Flooring: Repair or replace?

These are tough times in British manufacturing and we all need to make important decisions about our infrastructure; finding the balance between managing cash flow and investing enough to keep a competitive edge are the skills that separate thriving businesses from struggling ones. And for any industrial organisation flooring is a key consideration.

A workforce performs better in a cleaner, smarter and more efficient environment. Nothing creates an air of despondency more than broken fixtures, worn out fitting and the general sense of being on a drifting ship. And that’s before we even get started on safety. 

However, most industrial floors get worn away in different areas because there are always higher volumes of traffic in some places more than others. This is why it is quite common to patch and repair these areas for as long as possible. After all, it can quite often seem like a waste of money to lay a new floor when large parts of it are still sound. 

There is of course nothing wrong with this approach. Laying a new floor is not only expensive, it can be disruptive. We recommend you consider the following: 

Safety first 

To keep your workforce safe your floor must not constitute a trip hazard. You can monitor this by checking to see if there are differences in levels of more than 3mm. If there are you risk exposing your staff to accidents and all of the legal problems that could ensue.

You should take note of what your drivers tell you. If they are complaining of discomfort this could be due to the unevenness of the floor; this could even cause goods to wobble dangerously in transit. In short anything that affects the safe movement of forklifts is a warning sign and needs further investigation. 

In many old factories, substrates are made of different materials due to extensions, so half the factory floor may be quarry tiles and the other half timber. Because these materials expand and contract at different rates over time large differences in levels can occur between the two floors. Please note however that rather than spending a lot of money raising or lowering one of the floors, a good installation team using the right industrial flooring system can create a gentle ramp and then tile over the whole area providing a hardwearing, safe continuous floor surface.

Beware false economies

A common pitfall, we often see companies trying to make-do and mend for too long. Quite often it is cheaper over time to install a brand new hard wearing industrial floor in your workshop or warehouse than it is to keep patching up what you already have. Especially when you consider that the problem is only ever going to get worse not better. How much have you spent on repairs in the last 12 months? How much do you think you will have to keep spending this year and next? It might be cheaper to just get the whole lot sorted out now. 

Budget for the future

If you find yourself making regular repairs or notice any of the issues highlighted above, then it is likely that your industrial floor is coming to the end of its life cycle. But by keeping a close eye on these things you can usually begin to build up a picture of what it happening and start to plan ahead so that it doesn’t come as a sudden and nasty shock to your bottom line. Furthermore, a well-planned operation knows when the less busy or shut down periods are and can budget to have the work completed during these times. This is much better than reacting to a crisis caused by poor flooring management, with all of the inherent disruptions and extra costs that it entails.