At Your Business, All Parts of Your Floor Cannot Be Treated as One
All floors serve a universal purpose: They create a supportive surface for people and objects. However, each type of flooring, especially in a business environment, has unique needs. For instance, the floors of a restaurant’s dining area play a much different role than the floors in a high school restroom. Accordingly, every space requires a specific maintenance protocol efficiently performed by experts utilizing high-quality, effective products.
How can you quickly understand the needs of the various floor areas in your own workspace? We’ve done the hard work for you, beginning where most of your visitors, customers, and guests have their initial encounter with your facility: the main entrance.
The Entryway
Does your entryway quickly become a veritable dumping ground for everything from silt to salt to sand to sleet? If you feel like all that tracked-in muck piles up faster than you’d like, you’re spot on. As much as 80 percent of the debris that makes its way inside your office does so on the feet of travelers. Knowing this, you need to prepare your entryway flooring with a protective dirt-control barrier that stops moisture — and ultimately floor deterioration — from eating into your budget.
Of course, even within your entrance, you probably have three distinct zones. The first is the area just outside your building access. There, flooring needs to be armed with a scraping-action protective product that resists grit and heavy dirt particles.
The second and third zones are indoors. The second zone is just inside the entrance, sometimes featuring a recessed mat well, where maintenance is made easier with a floor that provides dual-action tenacity against scraping and absorbing. The third zone is located just beyond the second, where moisture absorption is the key ingredient for spotless floor success.
Non-Public Areas
Most companies have back rooms or other private areas that are not open to clients but need a facelift. Great examples include the back corridors in kitchens; security areas in airports; labs and research space in medical facilities; and specialty areas in schools.
In many cases, firms don’t have the money set aside to revitalize these spaces, which is where colored floor renewal coatings come in handy. For instance, MilliCare ’s colored floor application doesn’t just fill in tile cracks — it also adds the benefit of color. The result? A shiny, clean surface that looks pricey but doesn’t cost much in the long term.
Areas of Chemical Exposure
Chemicals and toxins lurk in a variety of spots in businesses and can make a mess of floors. Consider the prep areas in eateries; mall food courts; physician and surgeon procedure rooms; professional service provider break rooms; and middle school science classrooms. Every one of those floors is exposed to instant staining.
Facilities that do nothing may end up with spotting, discoloration (even in grout joints), and lingering unpleasant odors. On the other hand, organizations that utilize preventative products, like chemical/stain resistant coatings featuring two-part polyurethane sealers, can keep their flooring from becoming an eyesore.
Places Where Water Gathers
Think about all those water fountains in public areas: Inevitably, moisture gathers on the floor underneath whether through occasional plumbing leaks or human error. All it takes is one slip and fall to send a business into a litigation or insurance nightmare, especially if the floor isn’t certified via the Americans with Disabilities Act. Therefore, it’s important to seek out locations where slick surfaces are commonplace and apply slip resistant coatings.
Not sure that you have such areas in your organization? You might be surprised at how many places would be safer with an extra coating of a MilliCare product that exceeds the requirements of both the ASTM International and American National Standards Institute. Remember that not all slippery floors are obvious, like dock areas that are usually dry except in wet weather.
High-Traffic Areas
Unless your workplace is highly unusual, you no doubt have several high-traffic areas in need of permanent floor protection. Our durable product coats the floor with a water-based, polyurethane-based, and flexible elastic sealer, which is perfect for almost any surface, including surfaces made of cork or rubber.
Not only does this type of sealant restore the look of flooring, but it can also repair scratches. Over the long haul, it’s much less expensive than constantly buying new flooring. Even tough-to-clean hard surfaces spring to life despite years of traffic.
Have you been cleaning your floors as if they’re all the same? Take a new tactic and bring all your flooring surfaces into beautiful condition by customizing your maintenance. Talk to a MilliCare specialist and set up an appointment to walk through your facility. Our goal is the same as yours: Make clean a way of life — easily and affordably.