By Ray Darrah
Cali-Floor Technical Services
916-760-8030

About the author

Schools, Universities and Hospitals favor Resilient Sheeting,
Vinyl Composition Tile and Linoleum as the hard surface flooring
of choice for hallways, operating rooms, common hallways,
Cafeterias, laboratories, storage closets and areas with rolling wheel
chairs. The durability and environmentally friendly aspects are appealing
to architects and building maintenance engineers.

     Although maintenance costs per square foot exceed that of carpet,
spills, accidents and high traffic that negatively affect carpet
become minor maintenance issues with hard surface flooring.
Vinyl sheeting, properly installed, provides a seamless floor that is
water damage resistant with fast clean up and not negatively disruptive
in hospitals or schools when minor water events, such as a leaky
pipe, occur. This is not to give the impression that these flooring materials are not without their own unique problems.
    
      Hospital floors tear apart under the static load and movement of the locked wheels under hospital beds. This has been a decade old problem as the change from carpet to resilient flooring has taken place in Hospital Rooms. Narrow wheels were designed to roll easily over carpet compared to the flat design required for hard surface flooring. The change to vinyl sheeting and vinyl composition tile requires the change of wheels to a flat design to eliminate damage under the beds. Epoxy adhesives are now required by flooring manufacturers in hospital bed areas of patient rooms.

     Concrete moisture continues to be enemy number one in all flooring failures in schools and hospitals as well as commercial offices throughout North America. The cool concrete meeting warm air allows moisture to condense on the exposed concrete surface. Concrete moisture is a problem to new construction, remodel and replacement installations or wherever the concrete is exposed to air for any length of time. The concrete does not require extended lengths of time to accumulate enough moisture from the air to cause the new flooring materials to fail.

     The move to “Green”, environmentally neutral, flooring materials, adhesives and maintenance chemicals are new areas of concern. The need to rapidly respond with “Green” products to meet demand found manufacturers’ responding before thorough testing was completed. Demand created manufacturing defects as the time was not allotted for testing to insure product success. Cleaning and maintenance chemicals were sold as neutral to the environment, but not re-formulated to be truly green and environmentally safe. Buffers were added to bring the pH into balance hiding the excessively high alkaline nature of the chemicals that damaged the new flooring materials. A good example of buffering is adding acid to a swimming pool to neutralize the pH, but the Chlorine is still present.

     Installation defects abound in commercial flooring installations, not just in hospitals and educational facilities. Installation related failures are the most costly within the flooring industry resulting in time loss, flooring failures and costly litigation. Conditions resulting in seam failures, uneven surfaces in the finished flooring or overall de-bonding are the symptoms of installation related problems. The experts of www.FloorReports.com are the Flooring Industries most respected Inspectors. Should you have questions before hiring a certified flooring professional, please don’t hesitate to use our Free Online Consulting Service at www.FloorTekTalk.com. We’re here to help.