Safety flooring products offer sustainable wet slip resistance for areas that are a potential slip hazard. Used widely within the Healthcare sector for its hygienic and practical suitability. The most immediate benefits to this products are:

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• Slip Resistant

• Hard wearing

• Hygienic

 

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Designed for life
Tough, practical and hygienic, today’s modern vinyl safety flooring has moved on considerably from the ‘institutional’ looking, utilitarian flooring of the past and the marketplace now offers an extraordinary choice of decorative designs: from brilliant colours, abstracts and black and white, to near perfect reproductions of natural materials such as wood and stone.

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Traditional safety floors often include dark aggregate particles to provide friction which is very visible, whereas the carborundum-free particles used in modern ranges are similar to the tone of the floor’s base colour and therefore give the look of smooth vinyl but with the performance of a safety floor.

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Architects and specifiers have a duty of care to ensure that a suitable safety flooring is selected for areas where there are risks of spillages and surface water. Therefore, it’s always important to check that the product manufacturer can support slip resistance test method claims in accordance with HSE & UK Slip Resistance Group Guidelines.

In terms of safety floor credentials, products specified to provide slip resistance in wet conditions should meet EN 13845, which is the European Safety Flooring standard for particle-based slip resistant flooring. To meet the criteria for this standard, safety flooring must pass the 50,000 cycles abrasion test to ensure long-term, sustainable slip resistant performance of the aggregates used within the product.

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Products specified as safety floors should also be Health & Safety Executive (HSE) compliant and offer a low potential for slip. The production processes used to develop HSE compliant safety flooring are highly sophisticated with slip resistance generated through use of aggregates such as quartz, aluminium oxide, silicon carbide and recycled natural aggregates incorporated in the full performance layer. This ensures slip resistance is provided throughout the guaranteed life of the product.

To meet HSE requirements, a safety floor must achieve a result of 36+ in the Pendulum Wet Test with a surface roughness of 20 + microns.

*credit - Steve Urwin - Tarkett

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