3 Steps for Planning Your Epoxy Floor Coating for a High-Traffic Commercial Floor

Your high-traf­fic com­mer­cial floor­ing goes through a lot — heavy machin­ery, foot traf­fic, impact from falling objects, ground mois­ture, and more. To keep your floors strong and beau­ti­ful amidst all this action, you must pro­tect them with durable sys­tems, such as ure­thane cement, trow­eled epoxy mor­tar, or epoxy coat­ing sys­tems. Epoxy coat­ings are by far the most pop­u­lar options here. These coat­ings are visu­al­ly ver­sa­tile, resis­tant to impact, chem­i­cals, traf­fic, and more. So, installing these coat­ings (or sim­i­lar types of coat­ings) is a no-brain­er. How­ev­er, find­ing the right oppor­tu­ni­ty to get the job done is anoth­er sto­ry entirely.

With so much activ­i­ty in your facil­i­ty, how can you prop­er­ly apply these coat­ings with­out get­ting in the way of your peo­ple or operations?

Here are three key steps for plan­ning your epoxy floor coat­ing project in your high-traf­fic com­mer­cial facility.

How to Plan for Epoxy Floor Coating

1. Sched­ule Ser­vices Strategically

The suc­cess­ful instal­la­tion of indus­tri­al floor­ing sys­tems is high­ly depen­dent on prop­er sched­ul­ing. While dif­fer­ent coat­ings take more or less time to install and cure, the aver­age com­mer­cial epoxy coat­ing job takes sev­er­al days on aver­age — typ­i­cal­ly with a min­i­mum of 3 coats with 8 hour cure cycles you can be back on your floor with­in 24 hours after the top-coat is installed. If your facil­i­ty expe­ri­ences reg­u­lar down­time (i.e., overnights or week­ends), you’ll already have a built-in time slot you can use to your advan­tage. The more days off in a row, the bet­ter. If, on the oth­er hand, your facil­i­ty runs ²⁴⁄₇ or close to it, you’ll have no choice but to have ser­vices done dur­ing hours of oper­a­tion. To min­i­mize dis­rup­tions, work with a con­trac­tor that has enough resources and expe­ri­ence to get the job done effi­cient­ly with no work stop­page. These pro­fes­sion­als may break up the process in such a way that por­tions of your facil­i­ty floor­ing remain usable while the oth­er por­tions are being coat­ed. Your con­trac­tor should be will­ing and able to under­stand your oper­a­tional needs and unique chal­lenges, so your bot­tom line doesn’t take a hit dur­ing or after the process.

2. Keep Employ­ees and Cus­tomers Informed

It’s also cru­cial to keep your staff, guests, and cus­tomers in the know before, dur­ing, and short­ly after the epoxy floor coat­ing process. Fail­ing to com­mu­ni­cate what’s going on can result in acci­dents that either inter­fere with your peo­ple, floor­ing, oper­a­tions, or some com­bi­na­tion of the three. Make announce­ments and post sig­nage in high­ly vis­i­ble areas that indi­cate which por­tions of your facil­i­ty floor­ing are off-lim­its and which are fine to use. And be sure to allow all epoxy floor coat­ings to ful­ly cure before putting them back in operation.

3. Clean and Repair Exist­ing Floor­ing

While your com­mer­cial floor­ing con­trac­tor will per­form the prepa­ra­tions, it’s worth not­ing that all areas must be free of all obstruc­tions before the con­trac­tor arrives and fresh com­mer­cial floor coat­ings can be applied. 

Fail­ing to clean and/​or repair your floors before coat­ing them can result in poor adhe­sion, uneven sur­faces, trapped par­ti­cles, and more. It may go with­out say­ing, but none of these out­comes are ide­al. It’s worth doing some pre­lim­i­nary floor clean­ing of your own before the pro­fes­sion­als come in and do their thing — doing so will make their jobs eas­i­er, speed­ing up the entire process and help­ing to ensure its success.

High-Traf­fic, Low-Stress Floor Coating

At Kaloutas, our goal is to take out the frus­tra­tion and guess­work of com­mer­cial repairs by get­ting to know your par­tic­u­lar oper­a­tions and needs and work­ing with your sched­ule. We’ve pro­vid­ed a wide vari­ety of com­mer­cial floor­ing solu­tions to count­less clients in all types of indus­tries, always offer­ing our No Work Stop­page guar­an­tee. Allow us to help plan and exe­cute your next com­mer­cial floor­ing project with­out get­ting in the way of your dai­ly oper­a­tions. To learn more about us and all that we do, con­tact us online or give us a call at 978−532−1414 today.