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The Essential Guide To Resin Factory Flooring

On a regular basis, industrial factories will face plenty of challenges, including physical impacts, point loading from heavy equipment and pallets, forklift truck traffic and corrosive industrial chemicals, to mention a few.

Regardless of the high demands, the floor that you specify should remain a flat, seamless, water-resistant, slip-resistant and practical surface.

Whether you’re a building contractor involved in the development of a factory, or a factory owner or engineer currently using a factory, this post aims to ensure you’re opting for the best resin flooring for your factory. Read on to find out more…

Mistakes People Make With Factory Flooring

Some may believe that sticking to industry standards is the best option, but the standard does not always imply the best.

A low-cost polyurethane (PU) or epoxy resin floor does not always indicate good value. In fact, it could end up being the more expensive option.

Short Term Savings With Your Production Facility Floor

When it comes to factory flooring, you may want to consider less expensive solutions like PU and epoxy resins. After all, due to the initial expense of the floors, these are often chosen in industry.

Is this, however, the most cost-effective option?

The majority of the time, the answer is no. It’s a common misconception that industrial flooring will require many repairs during their lifetime and will need to be replaced entirely in 5 to 10 years.

There are various technical reasons why Epoxy and PU floors require these repairs, but the expenses of repairs and replacements should be factored into your investment.

Shutdown Time Of Your Industrial Factory

When it comes to resin flooring, your facility will need to be shut down to allow for the installation to take place. 

You will then need to wait for the floor to cure for it to be ready for use. However, this is often confused with the floor being dry.

How long does this usually take? 

The typical dry time for resin in PU flooring is 5-7 hours, with a cure period of roughly 5 days, resulting in a substantial loss of your production time.

If you lay PU floors in sections, you just have a mechanical bond between them from the beginning, so you’re starting from a less-than-ideal situation.

Unclear Warranty With Your Flooring Solution

The biggest disadvantage of utilising a PU or resin floor is the lack of accountability for the warranty.

This could be due to no one wishing to accept the financial burden of the problem as it is passed up and down the supply chain.

Since you may only be dealing with the end installer, there may be debates throughout the chain as to who is responsible for the problem, with no one willing to accept ownership.

You might be wondering who your warranty is actually with?

This problem has an easy solution. Choose a firm that spells out the warranty you’ll get and explains what can void it, with manufacturer to installer falling within the same group of companies.

What Is The Best Factory Flooring?

Determining which attributes are better suited for your factory will provide you with a much more durable and long-lasting solution.

Do You Require A Super Hygienic Solution?

When it comes to specifying flooring for your factory, hygiene may be a major consideration if you handle food and beverages.

You might be thinking to yourself, “How hygienic can a floor be?” But it’s about a lot more than the surface of your floor.

Dirt and bacteria can accumulate inside certain types of flooring over time, making them prone to contamination. This is exacerbated by PU resin floors, which create minute air bubbles during the curing process and escape through the floor, causing pinholes. These pinholes are large enough for dirt and bacteria to get in to during general activity.

This causes an entry route for substances to get into and under the floor, resulting in contaminants or bacteria growth in the floor, as well as between the layers of your floor.

Selecting flooring that doesn’t allow for these air bubbles to form is key to a resin floor that remains hygienic.

As an example, with  Acrylicon’s unique formula there is no gassing off in the floor as it cures and thus no pinholes, making your food manufacturing floor more hygienic. Acrylicon also has the highest compressive strength in the market sector, making it the most cleanable and the most difficult for anything to penetrate.

Slip Resistance Factory Flooring

The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 expect the flooring to be suitable, in good condition and free from obstructions. Therefore, flooring should allow people to be able to move around safely.

As a Specifier of flooring, you should search for resin flooring options that keep everyone safe and follow slip-resistance guidelines.

Working in challenging conditions where there is a significant chance of slipping can be harmful if you don’t have the correct safety flooring in place.

Specialist safety flooring is the best way to keep people safe in situations when toxins are present all the time and spills are unavoidable.

Acrylicon, a thermoplastic resin, is an excellent choice.

Why? Because the layers of these resins solve into one another, they form a monolithic floor with no mechanical bond between them, eliminating the possibility of delamination.

When specifying resin flooring for factories, we recommend opting for a provider that offers tailored cleaning advice, so that the longevity of your slip resistance is maintained.  

Reducing Downtime With Your Factory Floor Replacement

If you’re thinking about replacing your floor, think about how much downtime you’ll have and how it would influence output in your food factory.

The type of resin you select will have an impact on the time it takes for your food manufacturing facility to reopen. Consider the following scenario:

Depending on the temperature, PU resin flooring might take anywhere from 3-5 hours to dry and another 3-5 days to fully cure. This could take even longer in colder weather.

Cure time is significantly reduced using Acrylicon, as is downtime. In fact, after the final coat is done, your business will be able to resume production after two hours.

Speedy Installation Time

Factories cannot afford to be shut down or have regions set apart for long periods of time.

When we discuss how to keep downtime to a bare minimum, we’re really asking, “How long does it take on average to install a resin floor?”

As you may expect, the answer isn’t as simple as you might believe. The size and complexity of a project impacts how long it takes to execute it. The type of resin you use, on the other hand, has a big influence on how long it takes.

Standard MMA-based resins are criticised for their relatively low compressive strength – particularly when you compare them to PU and Epoxy resins.

With Acrylicon’s unique formula, it has an incredibly high compressive strength with a similar cleanability to Teflon and stainless steel, so not only do you get reduced downtime but an overall stronger solution, too.

PU, Epoxy And Acrylicon Resin Explained

You’ve heard a lot about PU, Epoxy and Acrylicon resin, but what are their key details?

Polyurethane (PU) Floor Coating

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.

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

Therefore, you would have to close your factory for at least 3 or maybe 5 days to allow the installation. Costly downtime.

Epoxy Floor Resins

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, shall we?

Epoxy, like PU, has a high compressive strength, which means it can protect the concrete base beneath it against impact, wear, abrasion, water intrusion, oil and other chemicals.

A damaged Epoxy resin floor is also difficult to repair permanently. Once damaged, repairs will require constant maintenance (think of a pothole in a road). Due to the very long cure time, each subsequent repair will also shut down for your factory for several days adding significant costs to your business.

Secondly – and perhaps most crucially – Epoxy will often discolour and corrode if exposed to lactic acid – not ideal if using dairy products. So, unless you’re working on a vegan restaurant, you may have a bit of trouble.

A Durable Solution For Your Factory Project

For a durable solution with a quick cure time and speedy installation – opt for Acrylicon’s unique resin flooring.

You shouldn’t have to expect repairs with your flooring solution. Instead, expect a long-lasting solution – Acrylicon resin flooring is durable and comes with a ten-year warranty.

Acrylicon is from the Thermoplastic family of resins. These resins can un-cure and re-cure, as they are reactivated by uncured resin. With this, there’s no risk of delamination within the flooring system, as there are no cold joints.

Secondly, the cure time of Thermoplastic resins is unbeatable in resin flooring. Fully curing in two hours, Acrylicon will allow for a company to be back up and running with very little disruption to the business.

Conclusion

When it comes to specifying the resin floor for your factory flooring, your specification must satisfy both your budget and your quality standards.

Although one floor may appear to be a wonderful deal at first glance, there may be a reason for it and it may be too good to be true, as the phrase goes.

If you want top-quality, long-lasting resin flooring that outperforms others in the market in terms of cure time, longevity and hygiene, then Acrylicon is the option for you. 

To arrange a free no-obligation floor survey from one of our local experts, get in touch today.