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Your Ultimate Guide To Resin Kitchen Flooring

On a daily basis, kitchen floors endure a lot: constant spills, persistent streams of water and heavy industrial cooking equipment, to name a few…

It’s safe to say that while choosing a flooring solution for your commercial or industrial kitchen renovation, you’ll want to check off a lot of boxes to guarantee that it performs well.

Therefore, to help you we’ve put together this kitchen flooring ultimate guide. We’ll look at resin floors for industrial and/or commercial kitchens and how Acrylicon resin can help you overcome a variety of issues that users encounter daily. Read on to find out more…

What Are The Different Resin Flooring Options For Me?

We’ll take a closer look at kitchen surroundings in general before diving into the specifics of each resin flooring option. Whether you’re designing a busy restaurant, a canteen area, or a food court, you should consider the following factors:

Hygiene is perhaps one of the most important factors. You need a flooring solution that is not only easy to clean but also reduces the risk of bacterial growth in the event of surface damage.

Downtime: Replacing a flooring system requires a significant amount of time. It might be the difference between two weeks and two hours depending on the sort of kitchen resin flooring you choose.

Polyurethane (PU)

Polyurethane coatings are scratch-resistant due to their high compressive strength, which is why you’ll see them in heavy-traffic places like multi-story parking garages. They can also withstand high-temperature changes since the flooring can expand and shrink, reducing the risk of cracking.

Perhaps you’re thinking,

It’s effective at harsh temperatures? There aren’t any cracks? This is ideal for my kitchen renovation…

The biggest disadvantage of polyurethane floor coating is the downtime. It can take 3-5 hours for PU to dry and 3-5 days for it to fully cure…

When the flooring is fully cured, it can withstand chemical attacks, including water. If you drop water on the floor before it is fully cured, however, the curing process can be disrupted, preventing the resin from reaching its full strength.

As a result, you’ll need to shut down your kitchen for at least 3 or possibly 5 days to allow for the installation. Making downtime expensive.

Also, PU flooring has a hygiene issue, as when the floor is curing gas bubbles can escape through the floor leaving behind pinholes that can then fill with dirt and bacteria and not be cleaned by your normal regime.

Epoxy Flooring

While PU has a lot of advantages, we’ve seen that downtime may be an issue, especially on kitchen projects.

Let’s take a look at Epoxy resin flooring.

Epoxy, like PU, has high compressive strength. This means it can protect the concrete base beneath it against impact, wear, abrasion, water intrusion, oil, and other pollutants. However, the cure period is much longer than PU – it might take up to 7 days to properly cure, depending on temperature. Meaning even longer shutdown times.

Secondly, and possibly most importantly, Epoxy can discolour and corrode when exposed to lactic acid, which isn’t ideal if you’re working with dairy products.

Joints in Epoxy flooring or in repairs within the flooring are cold joints, meaning over time they can delaminate and provide a way for dirt and bacteria to enter your floor.

Acrylicon Resin Flooring

Both Polyurethane and Epoxy have drawbacks, the most notable of which are the downtime and hygiene consequences.

Is there a resin flooring solution that overcomes the mentioned disadvantages? There is, as you will be thrilled to learn. And it’s Acrylicon Unique Resin Floors.

Acrylicon resin belongs to the Thermoplastic resin family. Uncured resin reactivates these types of resins, allowing them to uncure and recure, forming a chemical bond so that the floor is a monolithic structure. Because there are no cold joints in the flooring system, there is no possibility of delamination; ideal for working in a bacteria-free kitchen.

Secondly, the cure time of Thermoplastic resins is unbeatable for kitchen floors. Curing fully in two hours, Acrylicon will allow your kitchen to be back up and running with very little disruption to your business.

3 Signs Your Kitchen Flooring Needs Replacing

With kitchen flooring, elements should be examined over time to ensure it fits the requirements needed in demanding environments and continues to work as intended.

But how can you tell if your kitchen flooring is deteriorating? Here are 3 signs…

#Sign 1: You Struggle To Clean Your Resin Kitchen Flooring

For decades, polyurethane (PU) has been the most extensively used resin flooring option, and your kitchen floor could have a PU coating.

As previously mentioned, PU coatings are scratch-resistant due to their compressive strength, which is why they’re commonly seen in high-traffic locations. They can also withstand high-temperature changes since the flooring can expand and shrink, reducing the risk of cracking.

However, as PU flooring cures, gas bubbles travel through the curing resin, forming what we call “pinholes” from within the floor to its surface. These pinholes can be large enough to be poked through with a toothpick.

Bacteria and dirt can enter into these “pinholes” and live inside the floor if they are penetrated through general activity.

This makes it nearly impossible to clean the floor thoroughly, resulting in a kitchen floor that always appears unclean, even after you’ve scrubbed it down to the bone.

Naturally, this has a significant impact on the cleanliness of your kitchen floor, as it will become a breeding ground for bacteria and grime. Something you definitely want to stay clear from when dealing with food and drinks.

#Sign 2: Constant Kitchen Floor Repairs

Unfortunately, the industry often expects that PU flooring will fail after not many years, so when the time comes to part with money to fix them, some people do so willingly.

If you find yourself having to repair your kitchen floor on a regular basis, it may be time to reconsider the type of resin flooring you choose.

Before we go into the advantages of Acrylicon resin flooring, let’s go over what happens when your PU flooring is repaired:

Because PU is a member of the Thermo-Set family of plastics, it can only form a mechanical bond between layers and the remainder of the floor. As a result, strains can create delamination, allowing liquid to permeate and destroy the floor in new ways.

That’s why we remind our customers of our 10-year performance warranty, even though a well-maintained Acrylicon resin floor can last much longer.

#Sign 3: Slip Resistance Has Been Worn Away

Slip resistance is essential in the kitchen. Spillage is common, whether it’s water, dressings, or any other form of food substance. In these circumstances, ensuring employee safety is critical, and those engaged in the design or specification of a kitchen floor should keep this in mind.

Having slip-resistant flooring is not only a government regulation, but it also works to keep your staff safe.

Your slip-resistant surface may wear away over time depending on how the floor is used. This could be due to:

• – Heavy application of weight
• – Frequent use
• – Abrasive substances like flour being constantly trodden and abrading the floor
• – Even your routine cleaning process

Abrasive cleaning apparatus can actually wear down the floor, as it quite literally rubs the slip resistance away.

Although certain flooring’ slip resistance will deteriorate over time, Acrylicon will advise you on the optimum cleaning method for your Acrylicon resin floors to preserve their lifetime.

We analyse your needs and can adapt a solution to you, advising you on the best method to maintain your floor. Also, if an Acrylicon floor requires slip resistance maintenance, the refreshed layer will become part of the current floor due to its chemical bonding, with no chance of delamination.

How Often Should I Change My Kitchen Floor?

The simple answer to this is how long does it take for a floor to fail? It is impossible to respond because each scenario is unique.

Asking yourself, “What did I want my floor to do?” is a simple approach to determine if your floor needs to be replaced.

When the floor fails to meet any of the requirements you purchased it for, it is considered a failure.

How Much Does A Resin Kitchen Flooring Cost?

As you may be aware, the cost of a resin floor for your kitchen project is determined by a number of factors. These are some of them:

• – The location’s layout
• – Area Dimensions
• – If there is any obstruction in the way (for example, heavy machinery)
• – How modern the space is
• – The type of substrate

The final point, the type of resin flooring you choose, is a critical consideration that will influence overall costs in the long run.

Although it may not be possible to give an average cost of a resin floor replacement, there is a way to estimate how much one may cost.

First, work out the average cost of your floor now, using this equation:

There are various technical reasons why PU floorings require frequent repairs and replacements. Repairs and replacements, in other words, should be factored into the cost of your kitchen floor. Downtime should also be considered when calculating the cost of resin flooring for your kitchen.

Kitchens are active, lively spaces that can’t afford to be out of action for long periods of time for repairs or replacements.

Shutting down a kitchen for days or weeks at a can have a severe impact on revenue. Therefore, time (and loss of it) should also be closely considered when exploring the cost of your kitchen’s resin flooring. Here is a comparison:

As previously said, PU takes 3-5 hours to dry and 3-5 days to cure completely.

In contrast, Acrylicon cures completely in under two hours, allowing a kitchen to resume normal operations with minimal downtime. To put this into context, check out our acrylic resin floor installation in the Shangri-La restaurant kitchen at The Shard, which demonstrates how the kitchen was useable within 2 hours of the final coat being applied.

Seek A Resin Floor Partner That Provides Care & Maintenance Support

Cleaning and maintenance techniques should be tailored to the chemical composition of each floor. If you clean too forcefully or with some strong chemicals, the floor’s anti-slip features may be compromised, posing a health and safety risk.

The resin floor you choose should come with its own set of care and maintenance instructions, as well as specific cleaning instructions. Expect to meet with the manufacturer on a yearly basis to confirm that your resin floor is in good working order.

If you don’t choose a system that comes with a ten-year warranty – or if you prefer to work with numerous stakeholders to install your floor – this will be an issue. To put it another way, you pick X firm to make the product and Y company to install it.

Rather, select a single provider to handle both the manufacturing and installation of your resin flooring system. When it comes to warranties, this will ensure complete transparency and clarity.

Conclusion

We recommend for our clients to carefully examine the long-term expenses of a resin floor since frequent repairs and shutdown time can quickly add up and become costly for you. As a result, it’s critical that you pick a system that won’t need regular maintenance or cause your company disruptions.

We understand that any type of renovation work, especially in a customer-facing industry, can have a negative impact on everyday business.

For this reason, Acrylicon creates custom resin flooring systems for clients in the kitchen and food service business that are suitable for all parts of their establishment. A hygiene and performance warranty is included with both kitchen and front-of-house solutions.

And with a resin flooring solution that fully cures in just under 2 hours, your industrial/commercial kitchen won’t be out of action for long.