Our education establishments are areas of consistently high footfall, hence the need for flooring which is durable, safe and clean.
Poor Flooring Specification and the Potential Costs
Incorrect floor specification could lead to falls and personal injury; costly to the affected student’s education, damaging to the school’s reputation. Flooring could also incur high maintenance costs if fitted poorly, whilst difficult-to-clean surfaces in a “busy” environment are a magnet for germs and microscopic mites.
Is there a flooring solution?
A flooring system which provides a hard-wearing, cost-effective alternative to carpet, vinyl and timber, whilst helping our schools uphold the highest health and safety standards is available when you specify resin over traditional flooring build ups.
Taking into account the needs of the most demanding educational environment, a flooring manufacturer’s specification should provide a solution that looks at operational requirements, construction joints, floor to wall connections, surface design and installation details.
Sika‘s ComfortFloor® range offers an attractive alternative to traditional flooring. An easily applied, high-performance liquid, this hard-wearing system comes in an expansive range of colours and meets a wealth of aesthetic requirements, a particularly useful property in schools where the learning environment’s appearance can have both a positive and negative effect on student mood and behavior.
Sika Flooring
Smart and Sustainable Resin Flooring
ComfortFloor® is perfect for applications where exceptional hygiene standards are vital. Its seamless flooring surface is easily cleaned and maintained, and as a floor and wall system, is a proven solution for food preparation areas - another important aspect of school life. After all, who wants to be queuing for semolina pudding seconds on a dirty, sticky floor?
Sustainability has become a watch-word of modern construction, with the green credentials of materials used to build a house now gaining as much scrutiny as the property’s overall thermal performance. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) evaluates and measures a product’s environmental impact during its lifecycle from cradle to grave.
A product’s LCA enables specifiers to make informed decisions about the comparative environmental impacts as well as the cost and durability of rival products. The system is increasingly recognised by the construction industry as the most credible and comprehensive method for assessing and comparing the environmental impacts of products over their entire lifecycle.
Sika evaluates products systematically on environmental performance via regular and comprehensive LCAs according to ISO 140040, which describes the principles and framework for LCA, as well as EN 15804. The company undertakes LCAs from both a Cradle to Gate and Cradle to Grave perspective, the former seeing most of the environmental impacts connected to the raw materials used and the latter seeing most impacts in the in-use and end-of-life phases.
The impacts in these phases will be highly dependent on the different maintenance and refurbishment requirements over the life-cycle, which are in turn highly dependent on a floor’s intended use.
Green Flooring Goals
Sika Flooring has put a major focus on using less energy and resources when compared with other technologies and systems to help meet green goals as a society. It means offering a lower Global Warming Potential (carbon footprint) and low or even zero Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) options to deliver health benefits for schools and other public and private sector buildings.
Outside of the home, school plays the most important role in a child’s formative years. Every aspect of its infrastructure should conform to the highest standards in order to create a safe, clean and comfortable environment in which students can thrive. In that respect, Sika has all bases covered.