Flowcrete Group Ltd has been providing state-of-the-art resin surfaces to the healthcare industry for more than 30 years.
Healthcare environments pose significant challenges for facilities managers across Australia, especially 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. Floors attract the maximum bacteria requiring these surfaces to be correctly specified to allow easy cleaning and prevent the spread of disease or contamination.
Healthcare facilities are therefore increasingly adopting seamless resin materials to provide an eye-catching and clean surface, with load-bearing capabilities.
Resin floors offer several advantages, especially in the healthcare sector. The 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, preventing 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.
Flowcrete recently supplied their self-smoothing epoxy flooring system during 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.
Spread across eight storeys, the tower building represents a total footprint of 4,000 square metres with Flowcrete’s epoxy flooring system covering 1000 square metres across levels six and seven of the facility. The material was supplied in three custom colours, beige, red and orange.
A non-tainting and non-dusting system, Flowshield SL delivers an attractive easily cleaned surface that is ideal for use in laboratories and various sterile environments.
The project also included the installation of Flowcrete’s water-based epoxy wall coating system, Flowseal EPW in the same custom beige colour across both floors to deliver a seamless, chemical-resistant and hygienic finish.
Flowcrete installed a durable solution to address an existing flooring problem at the Park Ten Surgical Center located in Houston, USA. A moisture problem, originating in part from the vinyl tile 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 explains that Flowfresh SLB, similar to all other products in the range, contains Polygiene, an innovative antimicrobial additive that reduces the generation of bacterial population on the surface of the floor by up to 99%. Polygiene remains active 24 hours a day, 7 days a week during the complete lifetime of the floor for maximum hygiene performance.
Flowfresh SLB floors offer excellent resistance to moisture vapour transmission, eliminating the passage of water vapour to the surface, which ultimately avoids delaminating of the floor system. The system was coated and sealed using Peran STC and Flowseal UV, two low odour products delivering a durable and robust finish to the floor system, including chemical and abrasion resistance and a UV stable formulation to retain the colour integrity of the floor finish.
Flowcrete’s resin flooring system was also installed at the landmark Concord Repatriation General Hospital in Sydney. Flowcrete Australia's seamless and sparkling resin flooring system, Kristalina was installed on over 200 square metres of area at the facility's newly constructed Medical Education building.
The Flowcrete solution was provided to meet the client’s requirement for a slip-resistant, decorative and hygienic flooring system that would achieve a uniform finish. 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 project, the Kristalina system was formulated in a special blend of coloured aggregates to deliver an attractive multi-toned grey finish. The entire surface was then coated with a water-based polyurethane sealer in a satin finish.
In addition to delivering a highly attractive aesthetic finish, the eco-friendly resin floor also met the client's environmental requirements with the solvent-free and low VOC Kristalina delivering a wealth of lifecycle cost and efficiency savings.
Flowcrete Australia Pty Ltd is part of Flowcrete Group Ltd, 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.
