the americasA Publication for the Foodservice & Hospitality Industry

Vol. 2, Issue 1 • 1st Quarter 2011

To LEED Or Not To LEED?

Mining & Dining Commercial Kitchen Floors

QUARTERLY

n many foodservice design projects, thekitchen floor falls into the commodity cate-gory and, too often, gets installed in a rush.After all, you can’t install equipment until thefloor’s put in, and there’s a schedule to keep.The irony is that if the floor’s installed poorly,

all that equipment might have to come out in orderto fix it. That really gets expensive.

It’s easy, too, to default to the same flooring materials every time, when new options might begood choices. Quarry tile, sometimes embedded or glazed with traction-enhancing grit, has beenthe proven, lower-cost flooring for commercialkitchens for years, with good reason. It’s attractive,durable, and easy to maintain.

But some alternative floors, including a recycledPVC and poured or liquid-applied floors, are worthconsideration, too.

Some examples of poured floors include epoxy,polyurethane, methyl methacrylate (MMA), or thenewer polyaspartics; the latter rapid-cure in any-where from 5 minutes to 2 hours and can be ap-plied on surface temperatures from -30°F to 140°F;they don’t yellow, either. With a poured floor, youcan nicely control the amount of slip resistance depending upon the type and amount of quartz(sand) particles mixed in. There are lots of pouredfloor formulations, so it’s imperative you get onecustom suited to the demanding commercialkitchen environment.

We give you the skinny on a few of these choicesshortly, but when it comes to kitchen floors, here’sthe most important point of all: No matter whattype of floor you specify, poor installation will doom it from the get-go.

Common Mistakes“I’ve seen a lot of big mistakes in commercialkitchen floor installation,” says Lew Migliore, headof flooring specialists LGM & Associates, Dalton,Ga. Leading the pack, he says, is trying to cut costs

material world

Floored!

By Beth Lorenzini

I

Presenting best bets for commercial kitchen floors including installation specs and newer flooring finds.

FCSI The Americas Quarterly • 1Q 2011 47

The kitchen at Jester Hall at the University of Texas, Austin, received a new floor of recycled PVC in the kitchen over the holiday break. Recycled PVC is seamless once seams are heat-welded, extremely slip-resistant, has “give,” quiets the kitchen, and is impervious to anything spilled on it, hot or cold.

48 1Q 2011 • FCSI The Americas Quarterly

material world

by not getting the floor installed by professionals.You should always ask the crew laying the floor fortheir Installer Credentials, agrees Dave Stafford,partner in Stafford Properties, LLC, Stafford, Va.,and fellow flooring expert. The safest bet is to require that the installer be certified by the actualfloor manufacturer, which means he had to passthe manufacturer’s testing protocols and installa-tion requirements.

When installing sheet goods, for example, the installer must be experienced in heat welding and flash coving, since these are part of the usual specification.

“Always ask the installer for a list of projects heor she has done that are similar to the size andscope of your project in order to ensure experiencewith the flooring you’ve selected,” advises GeneCinotti, principal with HCH Inc., a Sparta, N.J.-based manufacturer’s rep firm.

Stafford adds that some of the biggest mistakesmade are in substrate preparation prior to floor installation. The floor will fail if the installer fails to test the substrate (concrete) for moisture contentand/or fails to install a vapor barrier if one isneeded between the substrate and the flooring material.

“If it’s a new project with new concrete, you haveto get an expert in to test for moisture content—the floor will never adhere properly if there’s toomuch moisture,” he says. In new construction, ittakes concrete a minimum of 30 days (but better,90 days) to cure, but there’s still moisture. “Afterthat, it’s imperative to use the right product to limitmoisture emissions. All of this should be worded inthe specification,” he adds. The test that gauges the

substrate for moisture vapor emission goes about¼” deep, according to Migliore. Another is the relative humidity test—this one drills down to testmoisture levels about 40 percent into the substrate,he explains.

A Good StartIf the job is a renovation, good substrate prep is even more critical. An old floor takes muchlonger to clean and prepare, and the job should be handled by professionals who know what they’redoing. Most floors require a very clean floor under-neath, free of grease, oils, and animal fats—every-thing you find in plentiful supply in a kitchen.Concrete substrates absorb these contaminants like sponges. Cleaning—multiple times—burningoff oils, using degreasers, and then grinding or scarifying the surface (techniques for this vary andinclude shot-blasting) create a surface prepped toadhere to what ever is bonded to it. Again, thesesteps should be specified.

Poured FloorsThe most difficult floors to install correctly withconsistent, high-quality results are all the pouredfloors, especially MMA,” Stafford says. “If you goofanywhere, you have to sand the floor down and doit again—some clients have ended up with 2 or 3attempts.

With poured floors, there is no substitute for acertified, qualified, and experienced installer, headds. “You want a crew that does this work fivedays a week rather than every now and then. Ittakes highly specialized equipment and training.

Stafford shares a few more tips about poured

Here’s how a pouredfloor, in this case,

methyl methacrylate,rejuvenated a

completely distressedconcrete floor. You

can add sand topoured floors to

enhance grip. Somenew poured floors

cure in hours.

Before After

floors: “For many commercial kitchens or foodprocessing areas, poured floors work because youcan specify the type and level of slip-resistant parti-cles, and the color, if the appearance is an issue.Also, you can adjust the thickness of the coating,and the height of integral coving up the wall,” hesays. These floors also can be installed in cold envi-ronments such as in walk-in coolers and freezers.Epoxy, polyurethane, MMA, and polyaspartics inthe right formulation are impervious to water,grease, oils, fats, and other contaminants.

Note that epoxy is slow to cure (24 hours for reg-ular traffic, 72 hours for heavy traffic, seven days tofully cure). If you can only shut down the area to befloored for a short period of time before exposing itto traffic, that’s a problem. “You’re better off withan MMA or polyaspartic floor because the kitchencan be put back into service within a few hours,”Stafford explains.

Newer Floor OptionsPaul Pape, nutrition services director for NormanRegional Health System, Okla., highly recommendsthe recycled PVC flooring he just installed in hisnew HealthPlex facility. “This is the best kitchenfloor I’ve ever had,” he said, “and I’ve had decadesof experience with commercial kitchen floors.”

Recycled PVC, available from such companies as Oscoda Protect-All (Shur-Step is a private label)

and B&H Commercial Service’s First Choice SafetyFlooring (to name a couple), is widely used inchain restaurants and is really catching on in non-commercial applications.

Recycled PVC comes in 4’ or 5’ by 8’ mat-liketiles, about a ¼” thick. Certified installers lay thetiles (which cove easily, as well), and then heat-sealthe seams in a process that renders the floor seam-less and leak-proof.

The benefits, according to operators, are myriad.The flooring, in addition to being Green, has a nice“give” to go easy on knees and feet and is super slipresistant (resistance actually increases when thefloor is wet). It’s impervious to all liquids, grease,fats and oils—even hot ones; recycled PVC with-stands temperatures from below zero to more than400°F.

Its slight thickness also quiets the kitchen signifi-cantly. “We’ve dropped glass items on this floor and they don’t break,” Pape adds. If the floor isdamaged in any way, repair is easy. “You would justcut out the tile, replace it and reheat-seal the seam,”Pape explains. Another benefit: existing operationsdon’t have to shut down to get the floor installed;because it comes in tiles, installers can lay portionsof the floor at night, disconnecting and reconnect-ing equipment as they go.

Rene Rodriguez, assistant director of foodservicefor the University of Texas, Austin, just finished in-

material world

Quarry tile has been the default

flooring choice forcommercial kitchens

for decades. It’sdurable, attractive,

easy to maintain,and cost effective.

50 1Q 2011 • FCSI The Americas Quarterly

material world

stalling recycled PVC throughout the kitchens ofJester Dining Hall, one of the largest dining halls inthe country.

“I started out using recycled PVC in my walk-insand freezers because their floors needed to be re-placed. Before long, I was installing it throughout my

kitchens.” What’s especially great about putting thePVC in a cooler/freezer is that you can finally use apower-washer to clean the floor, something that’s notrecommended with a metal floor.

“In fact, cleaning is the only complaint I hear aboutthis floor from my employees,” he laughs. “You can’t

just run a mop over it and call it clean.”Recycled PVC has a bit of a raised, textured surface, so cleaning it calls for a bristle brush or power washer, deter-gent, and possibly a degreaser. “Employ-ees really have to clean the floor withsoap and water, imagine that!”

Adding It UpRecycled PVC and poured floors willlikely cost more than traditional quarrytile (although the new, superior epoxygrout raises the cost of quarry a bit too.)How much more is a big variable. Whatgoes into the cost of flooring? Here’s ashort list: new construction vs. renova-tion, number of drains, size and shapeof the room, the condition of the sub-strate, floor preparation requirements,flooring and trim materials, union ornon-union installation crews, overtimeinstallation or regular hours, local laborcosts—the list goes on. Be sure to un-derstand these variables’ effect on thefinal cost when pricing out the project.

Resources

Information On Poured Floors:

Epoxy.comwww.epoxysystems.com/mmahom.htm

Concrete Networkwww.concretenetwork.com/polyaspartic-floor-coatings

Information On Recycled PVC Floors:

B&H CommercialFirst Choice Safety Flooringwww.safefloor.com

Shur-Step Non-Slip Flooring by Protect Allwww.shur-stepflooring.com