What are the benefits of epoxy floors?
Self-levelling epoxy flooring creates the uniform and smooth surface. Epoxy solution offers several advantages:
STRENGTH AND DURABILITY
Epoxy resins are very strong and resistant to heavy load. This makes them ideal for highly stressed industrial floors where ensure durability, extend lifetime and reduce the maintenance and repair costs.
RESISTANCE
Epoxies are resistant to most chemicals so they are also suitable for areas such as laboratories, chemical or pharmaceutical production plants and hospitals.
EASY MAINTENANCE AND REPAIR
Thanks to the seamless design, epoxy floors are easy to maintain and help prevent mould or microbial growth. Surface repairs are easy and at the minimal costs.
ANTI-SLIP SURFACE
Besides smooth and seamless surface, epoxy floorings can provide non-slip surface by sprinkling the surface with silica sand. The anti-slip properties can be adjust to customer's needs.
ATTRACTIVE APPEARANCE
Although an epoxy floor is often a synonym for a grey floor in garages or industrial halls, this material is also widely used by designers to create original and attractive floor patterns in decorative areas as galleries, cafes, hotels, showrooms etc.
How are epoxy floors applied?
Appropriate pre-treatment of the concrete surface is necessary for durability and long life of an epoxy floor. The surface must be solid, clean, dry and insulated from ground moisture. New concrete must be well-cured. If the surface is damaged (free particles, chipped parts, unevenness) or dirty from oil, diesel or other liquids, the floor must be sanded or blasted (with steel balls, sand or a high-pressure cleaner) before epoxy application.
After the pre-treatment, an epoxy penetration coating is applied to anchor free dust particles, to reduce air from the surface, to adjust the water absorption of the surface and to create adhesive bridge for the next layer.
After the hardening of the penetration, a self-leveling epoxy mixture (epoxy system) is applied using a notched trowel. Then, the surface is threaded with a spikes roller to remove air bubbles. The surface can be sprinkled with decorative chips and afterwards repainting with colourless epoxy topcoat if anti-slip surface is required by a customer.
Thickness of an epoxy floor can be low of higher (0,3 - 3 mm). An application sheet of an epoxy system product describes specific mixing ratios and includes step-by-step application instructions.
