Resin Flooring Solutions Support Healthcare Sector

Healthcare facilities can pose significant challenges for facilities managers across Malaysia, when specifying a floor covering material that strikes the correct balance between hygiene performance and design.

Hygiene and cleanliness are critical to the safe operation of a healthcare building. The floor is the surface where bacteria gather. If floors are not correctly specified or properly cleaned, the spread of disease and onset risk of contamination amongst patients can have devastating consequences.

As a result, seamless resin materials are increasingly being used in these settings to provide an eye-catching and clean surface, which is strong enough to bear superimposed loads. 

Not only hardwearing and durable, resin materials are easily cleaned and maintained. The material delivers a non-porous, watertight, impervious finish that does not support microbial growth or allow moisture to accumulate in joints and crevices.

Resin material can be laid to coves to provide a hygienic transition between the floor and wall - helping to prevent the spread of bacteria and infection.  Resin can also be graded to meet varying slip-resistance requirements - ensuring a safe environment for staff and patients alike by reducing the risk of slips and aggravated trips.

Based in Kuala Lumpur, Flowcrete Asia - part of Flowcrete Group Ltd - is a leading manufacturer of resin based floor and wall coatings, including seamless epoxy terrazzo, fast-cure MMA and hardwearing polyurethane finishes, as well as cementitious sub-floor screeds.

The Group, which has manufacturing facilities across the globe, has been providing state-of-the-art resin surfaces to the healthcare industry for more than 30 years.

Just this year, Flowcrete was fortunate to have played its part in the construction of a medical research facility at the Kwazulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV, located at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa.

The unique tower building is spread across eight storeys and represents a total footprint of 4,000 square metres.1000 square metres of Flowcrete's self-smoothing epoxy flooring system was selected for refurbishment works across levels six and seven of the facility.

Flowshield SL is non-tainting and non-dusting, delivering an attractive easily cleaned surface that is ideal for use in laboratories and other sterile environments.

The material was supplied in three custom colorways - beige, red and orange - all of which were hand-picked by the architect and color matched by Flowcrete.

Work at the site also included the installation of Flowcrete's water-based epoxy wall coating system, Flowseal EPW, in the same custom beige color across both floors to deliver a seamless, chemical resistant and hygienic finish.

Across in the US, a more durable solution was chosen to address an existing flooring problem at the Park Ten Surgical Center, located in Houston. A moisture problem, originated in part by the vinyl tile (VCT) installed throughout the facility, had caused bubbling and delaminating floor issues that needed to be corrected immediately.

Flowfresh SLB, a seamless, self-levelling and chemical resistant polyurethane concrete system, was installed across 7,000 square feet of the facility's hallways and surgery rooms, in a decorative flake finish.

Tony Crowell, Managing Director of Flowcrete North America Inc, said: "Like any of Flowcrete's Flowfresh products, Flowfresh SLB contains Polygiene®, an innovative antimicrobial additive that reduces the generation of bacterial population on the surface of the floor by up to 99 per cent.

"One of the Flowfresh advantages is that Polygiene® remains active 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, during the complete lifetime of the floor, for maximum hygiene performance.

"In addition, Flowfresh SLB offers excellent resistance to moisture vapor transmission, eliminating the passage of water vapor to the surface, which ultimately avoids delaminating of the floor system."

The system was coated and sealed using Peran STC and Flowseal UV. These low odor products deliver a durable and robust finish to the floor system, which provides chemical and abrasion resistance and a UV stable formulation to retain the color integrity of the floor finish.

Finally, a flooring installation in Sydney demonstrated Flowcrete's ability to deliver style and substance underfoot at the city's landmark Concord Repatriation General Hospital. More than 200 square metres of Flowcrete's seamless and sparkling resin flooring system, Kristalina, were installed at the facility's newly constructed Medical Education building.

After failing to achieve a satisfactory polished concrete floor finish across the centre's corridors and within student break-out areas, the client was open to finding a slip-resistant, decorative and hygienic flooring system that would achieve a uniform finish and represent the standards and quality of the hospital itself.

Kristalina is a highly decorative surface material containing a creative blend of pigmented and glitter flakes, which are scattered and sealed over a coloured epoxy resin base coat. The system delivers a hard-wearing, high-gloss finish and offers excellent UV resistance.

For the Concord Medical Education Centre, the Kristalina system was formulated in a special blend of coloured aggregates to deliver an attractive multi-toned grey finish. Following on from the installation of the Kristalina system, the entire surface was coated with a water-based polyurethane sealer in a satin finish.

As well as delivering a highly attractive aesthetic finish, the eco-friendly resin floor finish also hit the right notes in terms of the client's environmental requirements. Not only is the Kristalina material solvent-free and low in VOC emissions, but also delivers a wealth of lifecycle cost and efficiency savings.

As these projects all show - with healthcare and other medical facilities having to factor in a wide-range of flooring requirements including heavy foot and wheeled traffic, exposure to harmful chemicals, pathogens and bacteria as well as cost and color - resin flooring is emerging as a new trend within these settings for its ability to remedy all ailments.

Flowcrete offers systems that deliver exceptional benefits to the health care sector,  providing flooring solutions for the 21^st century - that have been trusted for decades worldwide.