Building Contractors: What’s The Best Resin Flooring?
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Building Contractors: What’s The Best Resin Flooring
If you’re a building contractor working on a flooring design or renovation, the resin you choose is critical.
It’s likely that your project will involve a lot of issues that must be explored before getting started on your project. These issues will almost always influence the sort of resin flooring you choose.
In this piece, we’ll go over the distinctions between the three most common floor resins: PU, Epoxy, and Acrylicon, so you can make the best product decision for your forthcoming resin flooring project…
Key Resin Flooring Considerations
We’ll take a closer look at key considerations before diving into the specifics of each resin flooring option.
Whether you’re designing a retail facility, restaurant or food court, you should consider the following factors:
Hygiene: is a particularly important aspect in environments where food and drinks are handled. However, in all environments, you need a flooring solution that is not only easy to clean but also reduces the risk of bacterial growth.
Downtime: Installing or 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 flooring you choose. Can you afford the delay, or can your clients’ businesses afford to be out of profit for long periods?
Polyurethane Resin Flooring
Polyurethane coatings are scratch-resistant thanks to their high compressive strength, which is why you’ll see them in heavy-traffic places like in multi-story parking… Polyurethane 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 resin flooring project…
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 something is fully cured, it can withstand chemical attacks, including water. If you drop water on the floor when not fully cured, the curing process will be disrupted, preventing the resin from reaching its full strength.
As a result, you or your clients will need to leave the floor to cure for at least 3 or possibly 5 days for the installation. This could be costly downtime.
Epoxy Floor Resins
While PU has a lot of advantages, we’ve seen that downtime may be an issue.
Let’s look at Epoxy resin flooring…
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
- – Other Pollutants
However, the cure period is much longer than PU – it might take up to 7 days or longer to properly cure, depending on temperature. Therefore, there are even longer downtime hours are expected.
A damaged Epoxy resin floor is also difficult to repair permanently. Once damaged, industrial floor repairs will require ongoing attention (think of a pothole in a road).
Because of the lengthy cure time, each subsequent repair will involve businesses being shut down for many days, incurring costs for your client’s company.
Acrylicon Resin Flooring
Both Polyurethane and Epoxy have drawbacks, the most notable of which are the lengthy downtimes incurred with both resins.
As a building contractor using resin flooring, you may be thinking: “Is there a resin flooring solution that overcomes the said disadvantages?”
You’ll be delighted that there is and it’s Acrylicon Resin.
Acrylicon resin flooring belongs to the Thermoplastic resin family. Uncured resin reactivates certain resins, allowing them to cure and uncure. Because there are no joints in the resin flooring system, there is no possibility of delamination.
Second, Thermoplastic resins have an unrivalled cure time. Acrylicon cures completely in two hours, allowing your client’s business to be up and running again with minimal downtime.
Find out how we were able to facilitate the installation of a complete Acrylicon resin floor in the prestigious Shangri-La at The Shard, allowing for the kitchent o be re-instated 2-hours after the final roller coat was applied. Click here.
Long-Lasting Resin Flooring
The strength of the bond is ultimately what determines the success of a floor. The bond’s capacity to transfer loads and temperature changes while keeping its “grip” is what ensures the systems’ longevity.
Acrylicon’s proprietary primers are designed to permeate the concrete substrate and chemical bonding between the body and sealer layers ensures that Acrylicon is permanently “welded” to the substrate, thus creating a long-lasting flooring solution for your client. Additionally, an Acrylicon resin flooring system comes with a ten-year warranty, but with the right maintenance, your resin flooring can last much longer.
One of our oldest installation in the UK is 25 years old (Middlesbrough Riverside Football Stadium), however, we have many installations throughout Europe that are over 30 or even 40 years old in a variety of industries.
Conclusion
With Acrylicon resin, you’ll obtain a more superior result that will endure a long time.
While this may not directly affect you, knowing that your clients will be left with a long-lasting floor is comforting.
So why not choose a long-lasting resin floor? It will not only make your life easier on-site and may save you a lot of money in programme time but it will also be appreciated by your clients.
Get in touch with one of our local experts.