What is epoxy self-levelling flooring?
Epoxy self-levelling flooring is a type of the epoxy floor coating that can be applied as a final surface treatment on concrete floors.
Where is epoxy self-levelling flooring used for?
Epoxy flooring is well suitable for various industrial and commercial buildings, thanks to its durability and excellent properties. You can often find epoxy floor in areas with heavy load, such as production facilities, warehouses, garages and parking houses. Epoxy flooring also brings variety of applications and its properties can be adapt to special customers’ requirements. That´s why it is also used in residential buildings, offices, hospitals or power plants – simply in the areas where both functional and decorative floors or/and surface with special properties (antistatic, anti-slip etc.) are required. Epoxy flooring, because of its versatility and variety of colours, is used for artistic rendering of floors in galleries, cafes, restaurants and showrooms. After appropriate surface preparation, it can be also applied even on damaged surfaces (cracks, chipped surface, slight unevenness).
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.
SPOLCHEMIE® solutions for flooring
SPOLCHEMIE® epoxy systems have been known on the market for several decades for their quality and durability. SADURIT® product name has even became in Czechia and Slovakia a synonym for epoxy concrete flooring.
The SPOLCHEMIE® portfolio includes complete solutions for concrete and wooden floors. SPOLCHEMIE epoxy systems are the right choice both for the high loaded industrial floors and/or decorative floors.
The universal, solvent-free, coloured epoxy system EPOSTYL® 521-01 has been designed for industrial floors, which are exposed to high loads as production plants, warehouses, shops, garages and parking houses. It can be applied either as a thin or thick layer and provides increased UV resistance. Non-slip surface can be created by adding sand. EPOSTYL® 521 FLEX is a flexible variant of the previous product. It has been specially developed for potting surface cracks of floors in buildings where UV resistance and high aesthetic properties are not required.
The solventborne, coloured epoxy system SADURIT® Z1 provides excellent chemical and mechanical resistance. It is suitable for both outdoor and indoor use and can be applied in a thin layer.
The epoxy system EPOSTYL® 521-180 AS and EPOSTYL® 521-01 AS system (solvent-free, coloured) has been designed for use as an antistatic flooring in the areas where protection against static electricity and static charge removal from the surface is necessary – in operating rooms, hospitals, dental surgeries, production of electronic equipment, places with a risk of explosion.
Besides to the products for industrial use, SPOLCHEMIE® also offers products for decorative use in studios, showrooms, cafes, restaurants, apartments, bathrooms etc. Decorative epoxy self-levelling flooring are not only beautiful but combine an attractive appearance with functionality. The coloured epoxy system EPOSTYL® 521-01 offers variety of RAL colour. EPOSTYL® GRANIT offers an attractive granite appearance (marble). Pouring small objects into epoxy systems are possible. SPOLCHEMIE® also offers epoxy systems for floor coatings and floor repairs, penetrations and products for stone carpets.
Kromě epoxidových litých podlah nabízí SPOLCHEMIE® také epoxidové systémy pro nátěry podlah a jejich opravy, systémy pro penetrace nebo systémy pro kamínkové koberce.
For more information, please contact our segment leader for the construction industry Tomáš Vejškrab, vejskrab@spolchemie.cz, +420 725 722 366.
Mgr. Kamila Vítek Derynková, Product Marketing Manager
Tomáš Vejškrab, Segment Leader – Construction
