applied directly to the existing floor finish.
Flowfast provides a seamless, impermeable surface that is easily cleaned and one where bacteria cannot accumulate in hard to clean gaps, joints, or grout lines in the floor.
ADDED SAFETY
The safety profile of a Flowfast floor can be enhanced with anti-slip aggregates. This is ideal in wet service environments where slippery, damp conditions can pose slip risks, leading to serious injury, significant cost to employers, delays in production, or in extreme cases, impairment of the company’s brand reputation.
Flowfast not only reduces costs at the start of the process, but can also offer significant long-term financial benefits.
Refreshing a dated Flowfast floor can be easily undertaken with a new MMA coating simply layered on top of the old. The new layer chemically fuses to the previous floor creating a monolithic system that will not delaminate. This means that floors can be upgraded for a fraction of the cost, time, and disruption that it would take to replace an entire floor.
Flowfast provides a wealth of design and pattern opportunities. The material retains color vibrancy well and where required can be color matched to neighboring surfaces or interiors. The material is also suitable for use in conjunction with an operational management program that uses color zoning, navigational signage, and safety instructions on the plant’s floor.
FLOWCRETE JOINS THE US SPACE RACE
Flowcrete’s mission statement, “for the world at your feet,” took on a new meaning with a high-technology installation at the American space center NASA.
The center, which is considered NASA’s primary base for human spaceflight activity, consists of a complex of 100 buildings constructed on 1,620 acres located in southeast Houston, Texas. Johnson Space Center is home to the United States astronaut corps and is responsible for training astronauts from both the U.S. and its international partners.
In 2007, almost 14,000 square meters of resin flooring from Flowcrete was installed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The flooring work included all the exterior walkways around the Mission Control complex. Flowcrete’s state-of-the-art surfaces were also used in the Saturn One Rocket Building, housing the Saturn One rocket used to send the Apollo space craft into outer space.
Flowcrete Americas, based in Spring, Texas, supervised the installation, which included the creation of an eye-catching logo at ground level in NASA’s distinctive livery. Flowcrete used its Flowfast “2-hour flooring concept” at NASA. This rapid curing system uses the latest resin technology to deliver a finished surface ready for use just 2 hours after application.
“The installation of our Flowfast material at NASA represents a hugely prestigious project for us to undertake and one which reaches new heights in the flooring industry,” says David McNeece, managing director for Flowcrete Americas. ■
Editor’s Note: The NASA project was completed in 2007. In 2012, a 550-square-meter area was also completed at NASA using Flowfast Quartz.
For More Information: Flowcrete Americas is part of Flowcrete Group Ltd and has offices based in Spring, Texas. Flowcrete supplies world-class seamless flooring solutions to transform environments across the globe. For more, visit www.flowcreteamericas.com.
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Modern Contractor Solutions, June 2015
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