Never take a concrete floor for granted — how you protect and maintain it can go a long way in boosting your facility’s productivity and safety; it can even bolster employee morale. A safe, nice looking floor will make coming to work that much more pleasant and can help protect visitors and employees from injury. We’ll look at how installing a quality epoxy concrete floor coating, such as those in Watco’s Epoxicote line, can repay your investment many times over.

Advantages of Epoxy

Epoxy floor coatings offer many advantages when compared to other coatings that are traditionally applied over concrete. One example you may not have thought of: it can even improve visibility in your facility. The reflectivity of a high gloss epoxy floor coating brightens up interior spaces, allowing the facility to be safer and more productive.

A quality epoxy floor coating can handle heavy and continuous traffic, meaning your investment lasts longer and there is more time between recoats, saving on your warehouse maintenance expenses. It’s also easy to install, and while many epoxies are two parts which need to be mixed together just prior to application (and which also presents a limited window to put them on), they can still be rolled on quickly and dry fast to provide a quick return to service.

Epoxy concrete floor coatings are easy to clean and can withstand repeated exposure to harsh chemicals. This makes it great for your warehouse or industrial floor that may be subject to food or chemical waste, lots of shoes and mud, and forklifts or other vehicular traffic. Also the coating is seamless, which means less chance of food and other debris getting lodged underneath it, creating health and safety hazards as well as disrupting continuity of the coating film.

Also, epoxy can be aesthetically pleasing. Many epoxy floor coatings can be tinted to delineate areas where extra safety precautions are needed, or to designate areas for break time or equipment storage. Not to mention it just provides a nicer environment for people who have to walk or ride over it all day every day. The color won’t fade, which means less downtime and less money spent on concrete maintenance and repaint.

Food Service Benefits

Food service areas can especially benefit from epoxy floor coatings. It’s easier to clean up grease and food particles off of a non-porous epoxy at the end of a shift, and this provides the additional bonus that employees can spend more time producing and less time cleaning. The coating can be painted right up to the drains and the walls, which will form a more effective barrier to insects, bacteria, and food particles. A quality epoxy coating can also stand up to daily use of harsh chemicals often put to work in food service areas.

It "Mite" Make a Difference

A common resident is the spider mite or clover mite — a small red bug that comes inside when the weather gets cooler and lays eggs in cracks and crevices in the concrete. While harmless to humans and animals, unchecked, they can multiply quickly, and if they get squashed, they’ll leave a red stain. Putting a layer of epoxy coating on top of concrete can help close up cracks, keeping these (and many other pests) out of the kitchen or warehouse.

Watco Has the Products You Need

Watco’s Epoxicote line has three different products to answer the call of almost any floor’s concrete and warehouse maintenance needs, and is available in a variety of colors.

Epoxicote High Build, our popular range of heavy-duty floor paint, delivers an ultra-hard wearing chemical resistant gloss floor coating. It’s resistant to oil, solvents and harsh cleaning chemicals. Its benefits include:

• Gloss finish.
• High-build application gives excellent wear resistance.
• Protects the concrete from oil and chemical contamination.
• Non-tainting and virtually solvent-free.
• Easy to clean surface.

Epoxicote High Build Rapid is Watco’s highest performing roller applied floor coating. It will provide a glossy, hygienic and easy to clean surface which is resistant to very heavy wear and a wide range of chemicals. It has been formulated with a ceramic additive which offers excellent abrasion resistance and improved stain protection. Benefits include:

• Ideal for showrooms, warehouses and any heavily trafficked areas where chemicals may be spilled.
• Longer lasting coating in heavy duty areas.
• Improved stain protection and scrub resistance.
• High gloss finish.
• Excellent chemical resistance.
• Low solvent content, virtually odorless.
• 100% solids epoxy resin formula.

Epoxicote High Build Cold Cure has the same properties as Watco Epoxicote High Build, but has been developed to cure at lower temperatures. It is ideal for use between 32°F and 50°F.

Contact Watco today for answers to all your questions on concrete floor maintenance. Watco has the products you need to maximize your investment in floor coatings.