The newest thing to hit floor tiles and flooring in general is liquid floor tiles. What happens with these is that walking on them moves colors around in the tiles. Perhaps put more poetically they actually create play as well as movements of light, which then stimulate the sensations of both atmosphere and nature. There are actually two different types of liquid floor tiles.

First to come out was the mono-chromatic liquid floor tiles. In effect these leave a retreating ray of various color tone rays within the memory traces of footprints left behind. What the bi-chromatic tiles do is to stimulate playing with colors as well as with forms of all kinds in an incessant and uninterrupted evolution.

As one walks, it comes as no surprise that the creators of these liquid floor tiles were obviously stirred by their memories of walking across green pastures or sandy beaches, which then left their marks directly upon nature in the form of their footprints. That particular feeling is just what the liquid floor tiles make you feel.

The liquid floor tiles are actually custom made, thus they can utilize any shape, any color combinations, and any size desired by the purchaser. The way that they are made is that they are actually filled with brightly colored, totally non-toxic liquids. This is what enables them to move and swirl in color when they are walked upon. Commercial usage such as bars, nightclubs, museums and even hotels where children gather have been the most common users of these tiles. Granted they are new, different, fun and very exciting at present.

Technically construction is rather simple, for it is 2 separate sheets of polycarbonate. The top of this tile has been treated so that it has anti-slip properties, and the bottom is actually used to act as shock-proofing. Then it is filled and encased in more polycarbonate. Each tile is about ¼” thick, and each of these tiles is individually tested before going out for use by having a 500 kg load for each square meter. Their reactions are best when applied at room.

As said these new liquid floor tiles are definitely new…thus the excitement of them will grow. It is obviously soft enough to leave foot “dents” into, and yet cannot be utilized where too much pressure will go upon it, and we have no idea how protective it will be to the concrete below it. Time will tell!

Various floor finishes do not come with a non-skid floor finish additive. These are added in by the operator or at the factory before the product is taken to your location. Thus if you desire a non skid floor finish additive you’d best bring it up to the person who comes to give you your estimate. Not all flooring companies will even ask you if this is a necessity for you, which is truly unfortunate.

On the other hand there are numerous additives that can get added very simply to paint. Whether or not this will deliver a true non-skid floor finish is debatable though. Read the warranty that comes with the product. Chances are they are not responsible if it fails for any reason. You might as well not even add it to their paint. Disclaimers abound when you add a non-skid floor finish additive. For instance I have found some disclaimers that say that it will actually reduce the lifespan of the product! Then there is a further warning, that definitely made my heart sink, stating that one needs to hold onto any leftover paint due to the need for periodic maintenance re-coating.

Then there are the companies who will sell you “play sand,” or silica sand, and some even utilize polypropylene beads. The last thing you will wish to utilize on your floor finish is play sand. It is very rough, and will skin the knee of anyone who happens to fall on it. In addition, play sand is much too abrasive, it will in fact shred off your flooring. There are some who will also sell you decimated walnut shells to mix into your floor finish. Commonly utilized though is pumice which is a volcanic product. All of these various techniques require sustained maintenance however as they will actually decrease the lifespan by wearing away the very product used to protect!

The very best product available though in a non-skid floor finish additive is Silikal. When you are seeking true non-skid products because it really counts, then you will find that Silikal has been utilized for it’s non-skid properties in military installations, air hangars, parking decks, restaurants and bakeries, hospitals and medical offices, schools, manufacturing plants, high rise buildings and a myriad of other places that knew that non skid properties in their floors was not to be passed over or denigrated!

Silikal is so serious about its non skid floor finish additive that it will actually offer degrees of non-skid to its flooring. Thus Silikal non-skid floors are actually designed to withstand all kinds of wear and tear and do this all without any warping, splitting or cracking or degenerating!

Any interior concrete is going to need an interior concrete floor sealer. The reason is that although concrete is hard, it’s actually rather delicate as hard things go. Interior concrete floors left unsealed will develop dust, and often have corners break off. In the worst case scenarios, cleaning plain old concrete gets old, and every time water is put on it, dirty water seeps through the concrete to make bigger problems eventually. There’s a saying that many people are taught in school about “the unexamined life is not worth living” said Socrates, but to paraphrase good old Socrates, I say that “the unsealed concrete floor is not worth having!”

The reasons are many why this is so. Putting down an interior concrete floor sealer will actually prolong its life, and will actually enhance as well as preserve its appearance too. There are of course hundreds of different floor sealers, some good, some bad, some just so-so and one superbly great one!

First, you’ll run into acrylic sealers, either water based ones, or solvent formulations. These work pretty well, and will definitely make your concrete beautiful and shiny for a while. That’s the catch – for a while. They will need to be specially maintained with more than a few coats of floor finish, or wax.

Next is the polyurethane interior concrete floor sealer. This is thicker than the simple acrylic sealer, thus has a higher resistance to chemicals as well as abrasion. Available in both solvent and water based types and generally they offer a range of sheen. Not for excellent resistance to chemicals nor abrasion though.

Now come epoxy sealers. These do produce an abrasion resistant finish, they are long-wearing and quite hard and do protect your concrete surface. Most of them are very water repellent. Unfortunately chances are that they will yellow if exposed to UV rays and shielding a flooring from UV is dependent on the space and exterior light access.

All sealers will not meet your current Federal and local regulations with regard to VOCs either. For example, xylene is a very common solvent frequently found in concrete sealers. It unfortunately produces VOC’s, or volatile organic compounds which can be harmful to elderly, immune deficient, and small pets.

Now we come to Silikal, yet another type of interior concrete floor sealer. First Silikal has absolutely no VOCs, ever. All of the Silikal products will deeply enrich the color intensity of the concrete if it was dyed or stained, or you may choose a seemingly unending choice of colors to bring incredible beauty to your floors. In return to making your floors superbly easy to maintain and clean, you will also be permanently blocking the penetration of stains, chemicals, grease, oil, and all manner of dirt. Neither water nor chlorides can intrude into your concrete either with Silikal. Protection against wear and any abrasion is a given, as Silikal floors outlast the buildings they are put into and they do not yellow!

Well, we all know the law of physics, Pascal’s principle, which tells us that water seeks its own level. Thus water that is at rest is at the same level as all the other water surrounding it. This is so because of the earth’s gravity. So, we were taught that the surface of the liquid is actually being exposed to atmospheric pressure, or put another way; it is reacting to the pressure of the immediate air being exerted on its surface.

Based on this need, those with uneven flooring might be heavily tempted to purchase one of those self-finishing interior floor toppings that theoretically creates its own underlayment. The goal of the product is to produce a smooth surface that is then completely ready for resilient flooring, or perhaps ceramic tile. Their “claim to fame” is that there is no troweling required.

The companies that sell this type of flooring resurfacer stringently proclaim that it is best to be used for brand new pre-cast slabs and concrete floors that have an unacceptable finish or that it is ideal for resurfacing any existing floors whose finishes have been damaged. That sounds thoroughly ideal until one looks deeper into the problem as well as the solution.

Now there are liquid floor leveling compounds that can be utilized on wooden floors, although many still believe that one should use furring strips on the joists. Because each joist will need different thicknesses and thus a different gradient of furring strip, this is definitely a very tricky job. Therefore, science has instead come up with a liquid floor-leveling compound that has fibers in it. The very fibers in it will enable you to use it on wooden floors.

After all is said and done though, one of the best liquid floor leveling compounds that can be found today is Silikal. And best yet, it can be utilized on all manner of flooring too! You see “regular” epoxies are polymer materials, which begin their life as liquids, but then a chemical reaction takes place and they convert into a solid polymer. In theory, this creates the most adhesive polymer possible, and its formulation can be heavily relied upon to make a completely non-porous and thoroughly seamless installation. Unfortunately this is not true of other epoxy products except Silikal, which utilizes “enhanced” MMA, which is methyl methacrylate. This product does create an impenetrable bond to the subflooring, is a floor-leveling compound, and is practically indestructible, therefore it creates a floor that will conceivably outlast the floor it is laid upon.

Back when MMA first came out for use as a liquid floor-leveling compound, unfortunately one of its problems was that it took ages to actually set. That meant that whatever business utilized it, had to shut completely down for at least 24 hours, sometime longer if the set up took longer to prepare. This then, created a problem for most businesses that cannot afford to lock their doors for this length of time. At last, along came Silikal, which utilizes “enhanced” MMA, and suddenly the whole floor-leveling world changed. Silikal, you see, will set up in one hour, and after that one hour, one can bring cars onto the surface and even forklifts and loads of foot traffic as it will be completely cured and ready for operation.

If there is one industrial floor corporation you need to know about it is Silikal. Believe it or not this corporation has been in the flooring business for over 55 years, and that’s over a half a century! First they were in screed construction. Now, unless you’re in the business you won’t know what that is. Screed construction is the use of some kind of top layer of sand and cement that goes on top of concrete, thus it forms some sort of flooring besides the concrete.

Since that humble beginning in screed, this industrial floor corporation began to create floor coatings that were based on synthetic resins. Now from then on, the corporation proceeded to accomplish countless development and research projects. Very proudly, Silikal is currently an industrial floor corporation across the world with specific representation in Europe, Asia and Australia with headquarters located in Germany and now the U.S. as well. They have a fabulous training center located in Mainhausen, Germany.

Of course, Silikal as makers of methacrylate resins became renowned in industrial and commercial surfaces, medical facilities as well as many public institutions. Even commerce and crafts began to ask for Silikal, and thus the industrial floor corporation grew by leaps and bounds.

Their product range today is phenomenal. They are the only company that deals with flooring that will cure so quickly that there is never any disruption of operations in any business, and even those who utilize forklifts can go right to work after the product cures for an hour. Each time Silikal lays a floor, it always receives the exact degree of required slip resistance. In addition, Silikal can be processed at extremely low temperatures, and businesses are thrilled to hear that they do not need to “apply, cure, reapply, cure, and reapply then cure!”

Even famous designers as well as architects are now specifically using Silikal floors due to the amazingly huge selection of colored design options. Silikal floors can mimic a tremendous range of rocks, and other amazing “trompe loeil” floor designs. You can even have imported Italian tile floors that are really Silikal concrete floors!

Silikal has been instrumental in creating a secret formula for its enhanced MMA, that was actually discovered by their own scientists. Their Silikal product can actually exceed the exceptionally strict LEED guidelines for environmental stewardship. Thus as an industrial floor corporation, they have good reason to be exceedingly proud of their corporation.

First in our search for concrete sealer non flammable, it is important to look at what a concrete sealer does and how it accomplishes its job. Any concrete sealer accomplishes its work by chemically bonding to the concrete until it has become part of the concrete’s internal structure. By doing so, it will increase the concrete’s specific resistance to mildew, algae, mold, moisture, alkalis and acids in general. It also helps protect that concrete in many ways, even against cold environments and frost. Some concrete sealers are so effective that they can even be utilized in curing wet and damp basements to prevent hydrostatic water from coming through the concrete. In addition a concrete sealer will halt such damage such as crumbling, pitting, spalling, efflorescence, and concrete dusting.

It is however, unfortunate that seeking concrete sealer non flammable may be like looking for a needle in a haystack. You see a great majority of concrete sealers are made of flammable materials. This is because they are not a solvent free product, and thus one can tell that they are full of solvents because the products release VOCs, which are also known as noxious fumes. VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compounds, but is shortened to VOCs in the industry. Some of these chemicals that make up VOCs actually emit gas known as off gassing, and they may have long-term or short-term adverse health effects on humans.

In searching through many products that are concrete sealers, one often finds products that speak of being non-flammable, yet in their advertising somewhere one finds the disclaimer that it is non-flammable as well as being low in odor. Something about such advertisements does not seem to settle well as there is a vast difference between no odor and low odor.

The point is that now one is seeking a concrete sealer non flammable in addition to one that is not full of compounds that will emit VOCs. Although I am aware of a tremendous amount of concrete sealers, the only one I am certain of that fits this particular “recipe” is Silikal. You see Silikal concrete sealers are totally non flammable because there is nothing in them that is capable of burning, and proof of that is that there are absolutely no VOCs in Silikal.

You will be happy to find that although Silikal is nonflammable, non-toxic and very environmentally friendly, which does not discharge any noxious fumes upon applicaton, the professional contractor will still follow strict procedures in order to perform the demanding work of concrete overlay. Any Silikal worker you will encounter has been extensively well trained, is courteous and extremely knowledgeable about the Silikal product.

99.9% of restaurant floors constructed today are surely made out of concrete, so when speaking of restaurant flooring, concrete figures predominantly in them. As to what goes on top of the concrete restaurant floors, now that’s the question that many restaurant owners need to face and question.

Some owners look at the restaurant floors concrete and envision being able to mix and match tiles with all manner of singular colors and thus being able to fashion appealing patterns on both the kitchen flooring and their restaurant flooring, The thing is that if a restaurant owner chooses tile, then they must make certain that each and every joint is properly sealed because grout can and will permit all manner of seepage and even allow food and other debris to lodge in those gaps between the tile. What happens next is that the grout begins to smell, and it changes color as well appearing dirty and filthy. There will also be dirty water seepage under the floor tiles, which will begin to pop out. Also, if not sealed, tile is incredibly slippery if either water or grease lands on it even if it is considered non-slip tile. Thus, if you see tiles in your mind’s eye, that’s fine but be sure and have Silikal seal the tiles so that you can rest assured they are properly sealed and will have slip resistance.

Other owners will see the restaurant floors concrete look and think that they need an older style appearance, and thus will want to put hardwood floors atop that concrete. The exact same scenario will happen with wood, as it needs to be properly sealed with Silikal in order to prevent water and grease seepage under that wood. Silikal not only does a perfect job at sealing, but it also brings out the natural beauty of the wood floor besides giving it a very eye-appealing polish.

Still other owners will look at the restaurant floors concrete look and envision stained concrete. Silikal can also do that, giving the floors in that restaurant exactly the “look” that the owners have envisioned for the perfect ambiance to take place. Be mindful that even stained concrete will need to have a concrete stain sealer applied. In addition to stained concrete, some owners have decided that they want the look of the floor to be stone or river rock flooring, some even opting for marble. “Real” marble of course is a terrible choice for a restaurant, as it stains so easily and is one of the most slippery of choices.

Silikal takes care of sealing all those, as well as creating a marble floor that only has the appearance of marble. Silikal is actually all those floors and more! With Silikal you can create the appearance you desire, as it is one of the greatest design elements available for restaurant flooring.

As we all know industrial resins & chemicals are now very widely utilized in order to enhance the actual performance as well as feats of today’s acrylic coatings technology. What’s interesting is that the very hardness and adhesion characteristics of acrylic polymers are what allow the amazing bonding to a miscellany of substrates. Combined with industrial resins & chemicals, acrylic resins have been able to replace the harsh chemical solvents that used to be in acrylic coatings. This has made great strides in being able to form and create environmentally friendly products.

Take the wonders of Silikal for instance. Industrial resins & chemicals have enabled the creation of Silikal flooring, which contains a number of startling attributes such as:

•Anti-corrosion properties
•Alkali-resistance
•Best storage stability
•Complete lack of VOCs
•Excellent gloss, finish and clarity
•Fastest curing possible
•Good quality, first-rate adhesion to non-porous as well as porous surfaces
•Improved pour of product
•Improved solubility
•Superior hardness
•Superb weatherability

There are all manner of different resins that have been developed in order to create water as well as corrosion resistance, gloss, adhesion and of course hardness. What has been developed is a modifier for both the alkyd and epoxy air-dry coatings. These coatings themselves were actually designed to improve the water resistance, gloss, adhesion as well as hardness that they are applied to.

So many chemicals have made our lives so much easier. For example take fully flexible (elastometric) waterproof decking systems that are utilized in highly exposed areas to create totally waterproof traffic bearing as well as walking areas.

We are all thankful for the industrial resins & chemicals that have created Silikal floors that will last longer than the building they are installed in. Silikal is so waterproof that it has been utilized as glass to hold back millions of tons of water in huge aquariums. Silikal flooring can prevent freeze-thaw damage in the worst weather conditions possible on earth, yet is the same Silikal that can be introduced to flooring no matter the weather.

Keep in mind too that industrial resins & chemicals are what have allowed Silikal to be installed anywhere, and in one short hour the floor can be driven upon even with forklifts. Only Silikal cures that fast, and that completely. In addition, the Silikal flooring can be completely stain resistant, which makes Silikal so much in demand for healthcare flooring where blood, iodine and other stains can happen, as in hospitals.

There are of course large companies in the United States where one may shop for same, and in that instance companies such as Home Depot would be said to be the floor coating system supplier. However if you are a company who is seeking substantially more expertise from your supplier, we cannot discourage you one bit away from those handyman locales.

You are seeking a floor coating system supplier who has the industry experience to accomplish what you wish, and you want this supplier to not only be exceedingly knowledgeable about the product he represents, but he must also know all about the product quality so that he can actually meet your demands regarding a resinous flooring system. Some people would say that they are not interested in a sales pitch, but you definitely agree that whoever provides a true variety of fully durable, yet flexible flooring solutions for your particular highly unique applications should become the floor coating system supplier for your company.

Well, many will come and present their wares. Indeed many will come, but few will ever be chosen? That is part of our free enterprise system, don’t you know? Your particular floor coating system supplier should be able to handle all decorative, institutional and industrial needs, and thus be able to offer specific polymer flooring as well as coating needs to your company thus providing an assortment of flexible, yet durable solutions for a huge variety of tremendously unique applications. The point is that your floor coating system supplier should be able to provide you with solutions that are truly based on your specifications that include: conductivity, thermal shock resistance, its impact as well as its wear resistance, and of course even its chemical resistance. Finally such a supplier should be able to answer direct questions even about the moisture vapor tolerance of such a floor, but then there is also being ultra cognizant of such things as color and the final appearance of your flooring.

In essence a good floor coating system supplier should be able to not only answer all the questions you may have on the subjects above, but needs to also be able to ascertain your needs on his own even. This is partly why Silikal is considered the foremost floor coating system supplier in the entire world. Their people know and understand Silikal with a deep dedication that shows the moment you contact that supplier. You will not do better than with Silikal, we guarantee it.

There are some floors that absolutely need to be in a no slip condition. Examples might include a butcher shop, a dentist office, a hospital, public showers, bathrooms, auditoriums, kennels, actually the list is totally endless, as to how many businesses and commercial establishments need a slip resistant flooring system.

No slip condition is also a theory of engineering or fluid dynamics. It relates to viscous fluids and boundaries thus limiting how much particles can move. Further along with these studies are insurance studies that have recommended that due to the American Disabilities Act (called the ADA) walkways, ramps, and flooring in the food and beverage industry must have a friction level of .60 or more for flat spaces and .80 should the floor be ramped.

OSHA has not gone quite as far, and required that floors should actually have a friction level of .50 OSHA is of course the Federal Agency called the Occupational Safety and Health Administration whose job it is, is to oversee and enforce safety and heath legislation here in the United States. There are even slip meters, which will allow someone to perform the static coefficient of measuring friction.

Silikal the world’s leader of concrete sealer flooring has delved deeply into the no slip condition, and in fact everyday their scientists are working on this problem, ascertaining that the Silikal product not only adheres fully to OSHA standards, but also surpasses them highly. It is important for anyone seeking no slip flooring to know and understand that the Silikal non-slip flooring is actually one of a kind. Above all Silikal installers are very adept at matching the non-skid coats to the floors, knowing exactly what to do when it is needed for extreme non-slips, as opposed to mild non-slips.

It is often said in the non-slip business, that Silikal is the only name that one should trust if an establishment wishes to completely avoid hazardous slip and fall accidents. Other businesses, property owners, architects, builders, and building managers have relied on Silikal for years to meet their full legal obligations to ensure that the floor surfaces that employees and the general public utilize are fully non-slip. Over and over again, courts have upheld that Silikal non-slip flooring offers the maximum protection against injuries that come from slip and falls.

If you are among those listed above, builders, building managers, etc. who feel that their businesses deserve the same high durability protection that will halt costly litigations that arise from injuries, then be sure to call on Silikal flooring. Silikal can offer peace of mind besides beautiful flooring!

Anywhere one enters a building we often see floors that are not quite as flat as the builder may have wanted them. Or, the various hills and valleys of a floor may simply be due to the building having settled ever so slightly, or it may indicate bigger problems. Utilizing a self leveling floor compound is best for leveling bumpy concrete floors or even wood floors that may be no longer level due to the floor joists having flexed or twisted in time. These modern self-leveling compounds are superlative for smoothing out the various dips encountered in either a concrete floor or even a wood subfloor.

Of course any application of a self-leveling floor compound requires that the subfloor is first of all stable and finally spotless. No floor compound will add stability to the floor, thus if need be floor joists may need to be either replaced or strengthened first.

It also stands to reason that the entire subflooring must be spotless. Dust accumulation especially will prevent any floor compound from adhering to the subfloor, so proper preparation by the flooring contractor is essential.

It is always interesting to watch such self leveling floor compounds being laid, however most of the time the first layer is nothing more than a primer. The primer then must be allowed to dry first before the self-leveling floor compound is introduced. The primer simply allows optimal bonding for the floor compound, very similar to a paint primer. However, this is one more step in the process, and time is money.

Things get a bit more interesting now, as the installer seeks and finds all of the lower levels of your flooring. There are numerous ways of doing this, but all of them are interesting to see. The installer will fill in those “holes” first since all of these compounds set up extremely quickly. If ever you’ve wanted to see a worker work fast, this will definitely be it. The self-leveling floor compound usually only has a “work life” of about 10 minutes, and thereafter it truly cannot be worked as it has begun to harden.

Or you might call Silikal to begin with. Because the Silikal floor product is put on while it is a liquid, in essence the product is its own self-leveling floor compound. In addition, you will not need to spend all that time allowing for a primer to be laid and worse yet to have to dry. Keep in mind that once Silikal is laid, the entire area is then ready to be walked upon or even driven upon for it cures in less than one hour – it’s that strong!

Probably the first thing you will run into if you are considering kennel flooring options will be rubber flooring. Now rubber flooring is frequently found in kennels as well as doggie day care facilities. Such flooring is superbly easy to put down, as no adhesives are even needed to install. Such rubber flooring is often sold in 5mm x 48″ x 50ft rolls, or in ¼” or 3/8”. Thus as you can see there are different thicknesses available, but all in 50ft rolls. The negatives to such rubber kennel flooring options are that it is superbly easy for the dog to chew on the flooring. Next, nothing stops dog urine from running under these rubber flooring mats. Since the subflooring is undoubtedly concrete, the concrete itself will have dog urine entering into it, as concrete is a porous substance. The rubber flooring will have to be pulled up, and properly cleaned each time the dog urinates on it, or there will eventually be a terrible stench coming from the urine soaked concrete, and it will be impossible to remove the odor from said concrete over time.

Next if you keep looking at kennel flooring options you will find vacuum-formed, but very high density especially designed thermo plastic panels as kennel flooring options, and these are equipped with interlocking tabs so that you can make one large perfectly interlocked kennel floor. At least this material is definitely difficult for a dog to chew, but the subflooring is still going to get ruined as pointed out above. There are, however some rubber flooring options that when utilized for dog agility courses do make sense. This type of material gives the added benefit of better traction, shock absorption and joint protection for the dogs, as well as their trainers all while running and jumping but utilizing it for kennel flooring is not recommended moisture will find its way beneath the floor flooring.

Occasionally I run into someone who has chosen garden pavers as a kennel flooring option. There are a number of reasons why this is a bad idea. First they tend to settle into the ground making your flooring become very lopsided. Next weeds will be inclined to grow in between each one, and finally they will hold moisture such as urine, thus you will have to remove them and place them elsewhere after a tedious cleaning job.

Finally we arrive at concrete. Concrete is great for as far as dog kennel flooring options, however the concrete needs to be sealed properly. The best seal for this kind of flooring is Silikal. You see it forms a total unbreakable bond to the concrete, so that no dog urine, no small bits of fecal matter can ever penetrate it. It retains the dog’s warmth when laid upon, cannot be chewed off, and is totally without VOCs, thus it is entirely safe for your canine. One of the additional reasons why this is superlative flooring for a kennel is that it is both skid resistant and slip resistant too!

Whenever flooring is being discussed, the question frequently arises asking, “Can the best flooring resist dog urine?” It is an excellent question as man’s best friend sometimes either has accidents on good flooring, or is being kept in a kennel where dog urine unfortunately has to be cleaned off the flooring found in there.

Often those asking that question have hardwood floors, and either have a brand new untrained puppy, or an older dog whose memory wanes so it forgets where it needs to “go.” Dog urine stains are unfortunately relatively easy to spot on hardwood floors as the moisture and the uric acid certainly are easy to tell once dried. Not only does the dog urine leave a stain, but also it unfortunately leaves a horrible scent. Now granted if you “catch” the dog urinating on your wooden floor, it’s pretty easy to clean that up without leaving a mark, but dogs know better than to urinate on your wooden floor, thus they tend to “hide” the fact that they are doing it, so you won’t find the damage until it’s too late.

So back to “can the best flooring resist dog urine?” Apparently the answer is definitely not wooden floors, not even well treated ones.

Moving forward with “can the best flooring resist dog urine?” we run into tile. Tile flooring is simply beautiful and dogs even like to run on it and it is known that tile systems will never have breakdowns of the product that allows dirt, watery products, mold and bacteria to grow underneath it, or will it? If the entire floor was tile, there would be no infiltration of dog urine, but unfortunately tile also means that there must be grout involved, and grout will allow dog urine to get under that tile. And then too, in addition an odor problem develops under tile. Along with that odor comes the break down of the grout due to the acidic nature of pet urine. It is only a matter of time before the grout becomes a serious issue in need of tile repair or replacement.

At this point, the question of “can the best flooring resist dog urine?” is being questioned with the sound of a plaintive whine being heard in it, thus we hurry past all manner of sticky tiles, rubber mats, and even urethane products. Though there is a possibility that some urethane products might have sufficed, the VOCs they put out may very well make our pet ill, or worse yet make us ill. VOCs are Volatile Organic Compounds, and none of us want to breathe that!

At last the question is asked one more time, and this time we come up with an answer that is accompanied by a wide smile. Silikal! We shout out loud, and the interested eyebrows go up and we rush to continue. Silikal seals off completely, there is nowhere for dog urine to go, thus it can’t make those awful smells. Go check it out; you’ll be very happily surprised!

When you are looking at flooring and you hear thin cement overlay, you may turn your nose up at it, figuring that the word “thin” is actually defeating your purpose of wanting to thoroughly protect the cement/concrete that will be under that thin cement overlay. However, what you do not fully comprehend yet is that a thin cement overlay is comprised of cement, various aggregate such as calcium carbonate, silica or sand, and in addition a polymer.

Polymers are what will give this overlay strength. What is a polymer, you may ask? Basically it is acrylic glue. This is what will allow this overlay to thoroughly and completely bond to the substrate, which is your existing concrete or even wooden floor. Now, the overlay will have its performance highly improved, will allow it to be flexible, and of course gives it increased strength.

Now, the overlay will also probably be given a number of additional chemical additives so that the overlay functions how the installer wishes. In other words, helping along its leveling properties, as well as drying properties, and anti-foaming properties as well. In addition there will be dozens of further formulations, so that the texture is what you desire, and the colored elements match what you have chosen as well.

In the business of applying a thin cement overlay, there are different means of applying it. Some installers will speak of a micro topping, a broom coat, a scratch coat, or a squeegee coat, but all of those are actually a type of skim coat. Basically they are used to resurface or bring forth new coloring to either drab or slightly damaged concrete. A skim coat may also be sprayed onto the existing floor.

Then there are self-leveling overlays. These are utilized more on slightly more damaged concrete or where the floor is not exactly level in spots. Generally people are ecstatic with those, as they get a brand new floor that dries in about 4 to 6 hours, and it can then be lightly stepped upon.

What they’ve obviously not heard of yet is Silikal. Silikal can be a self-leveling overlay with a vast difference from the other products we’ve listed. You see Silikal goes on very quickly, and in addition it cures within one hour. That does not mean gingerly walking on it either, you can if you so desire drive a car over it, or even a forklift!

There are so many protective floor products that it’s difficult to know where to start. For instance looking under protective floor products, one might even find baby mats that are slipped under a baby’s high chair. They’ve got a point, after all it is a protective floor product!

Yet, not the kind we needed to cover in this article. What we are talking about here is some sort of product that will help protect cement flooring. Thus one finds products such as a pigmented yet water-based epoxy primer. Being a primer, one can easily understand that more needs to follow. Such primers dry quickly, usually within 60 to 90 minutes. Dry in the business means “lacquer dry” which simply means that it is dust free. The primer must dry quickly because the cement will be re-coated at least once more. Once thoroughly dry then a colored product can be applied on top of this primer.

Now, when looking at protective floor products, one inevitably hits the various offerings put up by rubber flooring. Generally these ads for these products tout the fact that you would not chip the concrete with a 25 lb dumbbell if it was covered with rubber flooring. They then go into the fact that if your kitty has an accident on rubber flooring, it will not be impossible to clean, but the very opposite is true. They then talk about the stain and the smell that would remain if you’d carpeted that space instead of using rubber.

The problem is, of course, that rubber can have liquids seep under it and then you have such problems such as mold, mildew and other growing things, including that awful smell that may have been occasioned by the cat’s lingering and very odiferous liquid mistake. They lack explaining that one has to “know” that kitty urine has seeped under the rubber!

Chances are that next in your exploration of protective floor products you will light upon various water based polyurethane hardwood floor coatings. You will, of course, require a base coat, followed by a durable totally clear finish topcoat. It is unfortunate that the totally clear finish topcoat will unfortunately yellow with age in a pretty short time, and thus the flooring will require stripping as well as another polyurethane coating applied.

Finally we come upon a product that has been around for many years, and has managed to please all those who have utilized it for those many years. The product’s name is Silikal. Silikal is an industrial flooring manufacturer who offers the very highest quality industrial and commercial floors and coatings.

Numerous swimming pools exist in motels, hotels, various clubhouses, and many other places where the public may utilize the pool. Having the proper concrete coatings for pool decks had definitely become extremely essential. Thus one of the principal fashions to be seen in outdoor flooring design is utilizing a highly decorative pool deck. These concrete coatings for pool decks now are not only colored and textured, but they become an actual draw to the pool. Thus the concrete coatings for pool decks accomplish a lot more than to simply make available a safe and sound, slip-resistant deck that can be utilized for more than sunbathing and barbecuing. Today, interior designers pay just as much concentration on the pool decks as they do the interior design of the rest of the property.

After all, at present decorative concrete has beckoned to interior decorators to creating lavish pool decks that can actually complement the exterior of the building, and even meld with the remainder of the outdoor environment. In the present day concrete coatings for pool decks can now appear to be an exotic and conventionally expensive material such as wood, imported stonework, or slate as desired by the decorator.

Disregarding the fact that these decks are in actuality cement pool decks, the amazing variety available in order to design a truly exceptional, fully functional and exceedingly affordable pool deck is easily attainable. One has only to look at Silikal’s ideas about concrete to ascertain that fact.

Once treated with Silikal, a pool deck has an exceptionally durable surface, one which has even the benefits of being non-skid as well. Compared with a wooden deck, which requires constant sanding as well as resurfacing the benefits are easy to understand. These amazing concrete coatings for pool decks are actually currently created at a small portion of the costs that will be incurred by wooden decking. The very flexibility of a Silikal pool deck will please your designer immensely.

Once a designer has worked with the outdoor lighting, perhaps has added pergolas or trellises and arbors, and maybe cabanas, the entire scheme will begin to take shape. Adding deck planters, even matching concrete benches or even a romantic gazebo, and your pool deck will be the talk of the town! In addition be sure and utilize the same designer to add a matching spa to your Silikal swimming pool.

Often it is discussed online why have an interior concrete sealant? To some it makes sense to have an exterior concrete sealant, after all one wishes to protect concrete from the salts that a concrete area will get during the winter, but why protect concrete from anything on the interior? First consider the spills that concrete is subjected to such as dirty water, rusty water, oil spills and the like. Dirty water coming from just simple cleaning infiltrates through concrete so that eventually the concrete has a terrible odor emanating from it. It also stains concrete so that it becomes appallingly unattractive.

Another reason of course why one would use an interior concrete sealant would be to enhance the concrete floor, for today the colors and the shine that they can give concrete stagger even interior decorators with the complexities of choices available. Preserving the concrete is of course important but all concrete goes through a natural weathering process even when it is interior concrete. Thus an interior concrete sealant can stop concrete from looking pitted, and stop it from making concrete dust. Even inside a structure, concrete can go through spalling. This causes larger chunks of concrete to fall off and poor curing ordinarily causes it. It is unsightly and of course it’s also dangerous as it frequently causes falls.

The very best interior concrete sealant there is is Silikal. First of all it is USDA approved flooring, and that’s because it protects your floors from algae growth, bacteria, fungus and mold. Silikal flooring fits the demands of chemical processing plants all the way to food preparation locales. Silikal floors can be found in beverage processing, dairies, commercial kitchens, restaurants, and even businesses that make drugs for both humans and veterinary needs. That is because those floors are non-skid, easily maintained, and anti microbial as well as being able to withstand any heavy traffic, even forklifts!

Imagine a floor that is thermal shock resistant? That’s correct; Silikal can even be utilized in the freezers and cooler floors of those businesses. It is because Silikal is completely non-porous that it is a wholly seamless flooring surface thus water borne pests, dirt and bacteria simply cannot attach to the floor. In addition, one of the most important factors with regard to Silikal is that once it is laid in your particular facility, any work can be begun within one hour. That means that no business, no matter what, will need to close down for the lengthy time other floors take to set up, sometimes even as long as 72 hours!

Floor coverings for hallways present a unique problem. If it is a long hallway broken only by one door after the other and the floor coverings in each room will differ from the hallways, then the hallways can be covered in just about anything, as the space is broken by the doors. However, hallways that give onto other rooms, should in theory at least, all be covered with the same floor coverings for hallways.

Some hallways are actually the visual thread that will connect an entire building or office together. In that case, floor coverings should either be the same or at least complimentary to the main rooms that the hallway connects. Texture and color should be about the same as well.

You will also need to decide if you wish to speed your guests along those corridors, or if on the other hand, you wish to utilize subtle patterns as well as colors to create eye catching image highlights that will actually encourage your visitors to stop. Then they can admire your mementos of your corporation perhaps, or look at the photographs and pictures that tie in with your company. Making this kind of design statement will reinforce what the visitor thinks of your company whenever you utilize patterns, lighting textures and different colors to emphasize your hallways.

Floor coverings for hallways are also special when they consist of not just a hallway but an entryway as well. After all that will be the important first impression a visitor will have of the inside of your building. An entrance hall is a high traffic area as are the hallways, thus make sure that the first impressions count heavily. Some companies have their logo placed right into their entryways, which certainly makes a nice impression.

Unfortunately hallways also suffer from the dirt and even mud that is brought into your offices. Thus be sure that the flooring choice is easy to clean, and can actually take the strain of that constant traffic. In addition do keep in mind that your flooring should not only be easy to maintain, but provide excellent slip resistance as well. Also even flooring needs to maintain elevated indoor air quality, thus do not use any product that has VOCs, also known as Volatile Organic Compounds.

Of all the floor coverings for hallways, chances are that you will find exactly what you need through Silikal. They are even the ones who can have your logo imprinted for you right into your flooring as mentioned above.

When some floors are cleansed, they are not really cleansed because they do not have a floor water barrier. Instead the dirty water seeps under the floor when it creates havoc. What kind of havoc? Well, things like molds and also all manner of bacteria. There it festers and grows, and the next day possibly more dirty water gets in there, just feeding the mold and bacteria. After a bit, odors seem to rise from the floor, even though it looks as clean as can be on the top, but the odors are seeping from under that floor. Remember the havoc? If the floor we are speaking of is in a restaurant, it’s even worse because now the floor is harboring little pieces of food waste, such as tiny little pieces of meat and fish and rotten eggs. Things could not be worse if we tried, right?

Well, perhaps after all, that particular floor could be in a gymnasium where human sweat is deposited on the floor and guess what? It too seeps under that floor that has no floor water barrier. Now, we are really disgusting. You all know what a gym smells like, right? Ugh!

Those responsible for cleaning those floors have worked all in vain, because there is no way that they can stop that dirty water from slipping under the floors they have tried to clean. Owners may even fire their cleaners, or spend huge amounts of money trying various cleansers, but the problem just keeps getting worse and worse.

What they need to do is to contact Silikal. Silikal will come to the establishment, whether it’s a restaurant, a food processor, or a gym and they will test the floor, only to find out that there are minute little cracks in it, or even pinholes that are allowing the dirty water to get underneath whatever their flooring is. Silikal will then give the owner of said establishment an estimate on a new Silikal floor. The owner will hear all about why Silikal will solve his problem.

You see, Silikal is a complete floor water barrier. There is no water that will ever seep under a Silikal floor, no matter what. At last, that floor that brought forth so much havoc will be able to remain totally hygienic. This means that there will no longer be those awful smells coming from the floor. In the gym, there will no longer be human sweat seeping to the underneath floor area, thus it too will smell great. The cleaning staff will be overjoyed, as the floor will now be so very easy to keep clean and fresh smelling.

How does Silikal do all this? Understand that Silikal is a state of the art, totally and completely seamless reactive resin floor system. There is no other flooring like it. What Silikal puts down is a completely pore free monolithic surface.

If you currently have a new or even an old concrete floor, you may be seeking some kind of concrete floor coating material. There are many kinds, of course, and today such material comes in a plethora of colors so that whatever style you are seeking, you are bound to find it, and if you do not know what you desire, there are tons of interior designers, contractors and sub contractors who will also be glad to help. No matter what kind of concrete floor coating material you may have already heard of, shop around so that you get the right solution to your concrete floor coating needs.

You will receive all manner of truly industry proven recommendations. There will be some who wish for you to consider sealants and acrylic coatings, colored stains, stain sealers, concrete polishing as well as numerous epoxy coatings. Thus it can get confusing. You will need to call established companies, who have the correct technical know how, have the best customer support and thus can always deliver the best service available. Each company you call for an estimate should have as part of their goal, educating you as a customer, so that you will make the most informed decision possible as to which concrete floor coating material is going to be the best to meet your needs.

Do know that you will need an on site estimate? Do not let anyone tell you a ballpark figure over the phone or direct you to put what you need on the Internet yourself. Good business practice means that they will come to your location, actually be on time and act as professionals should. When you give them the go ahead, they should actually be sure to offer a secure and very clean work environment at all times.

Verify that all they claim about any product is as they say, and that it will do as promised. Call the Better Business Bureau and see if there are numerous complaints about either the product or the company. Whether you have an industrial or commercial flooring need, ask about protecting your concrete slab from contamination as well as deterioration. Ask also about the physical performance of the concrete floor coating material, the maintenance required, the chemical resistance it may have, and whether or not it will be non-skid. Look beyond their statements about wear and aesthetics, those are of the least importance, but do verify them. Finally no matter what kind of material you are seeking be sure and call upon Silikal. Chances are that’s whom you will hire, as they are simply the best!

We here in the United States are surrounded by concrete. Everywhere we look in the cities, there are concrete slabs, and especially industrial concrete slabs. Concrete is concrete to those who are not in the flooring business or construction of some kind.

In industrial or commercial settings, concrete slabs ordinarily have some highly specialized requirements. These requirements may be based on the evenness or flatness that is essential in that particular industry. Concrete contractors have been especially trained to understand and know how to place as well as finish the concrete. Many industrial and commercial floors have special requirements for color, finish and of course hardness as well. Some specs ask for a troweled finish, some want surface densifiers, and many today want special colors, even a logo incorporated into the industrial concrete slabs.

Industrial and commercial floors today can be created on a grade or even suspended. When they construct one such as this, then they use some sort of metal decking. Usually this consists of corrugated sheet metal, but then it is all supported by the structural steel around it. Evenness and flatness is more difficult on these kinds of floors, thus it is even more important for the floor to receive some sort of leveling. Installing a self-leveling flooring system usually accomplishes this. Only Silikal puts out this astonishingly protective liquid leveler that also incorporates their reactive resin flakes, which lends an extreme attractiveness to its amazing functionality.

It is amazingly functional because Silikal protection gives ultimate protection to industrial concrete slabs by being totally non-slip when it is integrated with a Silikal concrete sealer. In addition it is functional because Silikal can stop static shock as well as electrocution, which means that you can have total industrial antistatic safety. Further, any Silikal flooring is a totally seamless, monolithic surface. Thus it is always pore-free, which means that not even water can ever penetrate the surface. Imagine, if you will, that this one fact will prevent penetration and therefore any corruption to your floor or your substrate.

Best yet, is the fact that only Silikal sets up or cures in less than one hour. This means that your industrial concrete slabs can be fully protected without having to shut down your business overnight or even for 48 hours as many other industrial concrete slab finishes require, and then they do not deliver half the benefits that Silikal does!

With what has happened to the economy lately, many are staying in homes and businesses that do not have all of the accouterments that they would like in a newer venue. Thus, they decide to expand their real estate’s outdoor living space instead. Those with two or three stories to their commercial establishments are building decks for their upstairs business so that customers can enjoy the great outdoors in total privacy. However, constructing wooden decks with planking unfortunately does not transform the space below the deck into something useful, especially when it rains. If only one could have deck flooring that does not allow water to run through the gaps in the deck?

Imagine if instead, one could have yet another patio underneath, one that was dry enough to use when it rained, or perhaps have a hot tub below away from cold rainy weather? Some business owners use the space below as storage or perhaps a carport with a circular drive so that customers can be dropped off in bad weather and remain dry. But this can only happen if you can keep water from coursing through the cracks and fissures that a wooden deck presents.

A wooden deck also means that it will eventually warp, rot and crack, and need to be waterproofed constantly as well as stained or painted too. That means a lot of time taken away from the owner who would rather see customers sunbathing on that deck rather than watching workers work on that deck flooring. It also means that money will have to be spent over and over again to maintain the flooring of that deck.

There is a product available today though that saves the real estate owner from all that expensive maintenance and seemingly endless extensive repairs to that deck. That product is very easily utilized, will go up in only one day, and will thoroughly and completely seal that deck so that guests can enjoy both the top and below the deck!

Restaurants have been creating such decks for a long time with this product, and have created lovely dining areas on top and below the decks. Schools also have utilized this method, and country clubs love having the space under the decks for storage while the top of the decks are utilized by the country club members.

This amazing product that allows all of those examples is Silikal. You see, Silikal completely and totally seals the deck so that there are never leaks or water coming through the deck. Thus the area below the deck is always kept completely dry. Silikal is absolutely non-porous and is perfect for the extreme conditions found on a rooftop, as it is impervious to rain, snow, ice and it cannot harbor mold as decks often do. There is no downtime either if you have a venue or some other commercial venture. The flooring is tremendously easy to keep clean and even more importantly, it is a non-slip floor. Thus your help as well as your visitors can come and go without worrying about slip and falls with this amazing deck flooring!

It truly does not matter what kinds of floors you now have. Accomplishing a floor restore to them is always a good idea prior to thinking about completely tearing them up and building new floors. Those who undertake removal and replacement often do not take into account the awful mess it’s going to create, the costs involved, besides the costs of getting rid of the debris which can run into thousands and thousands if the reason for the floor restore is that chemicals have gone through the substrate and perhaps even into the ground below!

If one is speaking of a wooden floor, then usually those who handle a floor restore will speak of sanding and refinishing the wood. This too, especially the sanding, can create a terrible mess if you are still occupying the premises. One of the newer means of taking care of wooden floors that need to be refinished though is called screening. Actually it is a machine that scuffs off the clear coat that remains on the floors at the moment. Often these machines are equipped with their own vacuums, which thus pick up the greater majority of the dust though not all of it. What usually follows is new clear top coating, however that needs to dry for at least 24 hours after it is put on, with heavy traffic needing at least 4-5 days for total curing. This is not good news for an active shop, as shops cannot close for that amount of time, and actually many offices and office parks cannot either. The solution? Read further.

Let’s assume now that the floor restore needs to be done to a flooring that is made out of concrete. As the wear and tear on the concrete has caused voluminous amounts of concrete dust to rise, the more the owner curses having a plain concrete floor. Actually the same solution is going to apply that the owner of the wooden floor above will use.

The best solution, no matter what kinds of floors you need to restore, is to utilize a product known as Silikal. Silikal, you see, can be put on top of any kind of floor, be it wood, concrete, or even tile and terrazzo if it’s not been broken. The best news for the shop owner is that a Silikal floor can be installed quickly and then the surprise comes. Once installed it can be used, including heavy foot traffic in only one hour! Being told that it cures that quickly surprises most people enormously.

By installing a clear coat of Silikal, the beauty of the floor below it comes through, such as the wooden floors mentioned above, but if you wish to have colors or even mimicry of all manner of stone floors, that too is possible with Silikal. With any kind of Silikal flooring there is no floor that will ever harbor bacteria or mold as it is a completely non porous, pin hole free flooring surface that also happens to be seam free.

So you have a bare concrete slab. It is battleship gray, and even though it’s probably brand new, it’s still a distressing thing to look at, as there’s no life in it whatsoever. Thus you muse as to what flooring for concrete slab makes the most sense. There are a myriad of choices, that’s for sure.

First there is hardwood flooring for concrete slab. There are a plethora of hardwoods to choose from such as poplar, maple, cherry, oak, ash and birch. All of those are simply lovely, but the care that they will need probably is quite daunting, especially in a high traffic area. Besides, wood contains water, and it also sucks up water when one cleans it. It invites problems because of that, such as molds and bacteria, which eventually can cause terrible smells to emanate from a floor.

Then one might consider flooring for concrete slab made of vinyl, and if cushioning is a worry, vinyl even comes with cushioning. Vinyl causes its own problems too though. There is the adhesive that is used, some of which cause allergies. There is the fact that there are seams, and when you have seams, you can let in dirty water and cause the same problems that hardwood had. Vinyl installation might benefit from installations of a membrane. You’ll know what it is when you see it, for it is dimpled, usually a dull heavy duty gray color. Its purpose is to keep your floors dry and thus act as a vapor barrier. That raises the investment for you to use vinyl though, so keep that in mind.

Next you might consider placing tile. Now, tile requires grout, and unfortunately grout is not waterproof either. Ultimately there will be weathering on that grout, and eventually it will allow dirty water to introduce itself under the tile as well, and that’s due to the grout. This can lead to costly tile repairs without even receiving the full life of the new tile floor!

The very best flooring for concrete slab is of course Silikal. When you read about vapor barriers nothing but nothing does the work that Silikal does. The reason is because when Silikal is applied to a concrete slab it totally works its way inside the concrete, and then it makes a complete seal. Not even a pin prick will allow any water or wetness to penetrate Silikal.

That means too that no dirty water can infiltrate under Silikal either. It is a totally seamless floor surface. In addition the floor is completely safe, as it is an anti-skid floor. That’s important where there might be water on the floor, or other substances that might occasion a slip. The Silikal floor will “cure” or “harden” all within one hour of when it was laid. In addition, the floor will be quite simple to keep clean, no matter how messy those working on it tend to be.

When some floors are cleansed, they are not really cleansed because they do not have a floor water barrier. Instead the dirty water seeps under the floor when it creates havoc. What kind of havoc? Well, things like molds and also all manner of bacteria. There it festers and grows, and the next day possibly more dirty water gets in there, just feeding the mold and bacteria. After a bit, odors seem to rise from the floor, even though it looks as clean as can be on the top, but the odors are seeping from under that floor. Remember the havoc? If the floor we are speaking of is in a restaurant, it’s even worse because now the floor is harboring little pieces of food waste, such as tiny little pieces of meat and fish and rotten eggs. Things could not be worse if we tried, right?

Well, perhaps after all, that particular floor could be in a gym where human sweat is deposited on the floor and guess what? It too seeps under that floor that has no floor water barrier. Now, we are really disgusting. You all know what a gym smells like, right? Ugh!

Those responsible for cleaning those floors have worked all in vain, because there is no way that they can stop that dirty water from slipping under the floors they have tried to clean. Owners may even fire their cleaners, or spend huge amounts of money trying this cleanser and that cleanser, but the problem just keeps getting worse and worse.

What they need to do is to contact Silikal. Silikal will come to the establishment, whether it’s a restaurant, office space, or a grocery store and they will test the floor, only to find out that there are minute little cracks in it, or even pinholes that are allowing the dirty water to get underneath whatever their flooring is. Silikal will then give the owner of said establishment an estimate on a new Silikal floor. The owner will hear all about why Silikal will solve his problem.

You see, Silikal is a complete floor water barrier. There is no water that will ever seep under a Silikal floor, no matter what. At last, that floor that brought forth so much havoc will be able to remain totally hygienic. This means that there will no longer be those awful smells coming from the floor. In the gym, there will no longer be human sweat seeping to the underneath floor area, thus it too will smell great. The cleaning staff will be overjoyed, as the floor will now be so very easy to keep clean and fresh smelling.

How does Silikal do all this? Understand that Silikal is a state of the art, totally and completely seamless reactive resin floor system. There is no other flooring like it. What Silikal puts down is a completely pore free monolithic surface.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and one gets points on the LEED rating system for various things that are in the list of their system such as building reuse, recycling, utilizing regional materials, using rapidly renewable materials, using low emitting materials (such as low VOC or no VOC LEED flooring). VOCs are Volatile Organic Compounds. There are a tremendous amount of ways to earn points on the LEED rating system and an excellent example would be perhaps restoring an already existing concrete floor with a LEED Floor system.

You see, demolition would create a tremendous environmental impact, and so would the new construction of that concrete floor. Thus the restoration would be very environmentally friendly. By creation of a low or no maintenance floor, probably means that there will be no dangerous chemicals ever utilized to clean it and there will be no VOCs released either. The U.S. Green Building Council is the one under whose organization LEED points are given out. So, although a given project may not qualify for certification, as only new construction can do that, a project such as flooring will definitely qualify for points!

One of the LEED floor system proponents is of course Silikal flooring. After all, since Silikal flooring is a no VOC flooring, that makes them green, and thus LEED accredited. The various LEED credits go to those who actually select their products which means that Silikal flooring is not only superior in function as well as beauty, but it is also considered great for the environment. VOC are not “green” since VOCs are known to produce a breathable gas during flooring application that has been rated as being very dangerous to humans. As amazing as it may seem, the Silikal vessel and waterproof boat floor coatings actually meet the requirements of LEED credits too, and so do the Silikal antibacterial floor coatings!

As you can see Silikal has been extremely busy getting it’s coatings for concrete as well as existing substrates approved by the U.S. Green Building Council so that its products can lead to LEED points. After all in every way possible, Silikal is a thoroughly “green” company which believes in being as “green” as possible. Silikal also strongly believes in healthy human products and thus will do whatever is possible to present “green” products such as a LEED floor system. Using Silikal products will provide you with the ultimate satisfaction that you are actually helping the world community to build a better environment.

If you picture in your mind what a pharmacy looks like, and then zero in on the floor of said pharmacy constructed in your mind, the pharmaceutical flooring would be rather special. It would be scrupulously clean, gleaming in fact. The corners would harbor no dirt whatsoever and there would be no chinks in its armor preventing any dirt from entering the floor to the substrate. In fact that floor would meet or even exceed the necessary FDA and USDA requirements.

If truth be told, that floor would be chemically resistant to all manner of chemicals, be completely anti-slip to all foot traffic, and would even be resistant to forklift traffic. This means that the flooring items would not allow a break in the important bond found on that flooring to permit dirt, microbes or anything that else that might interfere with it being dust free and totally clean. Silikal fits all of these high demands for pharmaceutical flooring.

It is particularly hygienic since it is seamless, in addition to being non-porous. This is an important fact as germs and bacteria have nothing to attach to. Thus this joint-free flooring will have a high gloss to it, a finish that will completely eliminate all crevices and cracks found in other flooring. Now all the cleaning crew of that pharmacy needs to do is to easily clean it to decontaminate it. Now, that’s fighting bacteria at ground level!

The technical properties of Silikal mean that there are no VOCs whatsoever in the product, thus there are never any fumes to deal with. Its high durability means that your pharmacy can be open 24 hours a day without having to deal with toxic cleaning solutions, that’s how easy the cleanup will be with Silikal. High durability also means that you won’t be out of commission for expensive repair work either that can destroy or mar the sterile processing environments that you work so hard to maintain in your pharmacy. In addition, Silikal is anti-static as well. This permits highly sensitive electronic apparatus to fully operate without disruption of that pharmaceutical environment.

Pharmaceutical flooring extends to pharmaceutical warehouses as well. Thus Silikal is completely ideal for such industrial flooring. Therefore Silikal floors are very commonly utilized for industrial concrete pharmaceutical warehouses. Silikal is proud to say that the floors that have been installed in such pharmaceutical warehouses have stood up magnificently to the frequent cleaning as well as the known harsh sanitizing agents used for such cleaning. Silikal is exceedingly proud to say that there are no contaminants that can enter a Silikal floor.

If and when you decide on pharmaceutical flooring, do remember that Silikal is the only product that utilizes “enhanced” MMA. That’s what makes Silikal completely unique with regard to flooring for pharmaceutical locales.

Often people think that the only kind of underlayment there can be is the padding that goes under a carpet, but in essence that’s what an underlayment does and that’s where it got its name from as it lays under something else. There are some concrete floors that are very severely damaged, thus prior to laying a floor down over it, something has to be done to make it stable enough to receive some floor treatment or other. Often a shotblaster becomes the proper solution to those larger problem floor conditions. A shotblaster is a mechanical machine that literally shoots various sized shot at the flooring so that eventually the floor is basically flat and debris free as possible all ready to receive a self leveling floor underlayment. The shotblaster has its own vacuum system, thus clean up of debris is nominal at best.

As you can imagine having a self-leveling floor underlayment is of extreme importance. At least the self-leveling part of it is. Basically in a liquid form, a self-leveling floor underlayment will seek its own level, much as water does, so that when dried or cured, it creates a completely flat underlayment.

There are definitely exceptions though to having to use a self leveling floor underlayment which could save a tremendous amount of time should an underlayment found to be unnecessary, not to mention the cost that could be saved. For instance, when you have Silikal come to you to give you an estimate, they may well respond that instead of using an underlayment, that instead their product known as SILIKAL® R 62 resin may be utilized instead. This Silikal product is actually a reactive, slightly elasticized resin that can actually be utilized for self-leveling coatings. This then can actually bypass the underlayment process entirely, saving a great deal of time, energy, and cost.

The above named Silikal product is actually characterized by good quality flow properties. Do take note of the word elastic in the description. This is extremely important when using the product on wooden floors that could conceivably move ever so slightly when weight is put on them. By being slightly elasticized this will not cause the resin to break at any time. This kind of advanced product is what has made Silikal rise to be at the very top of flooring products as you can well imagine. Their constant laboratory tests have made their products the best in the world.

Most people have heard of the USDA, but few know what it stands for, nor what kinds of protection they are offering. The letters USDA stand for the United States Department of Agriculture, and even though the full name brings to mind heads of lettuce and bright red tomatoes, the USDA goes much further than simply dealing with salad items. In conjunction with the FDA, which is the Food and Drug Administration, both these government entities are responsible for the full protection of public health. They are the ones who make sure that your food, as well as its preparation is properly labeled, wholesome, sanitary and of course completely safe to eat. So, as you can see having flooring approved by the USDA is something that we should all be extremely thankful for.

In order for any flooring to pass the rigid constraints that the USDA has with regard to flooring, the floor must stop algae, bacteria, mold and fungus from ever growing on it, or under it. Now, if you imagine that any food plant that might utilize water or other liquids in food preparation, would need to have a floor that is not only steam-cleanable, anti-skid, anti-microbial as well as suitable for heavy traffic or heavy loads such as forklifts, you get the idea of what a USDA approved flooring must have!

Various food businesses that think that the USDA will approve any pigmented sealers or perhaps epoxy sealers on floors will find that these are not acceptable. The reasons why are that in order for floors to pass their rigid requirements, flooring must be proper and keep out any and all problems that are associated with businesses that might handle produce, poultry, dairy, pork, or beef. All freezers and walk in coolers also need to adhere to their requirements, thus commercial kitchens of all kinds, including the poshest of restaurants need to have USDA approved flooring.

The USDA does not only check to see how sanitary a floor treatment is, they wish to make sure that it is odorless, forklift rated, slip resistant as well as chemical resistant too. In freezers it is very important that such a floor is also thermal shock resistant.

Flooring approved by the USDA is not totally uncommon, but some floors go way beyond what the USDA requires. One of those is Silikal. Silikal is utterly non-porous, and it is even warranted to be pinhole free. It is of course, a totally seamless flooring surface, so that nothing can attach to the floor, not dirt, nor bacteria, nor can water leach under it to cause embarrassing odors. In addition, this is an anti-slip product, and since kitchens and food plants of all kinds are wet atmospheres, this becomes more important, as businesses wish to prevent all slips and falls. Besides all those wonderful things that one can say about Silikal it can even put up with mechanical abrasions from various machinery such as forklifts, and can even withstand chemical attacks.

However, keep in mind that in anything from diamonds to floors, there are always better qualities of any product. Silikal surpasses anything else in high quality for flooring approved by the USDA. After all, Silikal will be ready to work on in one hour after it is installed in your establishment. That means no lengthy shut downs, thus more money in your pocket!

Allergies can be caused by many things, but today scientists have been able to pick out the most common that are related to our floors, and this is also why this article will cover floor coverings for allergies. Most of us are allergic, to some extent, to dust mites, dust mite fecal matter, pet dander, cockroaches and all manner of mold spores. Thus a good part of regulating our allergies is making our floors easy to clean, as all of those things listed can be on our floors!

The use of carpeting actually creates many allergies. They actually harbor the pet dander, mold spores and dust mites mentioned above. Not only that, but they also harbor residue from cigarette smoke, your kitchen grease, various cleaning products, and even the insecticides used to kill cockroaches! It’s a very vicious cycle. Unfortunately too, new carpeting as well as the carpet padding carries its own allergens. After all they have had all manner of stain repellents and dyes applied to them. Consider as well the enormous rolls of carpet may stay in various distribution houses for months, even years before being purchased for installation during which time any sort of critter may make refuge within the stored goods.

The very best floor coverings for allergies then are tile and other flat surfaces that will not harbor as many items as carpeting will. But, one can go one step further, for you see even tile allows dirty water used to clean the tile to go through the tile grout joints and seep underneath said tile. Once it does this, all kinds of dirt as well as bacteria settle in under the flooring. Eventually many tiles fail, and the bacteria grows at an alarming rate. Finally, someone notices quite a bad odor coming from under the floor, and also chances are that a slip and fall problem has also been noted.

This leads me to the final pronouncement for floor coverings for allergies – the very best around is having a Silikal floor. In extreme circumstances even a Silikal floor will have to be consciously and meticulously cleaned to forgo allergies, but that is a very small price to pay to forgo the plague of allergies that some people have contracted. Given the seamless, non-porous attributes the ‘if needed’ meticulous cleaning is left at a minimum based on severity of one’s allergic reaction to airborne particulates.

The way that Silikal fights allergies is certainly most interesting. You see, when Silikal is laid down, either directly on concrete or as an existing floor coating, it forms the toughest adhesion to the substrate possible. You will find that a Silikal floor can be colorful, yet be a high performance floor with truly minimal maintenance even when Silikal has been utilized as floor coverings for allergies.

The beverage and food processing plants as well as commercial kitchens are actually the origins of the most intensive environments that floors can ever be subject to. Thus, Silikal specializes in these floors so that they are completely sanitary, chemical resistant, as well as thermal shock resistant for restaurants as well as for the food processing industry. Silikal’s floors are United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved, as well as slip resistant and of course totally odorless as all of Silikal’s products are no VOC products. VOCs are Volatile Organic Compounds, and absolutely none of Silikal’s compounds ever have VOCs in them.

Silikal firmly believes that restaurant and processing floors need to add to the general sanitation of their facility and thus they work diligently to make sure that their product is totally unable to harbor bacteria or mold because their flooring is always totally non porous, pin hole free and at all times completely seamless. Silikal makes the ultimate superlative commercial food grade flooring. Silikal’s floors are always safe as they have tremendous slip resistance as well as astounding clean ability.

If you have a restaurant or are in any way connected to the food industry, you will be thrilled with how durable the Silikal commercial food grade flooring is. It is no bluff when Silikal states that you will encounter very little to no repairs over the entire lifetime of that flooring. In fact, many Silikal floors have outlived the buildings they were installed in.

In addition you will find that Silikal flooring for restaurants and commercial kitchens, as well as food processing plants, beverage bottling/canning, or packaging plants is thermal shock resistant. That means that one can use hot water to wash it down, have fryers around it, as well as have that same flooring in freezers, walk in coolers, or wherever there is live steam, or even hot/cold cycling. None of that will affect your Silikal flooring at all.

Because it is chemical resistant, various sanitation chemicals, sugars and acids will not affect that flooring. Truly it is practically indestructible.

But you have not even heard the best news yet. If you currently have newly formed concrete or old concrete that needs a facelift or even tile that has seen its last days, Silikal is the perfect commercial food grade flooring for you. It will actually set up in once short hour!

Whether you have a clinic, a Doctor’s office, a Dentist’s office, or you are the owner of a large hospital or somehow connected to the pharmaceutical industry, you may be very interested in finding hygienic floor coatings. Silikal as a worldwide flooring solution provider, proud to deliver the exact kind of flooring you are seeking whether you are in need of either commercial or industrial flooring. Silikal makes industry proven recommendations for all the above offices using the product that Silikal makes especially for hygienic flooring.

For example with regard to our healthcare flooring You will notice that bacteria as well as mold cannot grow on a Silikal floor, and is exceptionally easy to keep clean.

Another of our sites shows you our operating room floors. We emphasize that our floors are totally seamless as well as non-porous, two absolutely necessary parts of operating room flooring. Note too that it is an aid to sound control, something every hospital strongly cares about. Do also take note that our flooring is impervious to spills such as iodine containing solutions or blood. This is a concern that all hospitals take very seriously as well.

Silikal is exceedingly proud to say we offer a range of excellent choices in hygienic floor coatings. Each of these provides great durability which is important to any practice, as well as delivering an easily cleaned product that in and of itself creates a very bright attractive environment for both your workers and your patients.

It is important for those in the health industry to realize that all Silikal products are made so that they actually exceed LEED guidelines. Thus with this product you become one step closer to environmental stewardship.

You cannot imagine what a Silikal floor will do for your practice, available in multi-colored flakes or even matt finishes, all Silikal floors are solvent free, which today is of supreme importance especially in health conscious businesses. In addition, you probably will notice that after you have your Silikal floors installed, the high light reflection won’t diminish the flooring colors over time as we have thought of that too. And that’s just one extra bonus you can expect when you use Silikal for your hygienic floor coatings!

In the face of the popularity of wood decks, having a colored concrete patio is becoming more popular as a fundamental factor in modern restaurants as well as backyards. Much of that popularity is owed to having more supplementary decorative options than ever. The owners of today want their outdoor surfaces to offer definitive design versatility. As opposed to wood, concrete patios very certainly are much more durable and the owners also like that it has extremely low maintenance associated with them.

With hotels, motels and restaurants, a colored concrete patio is excellent to draw forth people who wish to lounge and be entertained, and in addition many architects and interior designers love how such patios can seamlessly blend with the various inside and outside spaces. This is why many of these establishments have found that they can add outdoor kitchens to these patios, and turn the patios into actual outdoor living rooms. They make sure to offer tremendously cozy seating areas, all manner of water features, and even fireplaces to emphasize coziness.

A colored concrete patio offers truly boundless design options. Imagine if you will how a colored concrete patio can actually be color coordinated to match the establishment’s exterior or even its landscaping. Today colored concrete can imitate any number of types of stones, slate flake and flagstone quartz, and thus designers are finding more and more new ways to introduce them into the patios.

Hotels, motels and restaurants have found that spending their money on these investments makes tremendous sense, as the costs are much lower and less labor intensive than making patios of bricks or even natural stonework. The amount of patterns that can be laid out, as well as the myriad of colors available have now made concrete a very reasonably priced choice. Landscape and Interior Designers as well as contractors of such locales have found that because concrete can be molded into any shape desired, that they could create extremely attractive venues even where there are space restrictions to be dealt with.

Upgrading a patio area with a colored concrete patio is truly a small investment which will return revenue for many years to come and also improve the ambiance of your location. Also concrete is so very easy to maintain without any regard to any weather conditions. Where paving stones used to be considered the very finest in such gardens, the costs and work of maintaining the grass and weeds that sprouted between them was certainly not cost efficient. Remember that wooden decks may warp, rot or at least will require periodic staining. To see the best that a colored concrete patio can offer you, contact the Silikal Corporation.

Chances are you lit into this article since you are looking for restaurant flooring ideas. Perhaps you have had a restaurant for a while, and are seeking new ideas to completely change the look of your restaurant. Perhaps you are opening up a brand new restaurant. Either one is fine, because you know that above all the ambiance of a restaurant means more money in your pocket. Perhaps people have to be soothed when they come into your restaurant, they need to relax, after all this is a restaurant not a burger joint with kids screaming and crying because they spilled their milk shake.

Of course, above all a restaurant floor needs to be clean as can be, since it also must appeal in making people hungry. Unlike the days of old, you know that glue-down floor tiles are definitely not appealing. They can harbor all manner of dirt, left over crumbs of food, dirty floor cleaning water, and worse! Absolutely not conducive to a good appetite!

One of the newer trends in restaurants is a totally open kitchen, where you can actually watch the chefs cooking your food. One Italian restaurant has made a mint by allowing people to walk through their kitchen prior to making it to their table. This is a great idea because the kitchen is filled with great smelling Italian food, which the people can all see, and this leads them to become extremely hungry. In addition, they can see how clean the kitchen is, how spotless the floor is, and also they can see that the floor is definitely not slippery either for them as they pass by or for the chefs.

The utter functionality of a restaurant floor covers a lot of great restaurant flooring ideas. Functionality means that your kitchen floor is required to be unproblematic to clean, fully resistant to moisture, be helpful to your staff to be able to stand on their feet for extended periods, last a long time and even be able to endure the power of fallen utensils as well as high traffic from both patrons and staff.

Each restaurant will need it’s own ambiance. What is fitting in a Jewish delicatessen is different than that which will fit in a high bracket clientele of French connoisseurs and gourmets. Actually one of the best flooring choices that will give you the best restaurant flooring ideas is Silikal. The pictures of various restaurant floors that they have created will downright astound you.

The Silikal reactive resin restaurant flooring absolutely cannot harbor bacteria or mold for the reason that it is a totally non-porous, and pin hole free seamless surface. But it’s also slip resistant, and even so very durable that it will require little to no repairs in its lifetime. Now those are great restaurant flooring ideas!

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That is when you find out that there are actually different names for the same products. For instance, you may find slate tile, stone tile, stone look tile, quarry stone tile, quarry stone and quarry tile, yet they all fall under the header of concrete looks like rock your boss told you to look for!

The more you dig, the more questions you have. For instance when the boss said concrete looks like rock, did he mean slate, sandstone, river rock, quartz, flagstone or bluestone? You have found out that there are many colors of different kinds of rocks, thus the boss will have to tell you exactly what it is that caught his eye, and you will have to go to that particular site to round out your questions. The man made stones all look as if they could easily fit his descriptions, that’s for sure.

Finally after much digging you come onto a Silikal site. There you trip over what they call their naturals, which are exactly like native poured river rock. The colors alone are Razorback Red, Black Pearl, Cantina Pink, and a gorgeous Tan. Now we’re definitely talking concrete that looks like rock!

The site says that this is definitely a decorating coup, and you could not agree more. The more you read about it, the more this has to be what the boss wants. After all even though it appears to be a rough surface, it is definitely gentle on little toes so that it can even be utilized in a children’s area if you so wish. Even pet areas and dog kennels are so much nicer with that river rock flowing through it. As if the appearance is not something thoroughly special, you find out that it is completely simple to keep clean since it has a completely seamless installation.

Now, your imagination is completely snared, and you know for sure you’ve finally found the correct site. You confer with your boss and tell him, now spill out all that you now know about Silikal, how it is exactly what he was seeking and installed only by true professionals. We ride along in my car and can only talk about this new material. When we get to the Silikal office you too fall in love with Silikal, and thus you reward me by taking me to dinner in a restaurant with a Silikal floor!

Driveways – the most common driveway of yore was to have a gravel driveway. What this meant was digging up the area, for as deep as you wanted the driveway to be, then using vibrations from a vibrating plate to mash down the dirt and then using leftover rock as a base before finally putting in the gravel. It was a huge amount of work, gravel seemed to always disappear from the driveway, and often was subject to washouts during heavy rains, and the work had to be redone all over again.

Driveways then received an improvement, and driveways were made of asphalt. Now asphalt is a mixture of things, but basically it contains 80% carbon. Now you know why asphalt is black. Sulfur and a few other minerals are in asphalt. The tar is mixed with an aggregate such as perhaps sand or gravel. It is then laid down after it is heated, and a steamroller presses it down. So now you have a driveway made of asphalt. Problems do occur with asphalt though. For instance it bears the weight of your automobiles, which crack it, and literally the elements can wear out asphalt. Worse yet is freezing and thawing up north, which also makes asphalt crack and creates potholes through the expansion and contraction of trapped moisture.

Now, along come concrete coatings for driveways. Unlike the problems with the other driveways mentioned above, with concrete there are no fears about weeds, erosion, weather or actually any other problems with nature trying to ruin that beautiful driveway.

Using a product called Silikal will enable the Silikal contractor to give the concrete coatings for driveways the appearance and color of stone, or even a marble, terra cotta or travertine finish. The Silikal worker can duplicate grout lines, all manner of natural shadows, and even bring forth mottled textures to the concrete so that it appears to be totally authentic. No one using that driveway will be able to tell that it is not real tile, or some kind of real stonework.

Probably the best news yet about concrete coatings for driveways is that they absolutely do not fall apart. Those driveways will be there probably longer than the building that they drive up to. Thus, no matter what business you have be it a motel, hotel or restaurant in need of a very nice driveway, be sure and turn down gravel driveways, or asphalt driveways, and instead say yes to Silikal concrete coatings for driveways!

A protective fluid foundation sounds complicated, but it really is not, though attaining it might be rather complicated if you do not utilize the correct products. A protective fluid foundation is actually nothing more than construction talk for a water-based waterproofed foundation to a building.

Some formulations of such protective fluid foundation are nothing more than a single step, fully liquid applied, waterproofing membrane that is even water based, that is sprayed along the exterior of the foundation walls of an edifice under construction. The formulation ordinarily consists of an elastomeric waterproofer as well as a sealer. Of course they also have a high solids content so that it can properly seal the concrete or the foam insulation, or the polystyrene insulation board as the particular construction method demands.

Once dried, these formulations will cure into a fully seamless, non-deteriorating rubber film or membrane, which will then expand and contract when subject to variable temperatures. Most of these protective fluid foundation formulations do not contain volatile or unsafe solvents. Thus these formulations are referred to as VOC compliant. That is important as it means that it has eliminated any environmental and health considerations that may arise during the application.

Silikal, whose products are incredibly well known and highly trusted in the construction world, carries one of these protective fluid foundation formulations. They offer highly effective dampproofing as well as wall waterproofing that is actually applied in a liquid state, directly on the construction site, however it cures in a startlingly short space of time which allows for construction contractors to move forward without having to wait a long time for the foundation to dry. This results in little to absolutely no time delay on that building site, and in today’s world time is money.

Due to Silikal’s immensely low permeability, it will completely prevent water, air and even chemical transmission that would lead to mold and mildew growth along the foundation. In addition it will protect against many bacteria, algae, fungi, radon gasses and other detrimental agents that may be carried through by normal and common soil conditions. In addition, the product cures into a highly flexible state. That means that it can actually bridge any cracks that may occur in the future because it is a flexible membrane.

You will find that the Silikal scientists work night and day to find new improvements to such products as flooring and even protective fluid foundation products. Silikal is truly an amazing company.

Floor resources cover a plethora of items. For instance, one might not consider carpeting a floor resource, but it is. Carpeting can run the gamut from indoor-outdoor carpeting that is tightly woven and has a backing usually. The first indoor/outdoor carpeting was actually Astroturf. It was first introduced at the Astrodome, hence its name. People marveled at the new invention, and soon it was everywhere in its bright green fake turf color. Eventually it wore down and it was never very comfortable on bare feet either. Floor resources do not utilize much Astroturf any more. From there though came the real indoor/outdoor carpeting. The texture is soft on bare feet, and it can be laid just about anywhere. What makes up indoor/outdoor carpeting today is actually thermoplastic resin that is known as Olefin.

Depending on the backing that your indoor/outdoor carpet has, you may be able to clean it after it gets soiled, but keep in mind that it can get a case of mold or mildew. The only solution that will eliminate this pest is to utilize some light bleach, but you will have to truly make sure that it will not harm the carpeting and that all the bleach is removed. Keep in mind however that this remedy is only recommended for very small amounts of perceived mold; moderate (larger than a hand print) to large amounts will require an expert for remediation as mold can be extremely harmful to humans.

Other floor resources may be 3/4″ solid wood floors. What’s interesting about those of course, is that they can be finished according to your decorator’s choices. When choosing these, you will take delivery on different lengths, but the wood will have four-sided tongue and groove and you will also receive end match pieces. Pre-finished hardwood will arrive with beveled edges and of course will feature the stain color of your choice. All that’s needed then is for the floor to be laid by a carpenter. Floors that are made of hardwood are incredibly beautiful, but unlike care free flooring, infinite care must be taken to not damage it in any way, and should there be spills on hardwood, it may go all the way to the subfloor. This could on occasion cause warping of the wood, growths of mildew or mold beneath the wood, and eventually there may be some very noxious odors emanating from the wood floor.

No matter how special your place of business is, the best floor resources you can utilize is Silikal. First of all it is a completely sealed flooring. It will never admit any intrusion of dirty water or anything else below it, thus you will never ever have mildew or mold beneath the floor’s surface. No strange odors will ever escape from underneath either, as the underneath portion of Silikal is hermetically sealed.

Sometimes over heard is the phrase “hard as concrete,” but is concrete truly hard? Even the Romans knew about concrete and used it extensively to construct many of the buildings that are still standing today, and all this without the rebars (steel reinforcement bars) that we use today to give a concrete floor strength. It appears that concrete went through many changes in history, meaning that humans learned that certain additives changed the strength of concrete. For instance, adding horse hair to it made it least likely to crack while the addition of volcanic ash actually enabled concrete to harden while under water! Did you know that adding blood to concrete will make it much more frost resistant? The Romans added blood to many items in history, as their sports frequently had blood involved in them as we all know.

Today scientists toss around various words having to do with concrete such as their cemetitious and aggregate phases, but at least today we have the “recipes” for many different kinds of concrete and have learned that rebars are essential to hold concrete together. Thus we have learned to make concrete with a strong bond enough to utilize it to make skyscrapers, all out of concrete and steel.

When speaking of concrete floor strength though, we do not always have the additional strength that rebars give us, and concrete is not really that hard. For instance it can conservatively be said that the majority of concrete is as a rule rated for 4000 psi (Pounds per Square Inch). Thus the concrete floor strength is often aided by having something on top of the concrete to make it stronger.

Enter a product called Silikal. Silikal is actually a concrete floor strength-giver. It essentially protects the concrete flooring so that nothing can damage it. Looking at, for instance, a garage whereby cars drive on the concrete that is already on their floor, one would think that the weight of the cars, the traction from its tires would damage the concrete floor. One would be correct, and this is why many garages use Silikal to protect their concrete floors.

One of the most punishing pieces of equipment one can put onto concrete is a forklift. However, forklifts are absolutely essential to any pallet-racking warehouse. On the other hand, not only does the weight of a forklift account for damage to the floors, but also the fact that parked forklifts are known to leak a number of damaging liquids, such as battery acid, and hydraulic fluids, as well as oil. All of these factors play an important part in reducing concrete floor strength, yet Silikal will not allow any of these things to diminish the strength of concrete.

Commercial kitchen flooring requirements are substantially different than residential kitchen flooring requirements, of course. Each differs in the durability that is expected, the chemical resistance it has to show, the hygiene needed, and best yet the slip resistance needed in commercial kitchens. Silikal is definitely the most durable commercial kitchen flooring available, as Silikal has many commercial kitchen floors that are still in existence after a tremendous amount of years in service.

Silikal when utilized in commercial kitchens needs to be seamless and non reactive, as well as having absolutely no water absorption and the floors also need to be stain proof. Commercial kitchen flooring requirements also must be impervious to sharp and heavy objects as well as to heat. Commercial kitchen owners are thrilled to hear that Silikal is always unaffected by some of the truly harsh cleaning compounds sometimes found in commercial kitchens such as various acids that may be in the rinse aids or de-scalers, solvents, such as oven cleaners and degreasers, and caustics used for the dishwasher as well as oven cleaners.

In addition commercial kitchen flooring requirements mean that the flooring must be able to stand the unusually high traffic that such a commercial kitchen may bring. You probably have chefs who run from one side to the next constantly in a hurry, and often carrying hot tankards of boiling water, drippy cooking instruments, or various hot pans filled with hot food. In addition, you have prep stations where vegetables are cut up, salads are being made, and the like. Into this exhausting bargain you probably have a fryer section where such items such as French fries, breaded chicken , or onion rings are being fried. You may even have grills, sautéing stations, pizza ovens, and more, depending on the menu you are serving. The point is though that all of the kitchen must run cleanly and very efficiently without spills or counter-contamination of foods. Thus, commercial kitchen flooring requirements are extremely demanding.

Silikal works hand in hand with all these requirements as it is completely sealed, and with that seal also comes amazing clean ability, cleanliness, a totally seamless surface and slip resistance that renders any commercial kitchen safe and stress free. The durability of Silikal comes into play constantly in a commercial kitchen. A busy kitchen also means liquids spilling, utensils crashing onto the floor, and scratches along the floor when crates are pushed or dragged in the kitchen; all leading to the degradation for an ill fitted commercial kitchen flooring system. Nothing beats Silikal for commercial kitchen flooring requirements.

]]> http://www.silikalamerica.com/blog/2011/12/28/commercial-kitchen-flooring-requirements/feed/ 0 http://www.silikalamerica.com/blog/2011/12/27/concrete-resurfacing-problems/ http://www.silikalamerica.com/blog/2011/12/27/concrete-resurfacing-problems/#comments Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:47:31 +0000 admin http://www.silikalamerica.com/blog/?p=1324 Continue reading →]]> Concrete Resurfacing Problems Don’t Have to be So Problematic

Even though concrete is for the large part one of the longest lasting of building surfaces currently known to man, even concrete tends to wear down. It is also a known fact that once it needs replacing, it will be extremely costly and very time consuming to accomplish, and that’s when the thought of perhaps resurfacing usually arises. Of course, sometimes there are concrete resurfacing problems.

Unfortunately there are times, but only occasionally, when resurfacing will not be enough, such as when the concrete has sunken due to a shift in the soil beneath it, or if truly large cracks are evident, sometimes having been caused by freezing environments that created a change in the concrete’s surface. However, most times the concrete has been damaged lightly, and thus rather than being structural, the damage may be generally considered cosmetic. You should know that there are some products designed for these simple remedies. One of these is the use of a product such as Silikal’s acrylic impregnation.

Call Silikal to see if that’s what’s needed. They will come out and give you a free estimate, after looking over your concrete resurfacing problems. The Silikal professional concrete contractor will outline your costs for you, and completely cover with you what has to be done for your concrete resurfacing problems.

By calling an experienced professional such as Silikal, you will receive everything necessary as far as their advice. This is advice that can be totally relied upon. You will also be given options with regard to coloring, various styles and qualities that you may desire, and thus you may obtain a totally fresh and innovative look in exchange for your concrete resurfacing problems.

For instance at the moment you may not be aware that Silikal can bring you tremendous results that you are not even contemplating at the moment. These include such bonuses as perhaps a flooring that has UV resistance capability, or a floor that is guaranteed non-slip. In addition, a Silikal floor is totally pinhole free and when it is laid on your concrete it will never harbor mold or bacteria. It can withstand extreme conditions, including freezing and thawing without damage, unlike simple untreated concrete. After your concrete resurfacing problems are over, you can imbed your own company logo right into the flooring to give it that extra professional look.

You will also find that you will be given an almost unending choice of beautiful colors, pigmentation, and such that your resurfaced flooring can look brand new day after day, as if they were laid just yesterday! Best yet, you will find that a Silikal floor cures in less than one hour before it can be used, and yes even abused by such things as forklifts!

Let us say that you are a laboratory, or a processing plant where chemicals are used, or perhaps either a brewery, or a pulp and paper mill. What this means is that you are seeking to have a chemical resistant concrete, as spills may not be cleaned up right away, yet you do not wish to have the chemical eat through your floor covering nor do you wish to have stains everywhere. After all this is your business, and you want your area to look and feel professional.

In addition, because you handle a lot of different chemicals, you also probably care a lot about having a non-slip floor, as safety with chemicals is of supreme importance. Thus whatever you utilize to get a chemical resistant concrete has to be able to also give you the physical performance you seek, and let’s face it what you seek is significantly higher than concrete stains and thin coverings.

Where chemicals are concerned, there is a description of chemical accidents called splash and spill exposure. With even the most chemical resistant concrete these accidents will still need to be taken care of immediately ordinarily with a simple washdown, which usually suffices to reduce how long the chemical exposure was on the floor.

Chemical plants end up spending a huge amount of money having to repair or replace failed concrete especially those that have been exposed to alkali’s and acids. Chlorinated hydrocarbon products and fuel oils cause other similar problems. The predicament is that these leach through Portland cement and taint the ground underneath the cement. Thus this is an expensive setback.

Silikal has solved most of these problems, as they have created a “true” chemical resistant flooring that turns these concrete floors into chemical resistant concrete. If you can come up with as wide a range of alkalis and acids possible, Silikal has been able to prevent the harm to the substrate, and put an end to the high costs of repairs, the higher costs of replacement, and the astronomical costs of remediation for the failed concrete. No more will you be left with only weakly-bound aggregates after a chemical spill.

Thus, no matter what kinds of chemicals your company uses or plans to use, keep Silikal in mind for “true” chemical resistant concrete. Their scientists have definitely found the solution for your splash and spill problems – no matter what chemical caused them.

Most acrylic flooring adhesive is actually a hard-set adhesive which basically is utilized on semi-wet over very porous subfloors such as concrete which is extremely porous. The majority of those floors must tolerate daily stresses as well as some extreme situations. The variety of any acrylic flooring adhesive products are adhesives that are currently available to facilitate the different needs as well as the requirements at hand for a suitable installation.

As in all products, some however are better than others. Finding which one is best for your situation is sometimes like looking for a needle in a haystack. The problem is that all profess to be the absolute best of any acrylic flooring adhesive. Basically these products are utilized priming resins.

Our story begins with once upon a time…Let’s assume for a moment that you have had a concrete floor poured for your warehouse. At first everything is working as it should, but one day you begin to notice that the dust being raised in your warehouse is starting to cover the goods stored there, and you also have a few employees beginning to call in sick with assorted coughs and respiratory problems. Yet, you know that you had made sure that your contractor who laid the concrete had utilized a concrete hardener.

At this point as more dust accumulates on the goods in the warehouse, you call in the contractor to come survey your complaint. The contractor looks about and using his fingers to pull off some dust off the shelving, explains that the dust is coming from the hand trucks that your workers are using, as well as the foot traffic they are creating. Over and above all of that, he points to the forklifts that are zipping along the concrete stirring up the dust. You ask what you should do, and he recommends an acrylic flooring adhesive that will coalesce the concrete so that concrete dust is no longer raised by the workers.

In theory at this point you’d let loose with a manly sigh, but in actuality you begin to let out a few expletives. You explain that you cannot afford to close down the warehouse for the 48 plus hours that would be needed to install the acrylic flooring adhesive.

This is at the point where your contractor gives you the best news possible yet. He suggests a product called Silikal, which once installed will take only a very short time to cure; in fact it will take only one hour.

The next day a Silikal representative comes to give you an estimate on the flooring. He brings along some wondrously colored samples with him and notes that you will even be able to cut down on accidents as well as have a much brighter warehouse that will use less wattage to keep it bright there. The samples have borne out what the contractor told you. The next day Silikal workers install your new acrylic flooring adhesive, providing the MSDS for your records and from then on your workers are much happier working at your warehouse…and they lived happily thereafter.

An acrylic floor finish is utilized on such floors that are made of quarry tile, sealed wood terrazzo, brick, flagstone, concrete, rubber, asphalt, vinyl composition or just vinyl. When an acrylic floor finish is used to call forth high initial gloss, as well as durability after it is put on the floor, then the user will use what is known as spray buffing. The more gloss needed, the more numerous the acrylic floor coatings need to be. However, no matter what, the maintenance program calls for damp mopping always followed by spray buffing with some kind of speed buffing machinery. Chances are great that you have seen them in the hallways of various high traffic areas, as they are commonly utilized in schools, supermarkets, food service facilities, hospitals, malls and department stores.

Maintenance is rather costly of these kinds of floors covered with an acrylic floor finish, as well as time consuming. At various times, the floor must be completely stripped as the acrylic tends to turn yellow after so many uses. Once stripped, it has to be allowed to completely dry, followed by a good liberal coating of the finish. Each coat must then dry at least 30 minutes, longer depending on the humidity level. Then recoating is suggested, until a high gloss is attained. Most take 3 to 4 coats. Spray buffing is recommended after each mopping each night.

An acrylic floor finish is fine if you are up to doing that much constant work on your floors to get them to stay clean and gleaming well. However, much less work along with much less time invested in floors is yours with the use of Silikal.

Silikal is composed of methacrylate resins for patch repair, and they then have created enhanced MMA that puts out a tremendously beautiful finish on floors in the above stated facilities as well as offices and office parks, auditoriums, and actually any industry whose floors need the vast protection that Silikal can bring to them. Interestingly enough, Silikal can be laid on any substrate floor and it will work the same, providing more than a lifetime of high impact resistance as needed, along with a totally seamless installation that positively will not encourage any mold or bacteria since in actuality it is totally non porous. Because this type of flooring is best suited for a commercial projects that needs an anti slip flooring, various anti slip levels can be achieved. As you can see, even safety is considered high on the list of advantages that can be gotten through the use of Silikal.

The array of incredible colors that are now possible as far as concrete floor colors goes is absolutely amazing. Strange as it may seem, concrete floor staining is now considered the newest choice among designers across the entire United States and Canada. There are even some highly personalized concrete floor colors available now, thus they are showing up in offices, trendy restaurants and even in all manner of supermarkets and grocery stores. Designers as well as architects have glommed onto the craze knowing that the choices are now nearly limitless with wondrous splashes of color, or even having one’s own company logo put permanently into the floor!

At times referred to as cement flooring, concrete flooring no longer must be nondescript and an ugly battleship gray. Concrete floor colors, textures and varying patterns have now brought life to this long-established substrate. Today, concrete is being designed and utilized so very naturally that it can now blend in seamlessly with all the other elements found in the room, so much so that you may not even realize you are standing on a concrete floor!

Frequently, in fact, what appears to the naked eye as perhaps slate, Arizona flagstone or even incredible Spanish tile work, is actually concrete flooring. Architects are said to have agreed that all of these concrete flooring miracles have actually enhanced the very integrity of their designs.

Further everyone also agrees that it sure beats carpeting what with the way carpeting holds in soil, creates allergies, and can retain moisture underneath of it that may even allow mold to grow totally undisturbed. Most also agree that the very best concrete floor colors and concrete overlays are being sold and created by Silikal.

Interestingly enough everyone does agree too that concrete floor colors are now easily available in what can literally be called an infinite array of colors, not to mention textures. Architects claim that concrete floor colors can be the most versatile element in their own space décor.

Interior decorators are now being told to find the exact color they wish to match the rest of their schemes and then bring it to a decorative concrete professional such as Silikal. There, they match the exact color the decorator has chosen for the concrete. The interior decorator can bring in any color swatches, be they paint, wood, or tile and the entire floor can be made to the exact rendition of that swatch.

Of course it all depends on what kind of business you may have as to what your best flooring type will be. For instance if you are a walk-in clinic that sees a lot of people everyday, chances are that you will want to have some sort of totally hygienic flooring, yet at the same time a floor that will keep people calm when they are stressed. In addition, you will want a non-slip floor so that no matter what is spilled, you will not have to worry about your workers nor your patients. Further, you will want something that is good looking, provides sound control, and is easy on the feet of your staff. Moreover, you will want something that can put up with very high foot traffic, yet will last for the longest time, as you do not ever need down time. Finally, you want something that is beautiful and reflects your moral fiber and professionalism. You don’t want much, do you?

Well, the best flooring type that covers all of those needs and stipulations is Silikal. You see, Silikal floors are utilized in many hospitals, nursing homes, doctor’s offices, and the like because they are so easy to keep clean. In addition they are truly good looking and lend an air of calmness to the office as well as complete professionalism. The color spectrum you will receive can blend in with any office design you may already have, or inspire you to a brand new look. You may even have your own logo or the name of your company put into the floor if you so desire.

No matter what is underneath your Silikal flooring, you can always be assured that there will be no pinholes developing under the flooring which leads to constant problems with infection control, strange odors and can create illnesses such as allergies when the flooring develops molds and such underneath them.. Once pinholes develop on flooring, that’s when bacteria make a home there, as well as such terrible things such as mold and other microbes.

Of course Silikal floors are for all kinds of businesses, not just medical offices. Because Silikal is so strong, it is utilized for auditoriums, freezers and coolers, restaurants, industrial garages, car dealerships, jails and prisons, even all manner of outdoor flooring. In fact, there is not one business that can’t utilize Silikal to their advantage. It is incredibly beautiful, fully acceptable for the nicest places as well as garages, and here’s the kicker, it will usually outlast the building it’s put into!

In addition it is solvent resistant, and will not be marred no matter what you drop on it, be it iodine, tar, red clay, red cool-aid, creosote, motor oil, blood, tomato juice, and even rust! Now that is stain resistance! The Silikal product range is immense, no matter what kind of flooring you desire, and it can be installed anywhere, even in extremely low temperatures, thus that is the best flooring type.

It will absolutely stagger you to hear just how many different food businesses need freezer room floors. For instance there are those in the meat industry, dairy, candy, bakeries, the seafood industry, snack food processors, those that deal in pasta sauces and soups, and those who blast freeze foods in general. In addition there are those who utilize nitrogen tunnels and even those who make pet foods!

If you are not in one of those businesses, you may view a meat packing industry as one where beef quarters hang quietly in the freezer, but amazingly enough freezers have a lot of activity in them, thus the floors must take a lot of abuse. For example there are towing motorized vehicles such as forklifts and other machinery, totes, tankards, hoppers, all manner of pallets, cold/hot thermal shocking, thermal cycling, steam cleaning, as well as all kinds of chemicals such as sanitizers, cleaners, oils, acids and sugars!

Thus these floors need to not only be totally impervious to all chemicals, but in addition they need to be totally seamless, non-porous and then be easy to clean too. Besides all that, everyone must remain safe, thus they need to be slip resistant too in addition to being able to withstand all that severe abuse.

In addition to all that, freezer room floors need to be extremely simple to clean as cleaning is done around all the frozen foods. That alone is problematic with some freezer room floors.

Enter Silikal flooring, specifically freezer room floors! One of the things that those with commercial freezers love about Silikal is that it will never allow any mildew or bacteria the capability to start forming on wet freezer room floors. It has a completely smooth surface that is and will be totally free from pinholes or even any other means that would permit the freezer flooring to collect matter. This is highly important for passing those tests that come often enough in such industries that utilize such freezers.

Silikal is completely impervious to thermal cycling and is always at its best. Unlike urethane concrete that will let infinitesimal holes to appear, and have breakdowns of your system, Silikal will bond so much deeper, thus becoming a much superior product. In addition the epoxies and urethane concrete treatments will require your freezer to be down approximately 24 hours or longer, but Silikal can go on with the freezer running, and will return you to full service all within one hour of curing time.

Did you know that there is such a thing as acrylic glass? Well, there is, and it is incredibly strong. Such acrylic glass is actually poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). This is the exact “glass” that the Georgia Aquarium utilizes to hold the 8.5 million gallons of water that is featured in their tourist attraction. That’s how strong this acrylic glass is! Now imagine a clear acrylic floor sealer made of the same product.

This is exactly what Silikal is made of, for it is enhanced MMA. Enhanced how? Well, now that is a company secret but it was discovered by Silikal’s own scientists, and after an incredible amount of testing it was found that the product was one of a kind in the entire world. Many have tried to copy this enhanced MMA, but to this point, only Silikal has the secret.

So, what does the enhanced MMA accomplish for this clear acrylic floor sealer? Good question. First of all, all manner of additives can go into it without changing its foremost properties. These are additives that might render the flooring hygienic so that hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, medical offices, restaurants, eateries, and even veterinary offices can utilize it secure in the knowledge that the floor is totally hygienic.

There are also special additives that can be added to Silikal that will render it totally non-slippery. This is very important in the above areas listed, as well as garages, supermarkets, locker rooms and also jails and prisons. Note that these are all places that are apt to have spillage or water on the floors. Shiny beautiful floors that you do not slip on? Yes, that’s Silikal for you!

Even industrial floors will become clean and attractive with the clear acrylic floor sealer by Silikal. Just because a warehouse uses forklifts does not mean that the floor can’t be beautiful and clean looking, correct? You see a Silikal floor can actually withstand the terrible mechanical abrasion of forklifts and even chemical attacks because Silikal has been designed to last throughout the harshest conditions.

There is still a part of that secret that you do not know about yet, and that is that Silikal is so fast drying; which is called curing in the business, that you can have your floors covered with Silikal’s clear acrylic floor sealer, and drive those forklifts over it in one hour! Now, that’s a secret worth knowing!

No, we’re not talking about Leeds, England here. First created in 1998, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) finally became an internationally recognized system for “green” construction. The LEED was actually developed by the USGBC, which stands for the U.S. Green Building Council. They deal a lot with the stewardship of all natural resources, as well as the sensitivity of any impacts that such construction may have on the world’s resources. Having a building certified is the goal, and it is accomplished by the giving out of points for construction. Points may be distributed in the following categories: Indoor Environmental Quality, Materials and Resources, Energy and Atmosphere, Water Efficiency, as well as Sustainable Sites.

Interestingly enough it is the governments who are behind LEED products. For instance, many school districts, local governments, and even state and federal governments have created various types of LEED incentives as well as LEED initiatives. For example, some of the bonuses include such things as grants and low-interest loans, reduced-cost or even free technical assistance, expedited or priority permits, reduced fees, density bonuses, tax breaks, and even tax credits. Now you can see why there is tremendous interest in LEED flooring products, however you do need to keep in mind that the USGBC does not in any way promote, endorse, or certify any specific products, services or companies.

LEED flooring products might be some that are made without VOCs for instance. VOCs are Volatile Organic Compounds, and those are the ones that emit noxious gasses. A lot of LEED flooring products pick up LEED points for sustainability. What that means, for instance, is that if by using a certain floor product, it won’t have to be reused quickly. For instance just putting a shine on a floor is going to use up a lot of work, and at a great cost, and will use up all manner of products to do it. On the other hand, if by using a certain product, you extend the life of that floor, then that’s one of the LEED flooring products.

Granted that’s explaining it in layman’s language, but at least you will now go into looking for LEED flooring products with a little bit of knowledge about it. One of the very best LEED flooring products around is Silikal, thus if you need new flooring be sure and look to see why they are the very best!

If you go into an old bathroom with a shower floor, you will find that they always utilized small tiles to tile a shower floor. The reason for this was simple back then, only small tile made the grout appear often enough so that the shower floor was not terribly slippery, as having an extremely slippery shower floor is a recipe for disaster.

Interestingly enough today no one cares about putting in the smaller tiles because there are any number of shower floor waterproof membrane choices. Many hotels and high rise buildings have introduced their shower floor waterproof membrane via the use of ANSI-NSF, which uses the International standards utilized for commercial kitchens, such as cafeterias, delis, and restaurants, etc. The more often we all give each other a hand for things like these the easier it will be in finding them for our respective businesses.

The point is of course that any shower should be completely waterproof. Moisture has to have no chance to get into whatever decorative covering is put into a shower, such as the grout and tile that we often see. Thus a shower floor waterproof membrane must not ever let a shower leak, it must dry out extraordinarily swiftly after use. Of course it must dry so that neither mold nor mildew has a chance to attach itself.

Now Silikal has their own shower floor waterproof membrane. It is in actuality a combination vapor moisture sealer as well as being concrete waterproofing. It is, of course, applied directly to the concrete as all of their products. The Silikal concrete vapor moisture sealer will essentially provide your floors with their waterproof membranes. These membranes are what allow for simple control as well as the elimination of any moisture problems.

A concrete floor that does not receive this Silikal membrane typically has water vapor migrating and permeating the concrete floor. What happens next is that everyone receives a cold and clammy thoroughly damp feeling, which will unfortunately never leave. Getting rid of it ordinarily means very substantial high costs so that the entire floor has to be prematurely repaired, or worse yet, totally replaced. This of course means a business has to suffer through unnecessary downtime. It must be fixed, for once water vapor moves through your concrete floor, it will produce efflorescence on the concrete surface, damage your aggregates, as well as discolor the concrete with acid stains.

No matter your particular commercial market segment you will want to have a high performance product for a seamless floor for bathroom. You will also want a highly sustainable product and one that promotes safety, as well as the highest degree of cleanliness possible. But in addition to cleanliness your commercial venue should also have beauty, durability, as well as appeal too!

First let’s begin with cleanliness. Absolutely nothing says clean like a seamless floor for bathroom from Silikal. You see Silikal floors are totally impervious to high foot traffic, and even all the chemicals and cleaners that your cleaning staff utilizes. Why, some commercial bathroom cleaning is even done with steam cleaning, thus the floor will need to be impervious to steam. Just the disinfectants alone can often spell the demise of lesser flooring’s. In addition many commercial bathrooms need to be gone over with a degreaser depending on where the bathroom is located such as a ballpark where kids with greasy hands and feet may have used the bathroom. One of the last things that a cleaning staff does is to wet mop that bathroom floor, thus highlighting the biggest reason why you desire a seamless floor for bathroom.

Silikal actually presents the finest flooring for commercial bathrooms, since the owner of the premises never has to be concerned about moisture that tends to come about even when the plumbing has no leaks. One of the highlights of a Silikal seamless floor for bathroom is that it does away with the requirement of expensive repair work to the floor that results from damage occasioned by sporadic water spills or toilet overflows that unfortunately loosen adhesives found on many other floors. In addition, Silikal puts forward the paramount flooring for commercial bathrooms because it produces a slip resistant surface that will guard users from slipping. That’s something that all commercial sites care about deeply.

Also, Silikal floors are totally hygienic because they are completely non-porous which therefore prevents the trapping of bacteria on the floor’s exterior and even interior as liquids carry it underneath the flooring, where it festers and eventually causes nasty odors. After all, overflows of toilets, sinks and baths are unfortunately common.

Using Silikal as a seamless floor for bathroom means that you will have at your disposal some of the most beautiful floors possible. Although it seems as if ceramic tile is currently a very popular bathroom flooring option, and you are looking at commercial bathrooms, it is not your solitary choice. Before settling on an inferior product do take a look at what Silial can offer you.

If you are the proud owner of a dog, or many dogs, you may well have encountered the problems faced by dog kennel floor grating. Most dog owners and kennel keepers are more than aware that a dog kennel floor grating is a complete necessity. After all, putting a dog out on any kind of ground level system will oblige the canine to walk in his own stool and urine. This creates an incredible health hazard, and worse yet even if the area is concrete, hosing it down is certainly not enough as urine and feces are then forced into the concrete.

What happens next is truly unfortunate. Incredible odors emanate from the concrete, the canine will get staph infections, and with the digestion of bacteria that is growing on that concrete the canine will then begin to develop parasites, and all manner of worms.

Whereas a good kennel system will include concrete kennels whose floors have been completely sealed so that not even a pin hole will ever develop no matter how often it is steam cleaned, hosed out or whatever other means of cleaning is deemed important, kennel owners need to know that these type of floors are available from a company called Silikal. Silikal floors last and last and will not ever allow even the least bit of canine urine or feces to enter the flooring. Imagine if you can the fact that Silikal floors are absolutely pinhole free, and they stay pinhole free for the life of the building, or in this case dog kennel.

Interestingly enough although a dog kennel floor grating is necessary for the comfort of the canine’s feet, your dog will also find that having his bedding laid upon a Silikal floor has further advantages. If the kennel is situated outdoors, the Silikal flooring under his bedding will retain the heat very well, so that once warmed by the dog’s body, the dog kennel area becomes totally safe and warm for your pets or canine guests.

Imagine if you will how happy a dog would be under those conditions. The dog kennel floor grating enables his wastes to pass onto the Silikal flooring below the grating, but his home is kept clean and cozy if his bedding is laid on the Silikal floor. The bedding itself will always be kept clean as it provides warmth, and of course the dog will always have a tremendously comfortable non-skid surface on which to lie down or walk.

Of course by having a Silikal floor you will have taken care of the problems that face kennel owners. The first concern is always cleanliness and of course keeping odor down. The second concern is always the dog’s comfort. And that’s why a combination of a Silikal floor as well as dog kennel floor grating is the perfect answer.

When the floor to be eventually covered with Silikal has pockets in it, or cracks within it, Silikal will utilize a reactive, very low-viscosity resin that will be used to inject and thus impregnate the cracks and pockets. This process is known as acrylic impregnated. The resin is called Silikal R 41 resin, and it is transparent, completely solvent-free and is made up of 2-component methacrylic resin. The reason that they do this is to stabilize the substrate. Occasionally, after this is accomplished the surface may need to be primed. Should the floor be made of composite screeds, the operator will have to be extremely vigilant that the cracks and other empty spaces do not allow the product to seep through to the concrete underneath, and thus might drip into the floor below. This is where experience counts!

Once this area is acrylic impregnated, a hardener must be set with tremendous care given to not make the exact dose neither more nor less than what is suggested for proper curing. The resin itself must be applied as evenly as possible, thus they use either a brush or even a paint roller to put it on. Should there be any kind of matting or anything that is not even, then they rework it all in while it is wet, and prior to any hardening so that the pores can close up properly.

Should the application not be sufficient in order to fill holes and perhaps fill wider cracks, then a product known as SILIKAL® Filler QS 0.2 – 0.6 mm will be well sprinkled. This also has to be accomplished prior to the resin hardening. Finally, Silikal R 41 resin then has to be fully cured prior to any other coats being applied.

All of this is not a common application, but acrylic impregnated is only necessary if the concrete below where the Silikal will eventually be applied has pockets or cracks within it. However, once the Silikal R 41 resin is fully cured, then the “ordinary” portion of applying Silikal will follow since the applicator is now secure that no more holes or other deficiencies will prevent Silikal from working properly.

The Silikal normal application only takes one hour to cure, but if Silikal R 41 resin had to be utilized, the estimator would have covered that with the owner of the property, since it would take longer than the one hour prior to being walked upon, or even ridden upon with an automobile or a fork lift.

Following the curing of Silikal, the life of that product should actually surpass the life of the property the floor has been laid upon. In this manner yet another happy Silikal customer is made.

Have you ever been in a large hospital and been told to follow the red, yellow, or blue lines to the area you were searching for? That made it ultra simple for you to find your department, didn’t it? Psychologically, it makes even more sense than you probably suspect. You see as human beings, we are used to watching where we step, and many of us even walk with our eyes glued on our feet, although there are a few exclusions to that such as those unfortunate people who walk into open manhole covers!

Today a supermarket can actually capture their customer’s attention at the same time as they are making their purchase decisions, and therefore are actually ready to purchase items. Supermarket floor graphics are the newest and greatest thing, and they have proven to be truly powerful point-of-purchase advertising that actually attract a tremendous amount of interest, has encouraged message retention, and of course has been proven to drive sales. And it’s all there right at our feet!

Supermarket floor graphics can be fashioned in a tremendous myriad of shapes and sizes. Some have included highly colorful graphics or have included bold lettering. Many have short messages accompanied with excellent photographic images and a plethora of supplementary three-dimensional effects. What this means is that the customer will receive quite a visual impact.

As a brand new advertising medium, these supermarket floor graphics will seek to reinforce may other ad campaigns and messages. Also, TV and radio, outdoor advertising and newspapers are much more expensive than these floor graphics, thus they are gaining in popularity with advertisers. Just as the floor must, these graphics will be required to endure chemical cleaners, grit, grease, dirt and the extreme abuse of foot traffic.

One important point though is that if a supermarket is going to even entertain supermarket floor graphics, its floors need to be bright, cheery and above all superbly clean. Thus the best floors for that are the complementary Silikal flooring. After all, the supermarket floor graphics are going to bring not only attention to those lovely graphics but to the floor as well.

This is why Silikal flooring is a superb marriage for supermarket floor graphics. After all Silikal floors provide a safe and slip proof and totally hygienic flooring. Slip resistance is important in supermarkets for both the help as well as its customers. Best yet, is that any supermarket can have a brand new Silikal floor put down overnight since it takes only one scant hour to set up or cure. Thus it can be all ready to accept the new supermarket floor graphics as well as the accompanying graphic investments.

Not that anyone wishes to argue semantics, especially about paint, however acrylic floor paint is somewhat of a misnomer. You see, acrylic floor paint is really not paint at all, but rather it is more a floor coating. Why bother to make the distinction, you are thinking? Because a coating is something that goes deeper than the surface meaning of paint which by all rights merely covers the surface. A coating goes deeper than just paints since it is actually a covering, much like the difference it would make to you to be covered by a blanket if it is windy, as opposed to being covered by a coloring agent of some kind.

In most cases, since we are speaking of acrylic floor paint, as opposed to a floor coating, a floor coating will improve the properties of the surface of the floor, which in the flooring business is called the substrate. So, the scratch resistance, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, wetability, adhesion, and definitely the appearance of the substrate will change with a floor coating. With acrylic floor paint, basically only the appearance will change. Thus, when someone calls a floor coating just plain and simple acrylic floor paint, it does not cover all the bases, anymore than a roller skate is a vehicle, although most vehicles have four wheels.

One of the very best acrylic floor coatings that one can put on a floor is known as Silikal. You see,Silikal goes the furthest from merely being acrylic floor paint, than any other floor product can. It is truly a floor covering. You may be wondering why this is so?

First, Silikal is put down in such a way as to create an instant bond with the substrate. Perhaps if you create a mental picture of a hot English muffin receiving a healthy swipe of soft butter upon it, that will help you to understand the analogy. Just as the butter creeps into each and every nook and cranny of that hot English muffin without any impediment at all, so does Silikal enter the concrete that it is laid upon. It does this not because the concrete is hot, of course, but because it is enhanced MMA, and that’s what MMA behaves like.

Long ago; perhaps in the Stone Age, floors were made out of stone because they had to be. Today, just the opposite is true, and if someone has a floor covering made of stone, chances are they are in the upper echelon of home ownership or perhaps it is an attorney’s office, or a very high end hotel or motel.

There truly is an enormous choice of exotic natural floor covering made of stone. There is the deep earth sophistication of sandstone, the magnificent patina of onyx, the opulent hue of marble, the expressive tones of slate, and the exceedingly flourishing patterns of granite.

Chances are if it is a high-end casino, for example, then they might have gone for a floor covering made of stone – travertine stone! Travertine is actually in the limestone family, and is found in Italy, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico. It communicates affluence, good taste and success. The biggest problem with travertine though is the fact that it is a porous stone, and thus may easily stain. Later in this article we will cover what to do to protect travertine.

A floor covering made of stone today is the epitome of grace and refinement, thus we have come far from the days of the Stone Age, but with a few additions and fine-tuning. Ordinarily the stones listed above also need to be set into some form of grout-like material, and in turn need to be covered with some kind of sealant, regardless of the kind of stone utilized. Otherwise the grout gets dirty, and since grout allows water to seep through it, what happens is that dirty water goes under the stone, making for a terrible problem. Should that occur there may easily be mold under that lovely stone or even bacteria, as well as fungus, and what happens next is the emission of foul odors, not to mention the degradation that occurs from simply having moisture pass through the grout time and time again!

In order to save that lovely floor; including travertine floors, a floor covering made of stone needs to be thoroughly sealed over, and there is no better product than Silikal. Silikal can install a sealant that will be completely clear so that it will have that beautiful shine that your interior decorator was speaking of, yet it will be completely protected. Clear silicone sealers made by Silikal are the highest grade possible, and the sealers never need to be replaced. They go on quickly over your floor covering made of stone, and yet they can cure in exactly one short hour or less. Your business need not shut down for days as with other sealers that take far longer to cure.

]]> http://www.silikalamerica.com/blog/2011/11/21/floor-covering-made-of-stone/feed/ 0 http://www.silikalamerica.com/blog/2011/11/18/strong-flooring-bond/ http://www.silikalamerica.com/blog/2011/11/18/strong-flooring-bond/#comments Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:43:25 +0000 admin http://www.silikalamerica.com/blog/?p=1099 Continue reading →]]> A Strong Floor Bond Can Mean A Lifetime of Benefits for Your Business

OK, I agree the word strong means a plethora of different meanings. For example many people think that concrete is strong. Well it is, but consider why they put steel in poured concrete buildings? That’s because concrete is really not that strong? Now, if you look up strong flooring bond, you’re in for quite a surprise. What comes out of the search engines is strong flooring bond mats that are utilized during wrestling, judo and karate, or in other words martial arts.

In the flooring business, most of those people think of MMA when they think of a strong flooring bond. MMA stands for Methyl Methacrylates, and if you are seeking flooring that will create a very strong bond, that’s what you want. However, a company by the name of Silikal understood only too well that MMA had a few problems associated with it. First of all, it makes pinholes, and worst of all it undergoes chemical absorption which will eventually cause that bond to actually separate from the substrate, which usually is concrete.

Thus, Silikal put its best scientists onto this problem and asked them to solve it. The scientists came up with MMA which they had mixed with a secret ingredient, and that then became Silikal’s “enhanced” MMA. That’s the only wording they use for whatever they did to it, but it certainly made an impression on the eventual users of Silikal.

You see, then they found that this strange creation called Silikal would actually continue to be whole or monolithic for the complete life of the building it was installed into. In addition, because there were never any pinholes in it, Silikal became the only product that totally prevented dirt, bacteria, germs and many other nasties to locate and hide in the substrate. Consider for example a food processing plant, or a meat rendering plant. The waste products are washed down into the substrate by the water they utilize to cleanse the meat, such as turkeys for example. That water settles in the substrate, and next thing you know the plant is shut down for having pathogens in their meat, any meat products, whole poultry, or even assorted poultry products processed by that establishment! The establishment or processing plant makes worldwide news, and it’s not good news at all!

Now, you may not have a meat packing plant, and you may not handle any poultry, but you might be a restaurant that needs to have clean floors. You might be a veterinary clinic that performs operations on pets, or you may be a hospital that operates on humans. The point is that no matter what business you are in, keeping your establishment clean, and your workers healthy is your job.

Without Silikal and its enhanced MMA, you may have mechanics that call in sick due to unexplained coughs. The reason may very well be that the dust raised by foot traffic, cars and hand trucks going over untreated concrete may be raising dust that settles in your worker’s lungs. This is why even if all you have is a warehouse; you will want to use Silikal for your strong flooring bond. Check around, and you’ll find that there’s nothing like Silikal!

There are a great number of ways to seal a floor. For instance there’s epoxy floor coatings, epoxy resin coatings and seemingly hundreds more. Sealed and polished concrete floors have become so much more popular. They are currently in use in residential/office lofts, retail spaces and museums. All of those spaces look absolutely charming with some sort of concrete seal coating on their floors. In addition, seal coating will protect the floor, any kind of floor, from those in warehouses and basements, to garages. Thus, things like weathering and corrosion will no longer harm the floors, or at least that’s the goal anyway.

If you look at seal coating concrete you will undoubtedly find that many companies are suggesting a product that contains the highest quality epoxy, along with urethane, and a product called methyl methacrylate that they refer to as MMA. Chances are that is the highest quality product they can suggest, and that will go on quickly, dry super fast, and it will undoubtedly present you with a gorgeous seamless look. Thus your commercial kitchen flooring, aircraft hangar flooring, garage flooring, hospital floors or heavy duty industrial flooring will look absolutely great, but then comes the million-dollar question – how long will it last?

Ah, there’s the rub, as Shakespeare used to word it! This is why Silikal is best. They too use the highest quality product out there, but there is one very important difference, Silikal has “enhanced” MMA, and Silikal is the only company to have that particular secret in its concrete seal coatings. Because it is enhanced MMA, once applied and bonding is taking place, it becomes a part of the floor beneath it. Chances are that your floor will look as if it was just put down, no matter the punishment it is given, and no matter where it was put down.

The “where” is important, for if you put it down outdoors, it can take all manner of weather and best yet it is totally UV resistant. If you put it down in an abnormally hot location, next to huge commercial ovens for example, the heat will do nothing to it. Put it down in a laboratory, and drop all manner of alkalis, acids, tinctures, salts and grease on it, and nothing but nothing gets through it as it is not only seamless flooring system, it is totally chemical resistant as well!

Commercial ovens do not harm it, but how about inside a freezer? No problem whatsoever, the Silikal seal coating will not only set up within one hour in a freezer, it is made to cure in low temperatures! Thus, Silikal seal coating is found in the greater majority of the meat processing industry. That means all manner of meat cutting and packaging plants, sausage plants, as well as various slaughterhouses have Silikal floors. Only Silikal can take those extreme temperatures and the impact of the heavy loads found in freezers.

The thing is that there are seal coatings and then there are simply sealers. With Silikal the bond is complete, there will be zero pinhole entry under the sealed floor. There will be no wear ever. Other types of floor coverings will eventually wear down, but Silikal will last longer than the floor it’s put upon!

You may have heard this term bandied about but, perhaps you are not sure what monolithic floor coating refers to, or what it means. The word monolithic was first used to describe a geological feature such as a monolith; for example a mountain might be associated with the word. Archeologists use it to describe columns saying that there was a monolithic column found in Greece, for instance, when they meant that the column had been made all from one stone only. In today’s vocabulary it means that it is something that is unbroken, one piece, and therefore unfragmented.

Now you understand better that a monolithic floor coating will have no seams and thus no joints. Unlike say a tile floor that is in many pieces with grout in the middle of each adjoining tile, tile floors are definitely not monolithic floors.

Floors that are not monolithic can allow dirty water to seep between it and the substrate, a substrate meaning what’s under the floor or in some construction dictionaries define it as a structurally stable material. In many cases, the substrate is actually poured concrete, but imagine what nasty germination can take place in that instance? First, there would be germs, bacteria, even fungus, potentially followed by growing mold. Chances are that the floor’s condition would occasion strange appalling and ghastly odors. Let’s assume for instance that perhaps our non-monolithic floor is in a restaurant where spills are part of the business. How is one to clean a floor that sucks up spills?

The bacterial count of food waste alone is downright staggering, yet many restaurants utilize those old-fashioned safety rubber mats. Those need to be scrupulously cleaned then hung out to dry every night, and the floor then needs to be mopped with strong chemicals to try to stop the germination that very likely will still be taking place on the substrate.

Now you can see and understand the importance of a monolithic floor coating, it’s one that will not allow materials of any kind to penetrate it. Now, Silikal is the finest monolithic floor coating available anywhere in the world. The reason is that they have a exceedingly secret ingredient that their own scientists have created especially for Silikal. It is called MMA which is what is always in monolithic floor coatings, however because of the secret ingredient, their formula is what they call “enhanced” MMA. MMA, by the way, is Mixed Martial Arts to lots of martial arts fans, but in flooring it stands for Methyl Methacrylates, thus a mouthful that’s been reduced to MMA.

The “enhanced” portion of Silikal’s enhanced MMA enables a business to even drive heavy forklifts on the new floor with only one hour of “curing” which is the technical word used to mean “harden.” Now, if you don’t have forklifts in your business, perhaps you have cars that you need to drive into the mechanics, or perhaps you have a huge amount of foot traffic, all of which can use the new floor just one hour after it has been laid by the highly qualified technically trained workers.

What Silikal’s enhanced MMA does is to stop the product from making pinholes, which unfortunately MMA that has not been enhanced will make. In addition MMA that is not Silikal’s enhanced MMA will also go through chemical absorption that will also cause it to separate from the substrate. Only Silikal flooring will remain whole or monolithic for the entire life of the building.

Looking for a concrete sealer non toxic especially? Maybe your basement walls seem to feel damp during the wet months, or even the floors? Perhaps there is even a moldy smell? You may even require a concrete sealer non toxic type on your patios, sidewalks or driveways which; especially if you live up North, will have freeze and thaw damage. Your concrete walls that have that white powder efflorescence coming though probably have worried you, and rightfully so.

You see concrete, although rock hard if you hit your head on it, is actually porous. Thus it absorbs water, much as a sponge does. If you have used some concrete sealers on it but the problems have come back, chances are that that’s because the seal was not perfect, and only the surface looked sealed. You will want a sealer that permeates deep and sets up hard all through the pores of the concrete and is so well sealed that there are not even pin pricks through your concrete sealer non toxic.

Imagine if you can, a zoo that needs to create a pond for some of its animals. The pond has to of course hold water, and not leak, especially not into the next exhibit! The very type of permanent, completely non-toxic concrete sealer they would use is what you require.

In addition, this product has to have absolutely no VOC’s (odor) so that you do not bother the other animals, nor any visitors with the noxious odors that some products of this type have. VOC, by the way stands for “volatile organic compound” and if ever you have smelled one, you know how that noxious smell can knock you off your feet!

About the only concrete sealer non toxic that fits into the description above plus has many other wonderful qualities is of course Silikal. Silikal will be permanent, and will totally seal the pores of the concrete to which it is applied. It has absolutely no VOC’s, meaning no odor at all, and it seals concrete so well that not even a pinhole can suddenly appear in it. Non toxic concrete sealer completely adheres to the concrete for all time. In addition, it is completely seamless, and can be installed and utilized within one hour of installation.

Further, Silikal is not only tremendously functional but it is also quite beautiful. There is a rainbow of colors that it can be installed in, so that it can mimic rocks or hold the blue of the sky in its presentation. This is the same product currently utilized at the Georgia Aquarium, where the acrylic, which is 17 times stronger than glass, is currently holding back millions of gallons of water there!

First let’s cover what floor trench systems are. If you have ever been in a commercial pool, you know that the water laps over into a trench system as people make waves. Well a floor trench system is similar to that in that it acts as an overflow. There are many businesses that need floor trench systems, such as water plants, waste-water plants, power plants, parking areas, chemical applications, and food processing as well as pharmaceutical applications. You will also find them on hardscape areas, around swimming pools, athletic facilities, and tracks.

They are also found in vehicle maintenance facilities, auto dealerships, garages, gas stations, kennels, marinas, schools, hospitals and fire stations to name a few more. In addition, they really come in handy for manufacturing plants, wineries, resorts, water parks, airports, rail stations, ports, and highway rest rooms. Thus you will see the floor trench system in just about every business possible, including sports arenas, stadiums, jails and prisons as well. They are widely utilized anywhere where water may make the floors slippery, no matter the source of the water.

The thing is that they are built right into the floor utility chase. The designers that pour the concrete for these, take into consideration things such as load bearing strength, its hydraulic capacities, the chemical resistance of the product utilized to go onto the trench system as well as the structural technology to be sure that the trench drain is correct for its particular application. Thus when it’s done, these floor trench systems are an enhanced process for removing any surface liquids for nearly all applications.

The “trick” was to find a seamless, totally non-porous, internal surface in order to further enhance the flow within these concrete floor trench systems. However, one company stands out above all others, and that is Silikal.

You see, Silikal has designed industrial floor coatings that are an amazing floor covering. It is especially treated to set up within one hour of application, and the end product is reactive, in that it will not allow bacteria nor mold to grow on it, within it, or even under it. This Silikal flooring is also made totally safe since it comes with slip resistance and of course, amazing clean ability.

You will find Silikal utilized in a majority of high-end restaurants where the kitchen is a beehive of constant activity and there is often floor trench systems associated with them to carry any foods away that might be dropped, and liquids as well, thus preventing a calamity in the kitchen should someone slip. When the cleaning crew shows up after a day’s worth of heavy duty cooking to clean the kitchen, they need not utilize strong detergents as everything can be cleansed easily as the floor trench systems in these establishments carries down all that waste water immediately and none of it remains in the trench. All is immaculate once more.

Laboratory floors as well are treated with Silikal and floor trench systems since their lab products will not put down any long-term damage on their Silikal floors. The reason is that Silikal floors are also
highly resistant to many tinctures, acids, greases, salts and many other laboratory solutions.

Commercial epoxy flooring needs to be different than say residential epoxy flooring, as it will undoubtedly take a lot more punishment than it would inside a home. Take for example commercial epoxy flooring that is used in a garage where automobiles are repaired. First of course, there is the weight of the cars, the hot engines, the oil, the friction of their tires against the epoxy, and perhaps worst yet those dropped tools that fall out of a mechanic’s hands that with ordinary epoxy will gouge the flooring.

Or consider the commercial epoxy flooring that has to be put down at a kennel. This flooring needs to be hermetically sealed, as dogs will have sharp nails against the flooring, and unfortunately there will be both excrement as well as urine to deal with. If the commercial epoxy flooring is not properly sealed, even one tiny little pinhole would allow a plethora of germs and bacteria to grow underneath the floor resulting in malodorous smells and even encourage infections in their dogs. This is why, for instance, that tile is a very bad choice for a kennel. Tile means that there is grout, and grout will allow said germs and bacteria to grow at an alarming rate.

Then consider what hospital flooring must be like? They of course need to have flooring that is always extremely clean and of course the “right” floor is extremely helpful as far as infection control is concerned. Patients are already injured or in need of extreme care, and the workers need to be kept safe too, thus any commercial epoxy flooring utilized in a health care facility, hospital, or operating room needs to be completely slip resistant for both workers and patients.

Because, again we are referring to commercial flooring and not residential flooring, said flooring needs to be able to take a beating. Foot traffic is very hard on any epoxy flooring, thus it is imperative to find flooring that can “take” that kind of high foot traffic, such as a busy airport runway corridor, or the area where those taking an elevator or escalator would exit in a commercial store. Combine foot traffic with chairs on rollers, for instance as is found in side a laboratory, and that flooring needs to be the best it can be to take that without causing damage.

There is only one product that will adequately fill all the needs outlined above for a commercial epoxy flooring and that is Silikal. Amazingly, it will even set up within one hour so that no business needs to close for two to three days while the flooring dries! Created by Silikal years back, Silikal has had a chance to prove how long it will remain in service looking as if it had just been installed, and that length of time is positively amazing, for Silikal floors will outlast the buildings they are found in!

What makes Silikal so special? It’s the fact that it is made with enhanced MMA. The name of MMA is known as methyl methacrylate, but Silikal is the only company that has brought it one step closer to amazing by enhancing it. Yet it still retains its properties that enables it to be a no VOC flooring. That means that there are absolutely no malicious vapors or odors to contend with as it is being applied.

Put simply good hygiene means clean. Thus, there are number of businesses we can imagine that are hygiene critical and thus need hygiene critical floor systems. The first place that comes to my mind is an operation theater. Thus it should surprise no one that many of our hospital floorings throughout the world have utilized Silikal as their flooring system of choice.

A good part of having a hygiene critical floor system is that it cannot in any way or manner ever harbor molds or bacteria, and it must be totally soil resistant. In essence then the entire flooring must not allow anything to penetrate it. Hence the use of strong acids as well as alkalines in any concentration can have no effect on that flooring, even if given extended exposure. Various coloring chemicals, as well as solvents such as acetone, will not be able to produce any stains, nor any discolorations. There cannot be any surface damage to deal with, therefore the product will be extremely safe to use in various laboratories where these chemicals may be dropped onto the floor system. Silikal meets all those requirements and more.

Load resistance can be important even in hygiene critical floor systems, making the goal of any floor system is for the floor to be able to sustain a 5’000 kg powered forklift truck having either one or perhaps two steering wheels by a typical case. The floor system should be able to sustain no damage whatsoever one hour after installation of the flooring system. Silikal meets all these requirements as well.

Users of such products as hygiene critical floor systems insisted that the interior designers and the architects could utilize Silikal in ways that would be unique and very attractive. Knowing this, Silikal even has a see through product that enables any company to emblazon their logo on the flooring system, making the floor extremely unique and giving freedom of design to the interior designer and/or architect.

The reason why hospitals and the like love Silikal flooring is that it is one of the most hygienic flooring choices due to the fact that it is not only
totally seamless but it is also completely non-porous, meaning germs and bacteria have nowhere to stick to, and nowhere to go either. It could not be more perfect. The non-porosity of the flooring also means that it’s superbly simple and easy to clean no matter what gets on it.

In addition their hygiene critical flooring system is completely resistant to thermal as well as mechanical deformation, thus it works well in extremely hot situations, as well as freezing situations. Silikal fits well as hygiene critical floor systems when a pharmaceutical product research and development company needs flooring. A first-class hygienic industrial floor is the indispensable factor in their being able to achieve their highest quality production processes. That makes Silikal the very best choice for all possible hygiene critical floor systems.

Today everyone talks about being ecologically responsible, as humans have finally realized that this planet is not inexhaustible in its riches, and so our environment has been constantly subjected to recurrent degradation all seemingly because of our negative response to taking responsibility for it. Thankfully that kind of thinking is no longer the norm, and even though ecological problems appear to be very massive, and we think of ourselves as small insignificant portions of the whole, we are all glad that there are changes in consciousness being formulated over and over again.

Planting trees, and using energy efficient light bulbs can only go so far. We need to begin to use what we have with forethought and infinite care. Granted if we recycle and buy only environmentally–friendly products then we have a start, a truly good start to begin to reduce a lot of our damage on the earth.

However, we need products that are produced with ECO flooring in mind, products that are renewable and those that do not use up our precious resources. With this at the forefront of creating ECO flooring, Silikal has designed a renewable floor that has been completely designed to last or even outlast the lifetime of the structure that it is in!

In addition, any company that utilizes Silikal, may very well qualify for LEEDs credits as well. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, and is involved in over 30 various countries. It enables building operators and owners to gain a crisp framework in order to identify and implement measurable and green building design, operations, construction as well as maintenance solutions.

Silikal is extremely proud that their reactive resins are created, manufactured and sell in total conformity to the stringent quality requirements. These requirements were set down by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a group that strives to also conserve energy and they set commercial standards. Thus Silikal is exceedingly proud, because after all they worked diligently to consider sustainability issues that range from the use of energy to their careful selection of material, and then gave extremely serious consideration to all points while creating this product.

Not only are Silikal products unmatched for commercial and industrial usage, but they are hygienic, cleanable, safe, durable and have supreme looks and appearance. Their products also provide limited maintenance combined with years of service, thus their products offer users a much lower life cycle cost. Their products cure in less than one hour and in addition the product will bond chemically to itself, thus if repairs are needed, they can be accomplished painlessly and very quickly.

Thus if you seek eco-friendly flooring options, you truly can do no better than to utilize Silikal. Today’s eco flooring from Silikal brings you competitive pricing, varied surfaces, rich colors and they all are good for your health. Many synthetics create room toxicity through a process called outgassing. Usually that’s because volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were utilized. VOCs cause ground level ozone. Silikal will create no outgassing and their products are 100% VOC free.

Truly laminated floors that have been damaged are downright heartbreaking. The biggest reason for the heartbreak is that repairing damaged laminate flooring is next to impossible. The problem is that laminate flooring looks great immediately after putting it down, but as soon as it gets scratched by moving furniture, or even delivery of perhaps a dishwasher, or refrigerator, it can easily get scratches on it, that undoubtedly make it appear terrible.

There are some “fillers” that may work great with miniscule scratches and nicks, but definitely forget it if you have something that is considered a bit larger for your damage. These fillers work best if utilized on very tiny imperfections, but anything larger than the tiniest scratch will not work well and can unfortunately be easily seen. Semi trucks deliver the large laminate flooring when you first put it down, but delivering a ten-foot board piece will still cost you a large amount of money should someone put a very deep scratch in the laminate.

If you try to repair damaged laminate flooring, you could conceivably end up with laminate that is colored differently than the existing laminate, or have laminate that sits higher than the other laminate causing an irregularity that sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. Having irregularly repaired laminate is unfortunately inviting falls, and perhaps lawsuits.

Sometimes the solutions are right in front of our face, but we don’t see them right away anyway. For instance, have you ever thought of sealing in that laminate that is not very damaged, and using Silikal transparent liquid to seal in that laminate?

When Silikal is applied directly over the laminate it will attach to that laminate and thus it will on no account ever permit penetration of any kinds of liquids since that product is totally impermeable and entirely pin-hole free. When the Silikal product is mounted with an essential cove base, that is when you will find that you then have a fully seamless, monolithic surface! As if that were not enough, Silikal will thus produce a fully slip-resistant coating directly over your damaged and dangerous laminate. Yet, with all this, you will still be able to inspect your beautiful laminate that is now totally protected against almost any punishment.

Laying a new laminate floor takes days, and so one may have to close up the business for the length of time that the repairs take. What most people are totally surprised with is that when using Silikal, the business will also need to shut down but only for a scant hour, for that is the length of time that Silikal takes to fully set. Of course, best yet is the fact that the Silikal is impervious to just about anything! Not only is it completely waterproof but it is totally UV resistant as well. Chances are the Silikal covering the laminate flooring will outlast the laminate flooring-even the building itself! The colors in the laminate will never fade because Silikal protects it completely. Talk about beauty and durability, it can’t be beat!

According to Chris Spielman, host of “RISE UP” an ESPN makeover show, Wellston High School, located at 200 Golden Rocket Drive in Wellston, Ohio whose proud colors are blue and gold, was given a gift through its community for their home team, the Golden Rockets, of a refurbished stadium as well as a brand new renovated athletic facility. The makeover as told by “Rise Up,” an ESPN project that helps needy high schools by receiving donations from large companies for not only the materials, but also the expertise as well as some of the sweat equity required for such a large project, brought nervous emotions as well as warm happy tears from the crowd.

Deanne Bell, the construction project manager who also happens to be the co-host of “RISE UP” was quoted as saying, “There were tears, there was laughter, there were screams … there was a whole gamut of emotions here tonight.”

This particular project was essentially led by Brenmar Construction whose part-owner, Andy Graham, is a Wellston graduate. He among many contractors and local businesses, such as Silikal America flooring, donated their time and effort to transform athletic facilities that are in desperate need of their miracle. So desperate in fact that many spoke of the chance those students would get hurt utilizing the old and truly decrepit equipment! Everything was in total disrepair with no hope of being able to afford to fix it.

It was not only the football team who were shocked at their new facilities, but the cheerleaders also who were totally awed by the new facilities. Tape and photos of the “old” facilities show broken down stadium seating, leaking facilities, and wrecked facilities for everyone, mostly from the ravages of simple old age. Wellston superintendent Karen Boch said “We are Wellston Rockets and we stick together no matter what,” and that’s really what this small town is like, they do all stick together, and do so very proudly but that’s very difficult when money is so scarce.

What Wellston ended up with was amazing. They now have a gorgeous functioning girls locker room, brand new equipment, new uniforms and even a new football field that actually features irrigation. No wonder the townspeople are so happy that many cried.

Those kids whose amazing makeover of their own athletic facility did not end there. The high school students got together to work on the playground located at their elementary school. They exerted most of the day re-mulching the entire playground in an effort to pass on the huge donations that were made to their own school by the community. Lesson well learned is the feeling those who watched the other makeovers of other schools. The lessons are not only heartwarming but speak very highly of each community involved. Simply put, Wellston gave back!

Wellston in Ohio shares the “RISE UP’ makeover with other schools as well such as Dorchester Academy located in Boston, Dyett in Chicago and Ingraham located in Seattle. “RISE UP” airs at 7 p.m. ET Tuesdays on ESPN. They give other schools the chance to rebuild, reach out, and rise up!

Some of these acrylic floor cleaners are incredibly powerful, and unfortunately some of them even contain phosphates or alkalies. Some of the most common alkalies are sodium hydroxide, calcium hydroxide, and ammonia, all of which are difficult to work with. Other alkalies are sodium carbonate, sodium metasilicate and sodium hydroxide. Some contain acids, such as sulphuric acid and nitric acid. As unfortunate as it is, none of us are deeply into chemicals enough to realize what we are utilizing to clean our floors. The majority of our floor cleaners have some sort of surfactant which serves to not only loosen but suspend soil. What acrylic floor cleaners and finishers have in them is a chemical residue byproduct that remains on the floor to give it that extra shine.

Now, some acrylic floor cleaners leave the acrylic on the floor but chances are that it is not removed the next time the floor is cleaned. But, then another coating of acrylic goes on the floor because the same acrylic floor cleaner was utilized. What follows next is what many people responsible for cleaning floors refer to as the yellowing or build-up on the floor. This unfortunately will have to be removed by stripping the floor, which no one likes to have to do as it can more times than not be a lengthy, tedious, and messy process. Even attempting to place another new piece of linoleum over the old will not suffice as the acrylic byproduct will prevent the new from adhering to the old.

One should also realize that if one utilizes high quality acrylic floor cleaners that also have a polymer added, then that floor will have tremendous resistance against heel markings, scuffing, dirt and such, but again there is that build up. There is however an answer to this puzzling problem of low maintenance flooring that can still weather the effects of time.

Acrylic floor resins are the answer, which have been impregnated throughout the flooring such as concrete. Silikal is considered the world’s best acrylic floor resins. You see, they use MMA reactive resin coatings for floors. This kind of flooring never needs stripping, never needs polishing, and more importantly it is totally water resistant, and it can even be applied so that it is also slip resistant.

Many designers as well as architects dearly love designing using Silikal. You see, those floors can mimic even the “in” floors one sees today, such as a natural pebble stone look. Very posh indeed, and as aesthetically an artistic floor as anyone would desire. Finally consider the fact that a Silikal floor can be laid and utilized a short hour later. It also is completely free of VOCs. None at all, thus this means that it can even be laid while there are other people in the building too!

Concrete today is no longer that drab gray coloring. There are companies out there who do nothing more than make colors for concrete. If you can imagine it, there are thousands upon thousands of different colored pigments, from chromium oxide greens, to cobalt blues, carbon blacks, black or brown iron oxides, as well as a plethora of different orange, yellow and synthetic reds. With the push today for “green” buildings, many of the colors actually come from some kind of recycled material, especially many of the iron oxide pigments. Thus there are many reasons to utilize colored concrete.

For countless enthusiasts of decorative concrete what seems to excite them the most is the fact that each and every installation is completely unique. Today, concrete can now take on any texture, pattern, design or even shape. We can go one step further, and subtly blend in with Mother Nature or at times make a dramatic bold design statement with colored concrete.

At the moment, unless the actual design calls for that plain gray color, any color can be attained by the use of colored concrete. To be honest some companies offer a truly bewildering palette of various shades for any designer to choose from, and it boggles the mind to see it all.

It may be true that colored concrete is going to cost a bit more than the plain gray color, but the difference is totally amazing and most say that it is well worth the investment. The patios found outside today seem to simply harmonize with their adjacent landscapes, bringing a decorative effect that is almost a work of art in our present day.

If you are considering looking for colored concrete, be sure and pay a visit to Silikal. There you can see the effects of colored concrete, both inside and outside various buildings. You may even see what your logo might look like if imprinted deeply in the concrete floor of your office building.

Interestingly enough concrete can be utilized to “look like” any kind of surface, whether it is marble, wood, natural rock, or hundreds of other things, all because of the use of colored concrete. Some of the most beautiful driveways you’ve ever seen appear to be inlaid rocks but they are nothing more than colored concrete.

Colored concrete has been brought forth at such an amazing rate that today one’s entire house may be made of colored concrete yet be totally aesthetically pleasing. Silikal floors throughout can call forth some truly amazing beauty that will last beyond the life of the building those floors are in.

SILIKAL AMERICA LEED FLOORING POINTS CHECK LIST

First you may wonder what LEED is. Well, the USGBC, which is the United States Green Building Council, is who developed LEED. That stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. What they have done is to create a rating system that gives out specific credits depending on how green a building is, what kinds of products were utilized, the installation techniques utilized and such. Of course, we all want to be as “green” as possible, and thus when points are given for flooring, that is important to any company. Although only buildings can become LEED certified, the earning of LEED flooring points can eventually lead to a building become LEED certified.

Some LEED flooring points may be given to a company which utilizes recycled contents for its flooring. This may be carpet backing or the actual carpet itself, as an example. Another instance may be the use of natural products such as wooden floors, or perhaps bamboo floors which are a self-replenishing source of flooring. LEED flooring points are given, however if a company utilizes adhesives or other solutions that emit low VOCs which are volatile organic compounds that smell with a very bad odor when utilized.

The very best LEED flooring points can come from utilizing Silikal for your flooring needs, no matter what business you are in, whether a medical business, a business that allows cars to enter into them such as car repairs, or if you have a business that works their floors very hard indeed such as a beer warehouse where the forklifts work day and night moving huge pallets of beer. Silikal can give you LEED flooring points. You see, its reactive resins are manufactured, developed and sold in conformity to some very strict environmental management systems.

In addition, Silikal is not a “low VOC” flooring, it is a no VOC flooring. That in itself makes it a very superior product green wise. In addition, whereas other products for flooring may require a business to shut down for 12 hours, a day, or even a long 3 day weekend, Silikal has no such requirements. Silikal sets up and bonds completely with the flooring beneath it so that one can ride a forklift on it one hour after it is laid.

Additional points are given for Silikal because it can extend the life of any building in which it is installed. This is because the Silikal flooring frequently outlasts the life of any building. That means no repairs and no reinstallation of flooring is necessary.

In the United States, it is the United States Department of Agriculture whose responsibility it is to protect the public health through food safety inspections as well as defense. The USDA is responsible for protecting public health by making sure that foods and their preparation are safe, sanitary, wholesome and of course properly labeled. In addition, along with the USDA, the FDA the Food and Drug people, work in conjunction with them to make sure that both veterinary and of course human drugs are both effective and safe. Now, that encompasses a terrific amount of different businesses that would need to utilize USDA approved floors as you can imagine.

Thus USDA approved floors encompass any flooring that protects the floor from mold, fungus, bacteria, and of course algae growth as well. Thus, if you look at them you will find that they are perfect for wet surface floors that encompass food preparation as well as chemical processing plants. In other words, the floors are anti-microbial, steam-cleanable, suitable for heavy traffic as well as forklifts, and of course they are also non-skid. when the floors can pass all those requirements, then those industrial floor coatings can specifically be used for either food or pharmaceutical industries.

Although there are many floors that are acceptable to the USDA, straightforward epoxy paints and pigmented sealers are simply not acceptable. For floors to become USDA approved floors, they must go beyond what those products can do. As you can imagine USDA approved flooring is thus ideal for use in food processing locations, beverage processing, any business that handles beef, pork, poultry, dairy, or produce, any commercial kitchen, all restaurants, and also this applies to all their freezers and coolers.

Many other aspects of flooring come into play here, for instance is the floor thermal shock resistant? How about chemical resistant? Slip resistant? Forklift rated? Odorless? And of course above all, how sanitary is it?

One of the very few USDA approved floors that can answer yes to all the above questions is of course Silikal. With its totally non-porous, guaranteed pinhole free and completely seamless flooring surface, bacteria, dirt and any water borne pests cannot attach to your floor. That means that it’s exceptionally easy to clean. By being an anti-slip product this means that you can reduce or totally prevent slips and falls. Silikal can “take” the harshest conditions such as chemical attacks, or mechanical abrasion from forklifts and still hold up. Wet and cold conditions never mar it at all.

Thus, if you are seeking the very best USDA approved floors, you truly cannot do better than Silikal. Remember that Silikal is the floor that once it is laid down in your facility, you can go to work on it within ONE HOUR!!!, so that your business needs not shut down for 48 hours as many other USDA approved floors require.

Have you ever gone up stairs that were worn down? Absolutely nothing will bring on vertigo more quickly. Your mind tries to adapt to the worn stairs, and of course you begin to worry about falling down. Granted it’s even worse going down the worn stairs, because then your eye sees the worn steps and multiplies the danger by each step remaining. Mostly it is all in your mind, but it’s still a very harrowing experience. As you can see flooring for stairs is of extreme importance. It cannot be easily worn away, and most importantly it cannot be anything but slip resistant – ever!

They sell carpeted stair treads today that come with double sided tape, but my mind reels at the thought of such a thing. I do not wish to chance walking on such flimsily attached stair treads.

The use of laminate flooring also raises the hairs on the back of my neck. Even the directions state that one should not glue the flooring to stairs if using the foam underlayment that comes with the laminate flooring. This basically reminds me of the “warning” posted on some stepladders “Danger of Falling with Use.”

Today one can have stairs made of linoleum, hardwood, tile and just about anything one wishes for, but commercial flooring on stairs is of supreme importance of course, as the safety of those using the stairs must be taken into account. So, what is the best flooring available for stairs that takes into account supreme safety?

Well, relying on double sided tape obviously does not fit that bill, nor are laminates that are merely glued on, and of course linoleum and tile are simply too dangerous to even contemplate. Wood is acceptable, but will eventually create wear spots that will be problematic.

The only flooring for stairs that completely and thoroughly fits the requirements being sought for complete safety is Silikal. The reasons for using Silikal on stairs are numerous. First, it is a completely seamless installation that bonds both the wall and the stair together. Psychologically, the blend seems to give one tremendous security when climbing and descending the stairs. Unlike wood that might require “stick on” non-slip treads that are ungainly and definitely ugly to behold, the flooring itself is made of a reactive resin non skid coating that has been especially developed to be safe on stairs. Safety is of supreme importance; Silikal knows and understands that, thus when you utilize Silikal on your flooring for stairs you will be completely protected.

In addition, Silikal installations for your flooring for stairs is downright beautiful. However, Silikal fully understands that floor covering for stairs that are in high traffic areas mean that any other category of floor covering just will not do, as it will wear away, exposing the subsurface such as the concrete below it. This in turn makes it completely unsafe as well as unsightly. You need the completely safe foot friendly flooring for stairs – Silikal!

Just as in anything else, there’s protective flooring and there’s PROTECTIVE FLOORING. For instance are we speaking of protective flooring that is suitable for a restaurant kitchen, or perhaps you are seeking rubber fitness mats? How about protective flooring for performing aerobics? Perhaps your flooring needs even more protection as you have a martial arts school where they do mixed martial arts, grappling and dojo? What of locker rooms with drains in your floors, or spike protection? Any kind of institutional and industrial floors you can mention will need some kind of protective flooring.

If you run a garage, then your protective flooring needs to be able to put up with grease, tires, the weight of cars, and even dropped tools that may totally decimate other floors, thus you need very strong protective flooring. On the other hand, let’s say that you own a restaurant; you need protective flooring so that your kitchen is as immaculate as you can make it. There need be absolutely no pin holes in your flooring at all so that microbes and other nasties cannot enter your subflooring and grow into worse nasties.

Let’s say that you are a pet shop, imagine how the protective flooring there needs to be totally sealed, so that nothing, not feces, not urine from those pets can possibly penetrate it, or else you establishment would begin to smell very badly. You need to have flooring that is extremely easy to clean too of course.

You would even need protective flooring if you ran a pizza shop that only does take out, for instance. Now you not only have food handling, but those terribly hot ovens running close to 24 hours a day! Yet, your freezer needs protective flooring too!

Is there some kind of flooring that fits all these descriptions? Why, yes there is! Silikal is the answer to all of them. You see Silikal provides beautiful attractive floors that totally protect the floor of all those things mentioned above. Silikal floors are totally seamless, hygienic, and best yet for all those business owners, once poured it actually hardens all within an hour! The floors are so beautiful that many businesses like to imbed their logos right into the floor so you know that they are immensely proud of their floors.

The locker rooms mentioned above that needed spike protection will find absolutely nothing better than Silikal floors, and that’s because those floors are so durable that they often appear to just have been laid, when the building they are in is crumbling! They are the perfect moisture membrane no matter what moisture rigors your floors are put under. In addition they are chemical resistant, antibacterial, antistatic, and even slip resistant, very important for all the businesses listed above.

As if all those superlatives about Silikal were not enough, you will find that in addition Silikal flooring is UV resistant, making it perfect for patio floors too! Nothing, but nothing beats a Silikal floor when you need protective flooring!

Whether we are speaking of floors in a factory, in a huge car repair garage, or in a hospital, industrial floors have to last under the toughest of working conditions, thus they all start off with concrete. But, even concrete is subject to dis-figuration, cracking and staining as time wears on. Thus, even those industrial floors need concrete polishing, or epoxy flooring to make the flooring system beautiful once more as well as serviceable.

There are so very many things that can be applied to an industrial floor though. These run from polishing to various coatings such as epoxy and urethane’s, each with their own advantages and negatives with regard to how well they protect the concrete to how long they take to cure or dry.

No matter your industry, it is understood that it is your desire to obviously protect your flooring. In addition, this wise move on your part will greatly improve the aesthetics of your floors, and will save you a tremendous amount of money in the future. You see, if you choose the right product you are in effect protecting the entire surface from costly replacement requirements as well as stopping wear and tear from corrosion and chemicals. In addition you are greatly reducing the costs of floor maintenance and cleaning costs.

Putting down a new gleaming floor means that you will also greatly increase light reflectivity. What this means is less demand for auxiliary lighting, as well as brightening up the work area, maximizing productivity, and improving safety. Likewise workers are better protected and become even more efficient with the proper industrial flooring.

Now, the only question remains as to which product will work best for your industrial floors? Which product will render all the above and last the longest? Of the glut of products that promise to do all the above, only one sticks out above them all, and that is Silikal. There is an avalanche of reasons why Silikal is best as follows:

• Completely seamless. That makes it perfectly hygienic. It can never conceal any bacteria thus there are no odors ever associated with it.

• Extremely easy to clean. There are never cracks nor pinholes related to it, so any liquids dropped can be cleaned up quickly and easily.

• Anti slip. Your employees and the public will be completely safe on Silikal, even if grease or water is on the surface.

• Totally durable. Equipment such as forklifts cannot mar it, and neither do any chemical spills.

• Amazingly swift curing. Unlike most flooring products, once it is properly applied, it requires only one hour to totally cure. You can then even drive a forklift over it!

• It is totally no-VOC flooring. It can even be applied with others in the building, as there are absolutely no odors from it at all!

• Its appearance will remain the same for years and years.

In addition, there will be no need for polishing, or the expense of volatile cleaners ever. One could laud the product much longer, but instead do yourself the favor of looking into Silikal yourself for your industrial floors; there are just so many good reasons for you to do so.

If you own a restaurant, you may need to resurface the kitchen floors often in order to keep the cooking area as clean as possible. The kitchen area can become very dirty, especially if you do not have the means to keep it in immaculate condition. There are many types of industrial flooring that is great for restaurants but none compare to the durability and longevity of the Silikal concrete resurfacing.

Once food hit’s the floor, the bacteria immediately starts to grow, especially if it is not discovered and picked up immediately. You should also consider safety as a factor in flooring. You can completely place a new flooring down or you can resurface the flooring with Silikal concrete resurfacing which would be perfect for any restaurant or food flooring.

The overall décor of the floor should not be the priority in the industrial kitchen. It should be saved for the dining area. Instead, make sure that the kitchen flooring is safe and germ free. You want the kitchen to be slip resistant and you can get that with the Silikal concrete resurfacing. Spills happen all the time, grease constantly pops out of the pan and on to the floor. Water gets sloshed out of the pans, and food gets accidentally spilled off of the plates but nothing is worse than to have a worker falling on the flooring. This can cause extreme injury not to mention a loss of time in the kitchen. You want to protect your workers from a bad fall with a Silikal flooring system.

Easy maintenance is also important in Silikal concrete resurfacing. You can find several different ways to keep floors safe but you need to be able to maintain them too. If a floor is too hard to keep managed all the time, you will find that it becomes a real hazard. When the kitchen is closed you don’t want the cleaning to take a long time.

There are many reasons to use Silikal concrete resurfacing on your kitchen flooring. If you want a flooring that will last for years to come, this may be the answer for you.

It is difficult to imagine why someone would wish to cover up old floor tiles with additional tiles, but it can be done. The steps are distressing, dirty, and exceedingly time consuming, but one would have to accomplish the following in this order:

• Clean tiles with trisodium phosphate. (Danger: this is a very dangerous chemical! Be sure that none is inhaled nor spilled on your skin. The number of the National Poison Control Center is 1-800-222-1222.)

• Remove all contaminants that will prevent good adhesion, such as grease or wax.

• Apply a floor leveler or apply a cement underlayment. Underlayment must be carefully troweled on, and must dry at least 24 hours before proceeding.

• Apply thin set and re-tile floor over old tile.

OR

You may wish to go through the aggravating work of removing the old tile by the use of a jackhammer or by hand with a regular hammer or sledge hammer, creating an astonishing dusty mess that will leave dust in its wake for weeks! Be sure to wear a mask against the dust created for your own safety before covering floor tiles.

OR

You might decide to take the easy way out and instead use Silikal for covering floor tiles. Your old tile may have come away from the substrate because the grout joints have deteriorated. This has probably allowed all manner of dirt and bacteria to enter under the tile creating a cleaning nightmare and it may even have produced a very bad odor problem. Even worse, your tiles may have become soaked with various kinds of oils and thus have been rendered extremely slippery. If there was ever any slip resistant tile coating on the tile, it may have long ago disappeared, and now slips and falls are common. No wonder you want to cover them!

When Silikal is applied over the tile it will bond to that tile and never allow penetration of any kinds of liquids because it is impermeable and completely pin-hole free. When mounted with an integral cove base, it provides a seamless, monolithic surface! In addition, Silikal will thus create a slip-resistant coating over your dangerous tile.

Tile is often some of the most beautiful flooring available, therefore many people have utilized transparent Silikal to see the tile underneath, yet totally protect it. That’s using Silikal at its and once properly applied, it’s ready to work upon in only one hour!

When seeking an outdoor floor system, most people talk about desiring one that will deliver not only superior aesthetics, bit also one that had either low to no maintenance, but above all they want the kind of durability that cannot be matched! That’s a tall order to be sure.

Unfortunately some sellers of these outdoor floor systems want to sell you a stone deck or perhaps a terrace with either tile or gauged stone. Well, perhaps that’s an answer, we’ll see, but one worries about what happens with the weather going under it since it is outdoors. Others want you to take on grade pavers with removable panels. Hmm, that’s a thought too, although one is told to consult a structural engineer if on a raised surface. Sounds expensive.

Well, how about modular wood tiles over a weatherproof polypropylene base? Well, that leaves the problem with water intrusion underneath which will allow all manner of things to grow such as mildew, with rotting small animals and insects as well as allowing germs and bacteria to flourish.

Then there is rubber flooring which is totally 100% water resistant. Yes, that’s true but it does not create a completely seamless, monolithic surface! Thus all manner of things can get under it as does the above. I am told though that it will outlast laminate, wood and outdoor carpet though, which is very true, but what about the substrate? How long will that last with rubber covering it? It does have one thing going for it, it is UV Resistant, and that’s important.

Now we come to the absolute best outdoor floor system, Silikal. It is totally waterproof as well as UV resistant, and it’s designed to last next to forever, usually the lifetime of your floor system. It can take all manner of weather, such as rain, extreme sun, or snow and all the other stuff in the middle. Durability is its middle name, thus you will never have repairs, and what’s more it will not need replacement.

Its colors will never fade offering you tremendous beauty besides reliability. It is incredibly easy to put down, and cleaning it is a total breeze. You can have a myriad of traffic over it, and it is still going to be as beautiful as the day it was installed.

There have been tremendous advances in the last 40 years with regard to decorative concrete coating. Today we have exceptionally sturdy yet stunning surfacing systems that have been created to reproduce the natural look of granite, stone, and slate all giving previously inconceivable realism to the older medium of concrete. That means that this kind of decorative concrete can offer a totally limitless selection or colors as well as patterns that can now not only endure exceedingly high traffic yet will require very little maintenance. In addition, these coatings have durability that often exceeds the lifetime of the original concrete.

Some of these systems are called overlay, since what they do is cover up old, ugly and drab concrete surfaces. No longer do existing concrete surfaces call for the expense, nor the hassle of concrete replacement. These overlay systems are actually more durable and stronger than the concrete it hides.

The coatings can be utilized for pool decks, entryways, courtyards, walkways, patios, sidewalks, and driveways or wherever a striking and exhilarating vastly durable surface is needed. Science has brought us systems that color concrete in an amazing manner.

This is what allows these products to chemically react with the concrete to endow it with a unique but permanent coloring that will create the subtle marbled effects that will give it the matured facade of natural stone for example. Or if you seek colors in a decorative concrete coating, there are literally hundreds of colors at your disposal. If you wish blended colors, that is very easy to create as well.

Concrete is no longer concrete, or at least what we remember concrete to be. Now it is possible to have bold and exhilarating concrete that fairly bursts with color, no matter where it may be such as outdoor theaters, plazas and even theme parks. Imagine it placed where the surroundings are lush such as a golf course for example. Envision how it enhances any beautiful landscape. There are some cities, who have as an illustration, placed their city emblem on their concrete entryway. As said, concrete is no longer concrete, as you can now transform plain concrete into an effective artistic medium that can enhance any décor or theme.

If you find this exciting, and it stirs your imagination, you cannot do better than to look at what Silikal can offer you in the way of a decorative concrete coating. Landscape designers use Silikal all the time, since it is not only beautiful, but it is a non-slip coating as well, thus it is utilized for commercial use all the time. They believe that babbling brooks can be made with Silikal because that water will never enter Silikal covered concrete thus it will never wear away even if it does look like water-worn river rock! Not sure what can be created using Silikal? Then ask any hotel designer or architect, chances are that they have created something stunning and awe inspiring with Silikal.

Does your concrete have a crack, hunting for a strong sealer that can protect?

When concrete is poured, little thought is given to what will happen when it thoroughly hardens and unfortunately begins to develop minute cracks. Even more unfortunate is that those minute cracks often will turn into worse cracks as time marches on as well as people, handtrucks and even forklifts march on it too!

When concrete begins to crack, what’s needed is something that is stronger than concrete to completely seal it, permanently stopping any water from going into the cracks and exacerbating the problem. Imagine what a headache cracks are in any concrete floors, creating havoc in factory floors, and other commercial flooring, not to mention large garage floors?

Now you understand why Silikal concrete crack sealer was invented, but you do not yet understand its utter strength to thoroughly seal that concrete floor so that no more crack problems will develop.

You see, cracked floors are not only unpleasant to look at, but they can also create a workplace hazard. Cracked concrete floors make for a particularly unsafe workplace. Those cracked concrete floors often end up costing the business dearly in the long run.

However, by using Silikal’s concrete crack sealer, the customary Silikal Floor is intended to have just the precise degree of flexibility in order to contain the negligible stresses that would cause more rigid structures and systems to crack, split and eventually to crumble entirely. There are so many different types of cement coatings, and even specific concrete crack sealer that will have similar chemical compositions as Silikal does, yet there is only one that utilizes enhanced MMA, short for Methyl Methacrylate, and that’s Silikal.

With Silikal concrete crack sealer, it will not be made of rubber as that swiftly wears down thus leaving the cement totally unprotected for more cracks to develop. Also “unprotected” translates to the fact that the cement will be open to bacteria and mold, which is disgusting enough, but it also attracts bugs, rodents and other pests, that no business needs. Only Silikal’s concrete crack sealer will offer you total protection.

Granted bare concrete has its own problems. First of all it’s barren, ugly and depressing, and that’s a given of course, but more importantly it’s dusty. Each time someone walks over the bare concrete dust rises, not to mention what happens when the people use handtrucks over it, and it stands to reason that forklifts raise even additional dust. This is the reason why Silikal is such a welcome addition to the dust shedding concrete problems, as it thoroughly and permanently seals the concrete so that no more dust ever rises from it again. Silikal has gone one step further now, with its color mixing tool.

There is no law that states that business concrete flooring has to be so dull and boring the way that bare concrete is, thus this is why this color mixing tool was designed. You see, it has 4 different color flakes in it that can even make the concrete floor as beautiful and attractive as say, terrazzo floors have.

If your commercial floors need to match a certain color scheme, you will have this opportunity as well as this color mixing tool can be provided in up to 8 different color mixes. This ensures that even your floors can reflect the color schemes that are throughout your entire business. Long ago psychologists proved that color affects human emotions. Color enlivens, soothes, energizes us and even inspires us. Let’s face it color affects us every day of our lives, affecting not only mood but also our thoughts.

So now, you can see the extreme wisdom of using Silikal for your bare concrete floors. The fact that they offer this new color mixing tool for the Silikal flooring is yet just one more reason why so many people are thrilled with this amazing company and are delighted with this new tool.

Commercial kitchens will need very special types of kitchen flooring of course. Consider the fact that it will be a high traffic area, thus very prone to spills, dirt and dust not to mention that you will want it at least moisture resistant. The reason is of course to prevent various kinds of accidents as well as falls.

Besides all this, you will want to have a kitchen floor that is completely sealed so that no moisture can leak inside of it creating a harbor for both mold and all manner of awful microbes and such. Now tile is lovely but imagine how it would crack under what is actually normal commercial kitchen use? Grout unfortunately is not hermetically sealed either.

Wooden floors used the be the mainstay of commercial kitchens, until it was found to harbor so many bacteria that it had to be replaced. You see, the moisture content of any timber used to construct a wooden floor is fundamentally dependant on the variable temperature as well as the humidity of the contiguous air and the moisture content of whichever materials are in contact with that wood. Thus, wooden types of kitchen flooring are not suggested.

Actually the very best types of kitchen flooring is Silikal for it is the ultimate option for commercial kitchen flooring because it is offered in diverse anti-skid grades, a very alluring range of colors and in addition it is perfect because it is exceptionally effortless to maintain. Any commercial kitchen such as those in restaurants or hotels needs to have long-lasting kitchen flooring that is not only sturdy but also highly resistant to wear. With Silikal flooring, those who work in the various kitchens of catering establishments, restaurants, or hotels are afforded with a hygienic flooring, relaxed and highly dependable working environment in order to prepare their delectable meals.

To Silikal, a self leveling floor is an easy matter to put down, as all those technical people of theirs who do this know their business extremely well. However, for others in the business, not so much. See most companies will wash down the floor, dry it some, and then put on dissolved sulfamic acid, which they put down with a spray bottle, and that’s when they really start to work with a hard brittle scrub brush. The goal of all this is to make available an adequate texture to ensure bond of their product. Once that’s done, then they have to thoroughly hose that off with a high pressure hose. At that time, it’s the right moment to put on a salt removing liquid in order to stop the possible corrosion of the cement. At last the concrete should be tested. Once the floor is thoroughly dried, that’s when they put on the self leveling floor, rolling it out with a special spreader. Once solidification has taken place the concrete may be stained, and finally once it is completely dried and set, that’s when they put on a protective sealant.

Seems like a heck of a lot of time, effort, and worse yet time down for any business that is receiving that self leveling floor, don’t you think? That’s where the Silikal’s self leveling floors are utterly different. You see the Silikal self leveling floors can be put down and work of any type can resume in one hour! That’s it!

Having self leveling flooring is exceedingly important in instances say where you have a commercial swimming pool. If currently the cement surrounding the pool has not been properly graded and dirty water that has been splashed out of the pool is going back into the pool, that calls for a self leveling floor. And in the case of the swimming pool, Silikal is a methodically and vigilantly tested colored concrete sealer, which will even bring you an anti slip flooring!

There are some reasons or locations why you would want a flame resistant coating, and certainly one such location might be a pyrotechnics manufacturer, and another great example may be on boats. Silikal can satisfy both of those, as “we meet IMO floor covering requirements which means they are fireproof and safe for boats” Of course, in that particular instance, IMO refers to the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency specializing in maritime safety.

A newly formulated flame resistant coating as supplied by Silikal can result in reduced insurance costs as well as an added marketing benefit for a particular end product such as a boat. Not only are these Silikal flame resistant coatings, but also the coatings are aesthetically beautiful as they can be when color can be matched to any color, or color combination.

With the manufacture of these flame resistant coatings, using an intumescent formula created against flame and fire, Silikal has met a special demand from the maritime industry that we are extremely proud of! Synthetic materials are being used more and more and are even now being utilized in light marine industries. The new wave materials are outstanding concerning their special light weight and their particular strength, but a top priority is that these products are highly combustible and will not by themselves meet required fire ratings. The flame resistant coatings especially formulated by Silikal have answered this key concern for many.

Imagine too the use of flame resistant coatings on hospitals, restaurants and in fact on any public buildings. Just think how many lives can be saved with the use of a special flame resistant coating on such properties? Silikal has thought of it, and that’s why they manufacture a flame resistant coating which has been especially formulated in order to provide flame resistant finishes that are durable, and beautiful but more importantly tough.

For your health…

There are all kinds of different floor sealers and there is a healthy concrete floor sealer. So, you are wondering what the difference is, right? Business owners, contractors, engineers as well as architects all want to be “green” today and thus are searching for a more healthy concrete floor sealer.

First, let’s look at non-healthy sealers. These are the ones that contain what is known as VOCs, which are volatile organic compounds. Volatile organic compounds are non-healthy because they are not safe to inhale for the chemically sensitive, nor for children and pets. It’s pretty easy to spot them as they are being applied, for they emit a foul smell, usually say that the product must be used in a well ventilated area, and truly often they are a biological or chemical pollutant because they actually emit gas.

Exposure to VOCs can cause one or more of the following possible symptoms:

• Dizziness
• Fatigue
• Epistaxis
• Emesis,
• Nausea
• Declines of Cholinesterase levels
• Dyspnea
• Allergic skin reactions
• Headache
• Throat and nose discomfort
• Conjunctival irritation

A healthy concrete floor sealer on the other hand contains absolutely no VOCs, not just one that is low in VOCs. One such healthy concrete floor sealer is Silikal. Silikal believes that having environmentally sustainable building practices is of supreme importance. Thus, their healthy concrete floor sealers are LEED floors. That means that it has been highly rated in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design because it contains absolutely no VOCs!

It never ceases to amaze me how we in the United States mean one thing when we speak or write, yet in the United Kingdom it means something different and of course vice versa. A wet room in the U.S. is where the youngsters come in from playing in the snow and leave all their soggy snow and ice covered clothing to drip, however in the UK it refers to a special room that has been converted to a walk in shower, or perhaps a roll-in shower for the handicapped in wheelchairs.

Either way, whether used for commercial storage of wet clothing perhaps in a boarding school for instance, or a huge commercial shower room, wet room flooring needs to be completely seamless. In such a wet room, you need a floor that will be totally hygienic and thus Silikal fits that bill exactly.

You see a Silikal floor will not allow mildew or bacteria the ability to begin to form upon wet room flooring. Its smooth surface is completely free from pinholes and any other means that will allow the flooring to collect matter.

In addition, wet room flooring has to be easy to keep clean. Silikal flooring can withstand all manner of nasty chemicals used to clean such floors. Even more importantly, flooring in any kind of wet room must be free of dirt and bacteria, but Silikal offers the opportunity to take care of all cleaning and odor problems because it is totally seamless.

Finally, Silikal is the best wet room flooring available because it is also slip resistant, a very important consideration wherever a floor is wet! In this respect, any Silikal wet room flooring is beautiful, simple to clean and slip resistant to boot whether used to hang up drippy clothing and boots, or for a shower room!

There are so many different kinds of alternative flooring that can be used for different types of businesses. For instance some look at cork, leather or bamboo, but that presents many problems of course. Terrazzo is beautiful but if something heavy is dropped, it can shatter. Alternative flooring can also mean concrete, but even concrete needs to have some kind of overlay on it.

You can look at having concrete acid stained, but woe to you if you need something that is imperiously sealed, or concrete that will suffer through the use of heavy machinery. What if you need alternative flooring that is abrasion resistant due to the passage of goods on trucks, or pallets, or perhaps you need some kind of non-slip flooring?

For commercial usage, nothing but nothing can beat Silikal. It will set up in a scant hour, and unlike tile systems, will never have breakdowns of the product that allows dirt, watery products, mold and bacteria to grow underneath it. In addition an odor problem develops too under tile.

Alternative flooring may mean designed urethane concrete to you, but if you look at Silikal you will find that it is far superior. Urethane concrete will allow infinitesimal holes to appear, and again you have breakdowns of the system. Silikal bonds so much deeper, and that’s why you will find that it is a much superior product. Urethane concrete, epoxy and many other polyurethanes may actually require you to be down from 24 hours to even 3 days but Silikal is going to return you to service within one hour!

Almost all cement floors require some sort of coating to protect the substrate, especially if they are used in commercial locations. Commercial locations may need to utilize machinery that may damage the cement, or may have so much traffic over them that coatings over cement are highly indicated.

Regardless what coatings over cement you wish to use, by coating the cement you will be adding value to the site by creating a brighter, much more attractive, highly efficient and very well protected flooring so that you will appreciably maximize its cost efficiency. However, the coating that you choose will make a huge difference in how long it takes to set or cure, whether it is VOC compliant, how long it lasts, and of course what it will ultimately look like.

Some like the look and low cost of PVC or rubber flooring, however they cannot have looked over the look of Silikal coatings over cement! Silikal Reactive Resin flooring can be put down to harden or cure in less than one hour to give you a truly fine-looking floor. In addition it is totally non-porous flooring, so that no penetration of bacteria will occur, as it is completely pinhole free!

Frequently other coatings over cement provide a good-looking floor, but then it is incredibly slippery, and falls frequently occur on it. Silikal on the other hand brings you a safe slip resistant surface, a true monolithic flooring surface. Silikal also offers a floor that can withstand mechanical abrasion forklifts and even various chemical attacks. It can do this in ways that other coatings simply wish they could.

If you have a dental office, the first thing you will want is for it to appear as clean as possible, but not only do you wish for it to appear clean, it has to be impervious to a number of wet problems as well. Many dental offices use beautiful vinyl sheet flooring, however that type of flooring can create terrible problems because the seams will allow watery products, dirt, mold and bacteria to grow within it. Natural wood flooring has the same problems in that it is definitely not seamless, whereas any dental office flooring has to be resistant to microbial growth.

Dental office flooring also has to be quite resistant to stool casters, be impervious to any spills, and cleanup is of course exceedingly important. In addition a dental office needs to reflect the professional aspect that is necessary. Aesthetically, there is a necessity for the environment to be both calm and relaxing.

Considering the fact that today dental treatment involves a heavy volume of aerosols and many assorted means of spatters that are produced during dental treatment, it is exceedingly important that dental office flooring absolutely must be slip resistant. One of the very best dental office flooring available is Silikal. This is due to a number of important reasons.

Silikal actually offers special healthcare non-slip flooring that is coated with colored flakes to create a thoroughly relaxing ambiance. In addition, Silikal is resistant to the plethora of solutions that will be used in a dental office such as tinctures, acids, grease, salts and alkalis.

When you utilize Silikal you will find that it is not only a concrete sealer but also a double flooring system with a topcoat that truly offers you twice the protection, because Silikal offers you twice the protection, regardless of what is dropped upon it, it will not penetrate the substrate below to cause problems beneath.

Businesses that involve commercial kitchens, healthcare, restaurants and supermarkets love Silikal because they absolutely must maintain extremely rigid standards of cleanliness as Silikal with its non-porous characteristics, clean-ability and durability offers no worries regarding strange odors, nor grime and worse yet bacterial growths while tough and long lasting for a potential lifetime!

A Silikal flooring system is also perfect with its double protection because it can take the rigors of an airplane hanger, an industrial garage, outdoor parking decks, and sports arenas to name yet a few places where the flooring system must be waterproof, skid proof, and of course as durable as possible. Silikal’s double flooring system can be utilized by veterinary or dog kennel flooring, as well as commercial food flooring.

Double the protection and for use in unlimited locations nothing but nothing is equal, much less better, than a flooring system made by Silikal.

VCT flooring is probably not your best bet for a quality floor for your business. There are a myriad of reasons why this is so, but here are a few of them:

First you should know what VCT flooring is. VCT stands for vinyl composite tile. You should be aware that your floor will need preparation prior to installation of VCT, as it is not a seamless product. Since it is not seamless, it will unfortunately allow all manner of bacteria to grow underneath it, causing dangerous growths, odors and eventually require costly removal of the product. You will also need to regularly strip and wax your flooring.

Because it is made of separate pieces of tile, often VCT flooring has been known to buckle. This in turn creates unsightly bulges in the tile, as well as presenting a trip hazard besides allowing bacteria to grow under it. VCT flooring is also very slippery when wet creating a hazard for your business.

You also need to be aware that many of the products utilized to glue down vinyl composite tile produce noxious fumes that may be dangerous to those laying down the product as well as anyone in the building. These fumes are called Volatile Organic Compounds usually referred to as VOCs when speaking of flooring fumes.

If instead of VCT flooring, you should examine Silikal, you will be happy to find that it is totally seamless, thus the introduction of anything being allowed to seep under it has been rendered impossible. Therefore a Silikal floor will never buckle due to growths beneath it. Best yet, Silikal is a totally VOC free product. Actually it is certified to be a non-VOC product!

Being seamless allows for the easiest cleaning possible, and you will never have to strip nor wax this floor. It stays beautiful as the day it was laid for you.

When you are searching for an ECO friendly concrete sealer, what you are really looking for is one that has no Volatile Organic Compounds which are known as VOCs in the concrete sealer business. You see, when they are applied to flooring, VOCs generate a breathable gas which is measured as being highly hazardous for humans as well as animals. You should thus know that Silikal eco friendly concrete sealer is a totally non-VOC product. It is thoroughly tested and approved to be an ecologically friendly product. As a matter of fact it is certified to be a no VOC product!

With Silikal you will receive a eco friendly flooring that seals your concrete floor perfectly but is also going to bring you superior utility, exquisite looks and is also as “green” as can be for the environment! In addition your Silikal flooring will be totally non-slip and because it applies and completely seals in less than an hour. Silikal flooring is not like any other brand of industrial floor coatings, because only Silikal utilizes a specially patented enhanced MMA that is astonishing in its very composition.

Silikal is an ECO friendly concrete sealer that is a cured system which is USDA and FDA approvable. Also, because Silikal is completely seamless, you will find that it is extremely easy to maintain, totally non-slip, and incredibly durable no matter what kind of “torture” your floors will be subjected to. You will find that only Silikal offers this kind of outstanding chemical element, mechanical as well as thermal resistance

Our pets mean so much to us! So naturally we want the best for them even when it comes to kennel flooring. So what is the best flooring for a dog kennel? Obviously we wish for them to be as comfortable as possible even when kenneled. This means that we want them on a non-slip floor that will be kept clean and dry and not harbor any disease causing microbes underneath that flooring that may have absorbed urine, blood, feces and other harmful bacteria. That also means that we want a flooring that will stand up to animal claws and the strong disinfectants used to keep kennel floors clean. So the question still stands, what is the best flooring for a dog kennel?

The answer to this question is Silikal flooring for your kennel. You see, other products that are not the strong Silikal are unfortunately rather inferior. They actually will allow penetration of dirt, water and worse yet bacteria because they are porous. Imagine what a cleaning nightmare that becomes when it is a kennel floor?

Further, even when wet Silikal kennel flooring will also prevent slips and falls for both the humans as well as your animals. This means that your kennels will be as safe as can be! Whether you use your kennels to house your pets, work animals or use them to allow your animals to be inspected by the public, you will also love the fact that Silikal flooring can also be beautiful kennel flooring that presents a very professional atmosphere for your kennels. This is very important for commercial kennels who wish to put forward the best looking environment for the owners of their canine “guests.” So you no longer have to wonder what is the best flooring for a dog kennel, or any kennel for that matter as Silikal is what you are looking for.

If you are seeking commercial liquid floor refinishing, it’s no wonder that you are confused. Everyone is trying to sell you one thing or another, but you may have special requirements for your liquid floor refinishing, and therefore do not know which is going to be best for your floor.

After all you will run into liquid floor coatings, polyurethane (PU) floor coatings, resin based liquid floor refinishing, polymer modified cementitious floor coatings, and seamless coatings among others, all of which will give you varying failure analysis concrete moisture and alkalinity testing results, which will confuse you even more!

So yes, what you probably need is a seamless flooring system, and one that will not wear out on you, as well as being corrosion free and also is a reactive resinous floor system. Thus, you are looking for liquid floor refinishing that contains Methyl Methacrylate or, as it is known in the flooring industry MMA.

However, if you do your research on various MMA seamless flooring systems, you will find that not all MMA systems are alike. You see only Silikal liquid floor refinishing actually uses an enhanced MMA. Whereas MMA liquid floor refinishing will give you a complete seal, it will not be wear free, and will probably have to be refinished again and again. Silikal liquid floor refinishing will give you all that you seek, as well as not need to be refinished again. What’s more is that Silikal liquid floor refinishing will set up permanently in just one hour, thus it requires no more down time than that for your business!

It stands to reason that flooring for wet areas is going to be different than for dry areas. For instance if you have hydrotherapy areas, changing rooms, an indoor pool, or walk in showers, you will definitely need special flooring for wet areas so that those who are barefoot do not slip and fall. But there are other areas too that call for specific treatment for those areas that are constantly wet.

Commercial laundries, for instance will constantly have wet floors, as will commercial kitchens. You will definitely need flooring for wet areas around public saunas, for example. Other illustrations include chicken processing plants, dairies, commercial aquariums, abattoirs, and of course food-processing plants or even bakeries.

Thus when you need flooring for wet areas such as those mentioned it behooves the modern commercial consumer to use a product like Silikal, which has been especially created for flooring for wet areas, thus preventing spills and other calamities that might happen because the floor is wet. Silikal creates a non porous as well as non-slip flooring because it is a reactive resin component.

Thus not only is it perfect for flooring for wet areas, but it is also impervious to chemical spills, a very important consideration in a chemistry laboratory. As a food grade flooring, Silikal also will not allow any water, dirt, or bacteria to introduce itself in your flooring, due to its non-porous nature.

Many of our commercial users state that it is the perfect flooring for use in wet areas, but they are especially thrilled with the results around their drain areas, that used to present problems around those constantly wet areas. You definitely can expect more from you flooring for wet areas if you use Silikal.

There are many different kinds of sealers and floor systems that act as a top coat cement. For instance there are various kinds of waxes, urethanes, and epoxies. There are also various categories of acrylics certainly, but what Silikal uses as a top coat cement is enhanced MMA.

There are of course, problems with other kinds of top coat cement. Take for instance waxes. Waxes will obviously coat cement, and you can use food grade waxes if that’s important to you. The problem is that once applied, it will need to be buffed, usually machine buffed, thus you will have down time and the cost of that person to buff the waxed top coat cement. Finally, the process will have to be repeated approximately once a month to maintain the proper shine on the cement.

Urethanes used as a top coat cement must be applied in temperatures between 50° F and 85° F, and priming is obligatory in order to prevent blistering as well as outgassing. Full chemical resistance will be available only 7 days after application, full service within 48 hours after application, light wheel traffic within 24 hours after application, and foot traffic within 8 hours after application.

Epoxies used as a top coat cement also present their own problems, especially in preparation which must be impeccable in addition to a possibility of surface salts or ions in the concrete itself, water flow before, during or after application, vapor pressure problems, or if applied to either very old or very new concrete. Creating the perfect mix ration is sometimes next to impossible, also resulting in problems in the future with epoxies.

When Silikal is used as a top coat cement however, it is dry to any use, traffic, full chemical resistance, or water resistance within one hour of application. There is no blistering, or outgassing, and it need not be repeated, nor will there be leaching of any surface salts or ions in the concrete itself, besides being totally slip proof.






Smooth resin flooring is called for in a plethora of situations, from beverage producers, wineries, dairies, slaughterhouses, fishmongers, food processing plants, bakeries, workshops, pharmaceutical labs, automobile assembly lines, heavy industries, to supermarkets. Doctors want it in operating rooms, and dentists want it in their dental practice.

The reason is actually plain and simple, a smooth resin flooring such as Silikal which goes down and cures in only 2 hours will mean much less down time to put down a smooth resin floor that will resist aggressive materials such as salt, oils, greases and even lyes as well as become a non-skid and non-slip surface that will resist weathering and ageing, yet will actually resist frost as well as very high heat!

If you can imagine a floor that is perfect for a tractor repair shop as well as a floor in a bakery for making cookies, you have an idea of just how versatile a smooth resin flooring can be when it’s made from Silikal. Sanitary areas such as those as a cookie factory, require flooring that will stop contaminants and liquids from penetrating into the substrate which are the source of harmful growths of bacteria and fungi call for Silikal flooring.

On the other hand imagine how straight and free from any lumps a television or movie studio must be, and you’ll realize another instance where Silikal is considered to be in top demand. Heavy cameras and large sets can often damage those floors quite rapidly, but with Silikal they last and last as smooth resin flooring.





Imagine if you will the amount of heat generated by a commercial bakery? Let’s face it they will need a totally heat resistant flooring. Now imagine foundries, and other places where incredible heat is not only a daily occurrence but often it is worked 24 hours a day, nonstop?

Consider metal production companies, mills and forges? They too will need heat resistant flooring that will never spall even when splashed with dross, slag or even molten metals. Those floors need to resist hot coils, slabs, pigs, sows, ladles, shapes and any and all other forms of hot metals!

Now you understand when I say that there is heat resistant flooring and there is Silikal! Only with Silikal can you rest easy about your flooring even if it must undergo the kind of heat and torture we’re looking at with foundries!

Hot metal spills occur frequently when the floor is not level or contains an uneven surface, thus it behooves you to seek the best heat resistant flooring possible, and that is definitely Silikal. After all, Silikal is totally designed for areas that have extreme thermal cycling as well as sporadic exposure to slag splash or even other liquid metals.

You can experience much safer work surfaces within 2 hours of having your floors finished with Silikal, as they are fully cured and ready to work upon and not 24 hours as with other similar products. That means a lot less down time to your company as well as to your workers!





If you have an industrial concrete patio and need to get industrial concrete patio crack repair, you may be tempted to just fix it with the existing concrete patio material and hope for the best. Hope for the best, because chances are very good that if it is cracking now, it will crack in the future.

The reason is that outdoor patios must take a lot of punishment from the heat and cold that happens as we go through the seasons, but also the carbon dioxide that is in our air, and various chlorides and sulphates that are used throughout the world will wear at it. In winter time there are chemical attacks happening from various de-icing salts, not to mention acid rain!

Industrial concrete patio crack repair can be accomplished by simply covering up hairline cracks and worse with a flexible cementitious membrane that is a corrosion inhibitor, however when you look at what an industrial concrete patio crack repair accomplishes when using Silikal you will be astonished at the difference this reactive resin floor technology will bring to your patio.

It is a completely naturally textured thoroughly sealed stonescape, using a natural outdoor surfacer, as opposed to various membranes that can chip, spall or flake away from your patio surface again necessitating expensive repairs. After all spalling creates unsightly concrete as well as presenting a chance for someone to trip and fall. This is why Silikal is considered the absolute best industrial concrete patio crack repair available. Be sure and look into it before you agree to have ordinary repairs done to problem concrete patios.




When you are referring to food grade non-perforated flooring, you are speaking about floors that must withstand some of the worst punishment a floor can take, with the direct beating from pallets, hoppers, tanks, totes, tow motors that are either dropped, dumped, pulled, pushed or even dragged onto that floor. In addition there is probably constant water usage with steam cleaning, thermal cycling, thermal shock, and regular use of hot or cold water, and we’ve not even spoken about various sanitizers, cleaners, oils, acids, sugars, salts, chemicals and staining foods! Now when we look at food grade non-perforated flooring, we now know what it must withstand!

With Silikal food grade non-perforated flooring, you may rest assured that your floors will remain undamaged even if subject to all the above and even more. When dealing with food, many think of tile flooring, but tile as well as its grout will invite a plethora of fungus, staph, microbes and bacteria to grow, as if it’s found a good home. The totally seamless properties of Silikal render these thoughts completely useless, thus you will pass your inspections quickly and very efficiently as soon as the inspectors see your Silikal flooring as well as its response to such punishment.

With Silikal food grade non-perforated flooring you may rest assured that there are no holes, dusting, nor any fissures that can form on your floor, thus totally avoiding colonization of bacteria and microbes. With a monolithic, seamless surface such as Silikal those worries are totally over.

Check back often as weekly posts will be made about everything Silikal and flooring!