It is useful in commercial and industrial spaces because it is durable, easy-to-clean, and cheap – however, it may be applied in residential spaces too.
Easy to clean, resistant to wear and damage, and offered with anti-skid and excellent hygienic properties, resin floors can address common health and safety concerns while providing an attractive, customizable look.
Price: Resin is a cheap material. As a derivative of plastic, it has a very simple method of manufacturing and is relatively fast to install. Cost-effectiveness is a key appeal of resin floors and makes them suitable for large spaces such as warehouses.
Durability: Once the resin hardens it is extremely firm. Thicker floors can withstand almost constant use from heavy vehicles, which makes them useful for garages. Forklifts are another potential vehicle that are suitable for use on a resin floor.
Lifespan: There is little point in installing a new floor if it is going to need replacing shortly after – or if damage occurs. Epoxy resin flooring is an exceptionally long-lasting type of floor, which can exceed 10 years even with constant use.
PMMA stands for polymethyl methacrylate, a synthetic resin also known as “acrylic” or “acrylic glass” that is used to create common products like Plexiglas, Lucite and Perspex. Classified as a thermoplastic resin, PMMA resin flooring is highly customisable for precise industrial needs, such as slip, chemical or electrical resistance.
The distinguishing characteristic of PMMA resin flooring is its incredibly fast application and hardening (cure) time, even at temperatures below 0°C. This super-short cure time ensures that a PMMA resin floor can be fully installed and fully cured over a weekend, resulting in minimum downtime for factory and production facilities.
PMMA flooring is also easy to repair and upgrade due to its unique interlayer chemical bond, versus other resin floorings that require complete replacement. PMMA resin floors do typically cost more than other resin floorings; however, PMMA resin floors are longer lasting and the time interval to first maintenance is considerably longer than any other system, an important consideration when comparing resin floor options.
As with PMMA floors, PU resin flooring provides excellent resistance to impact, abrasion and most chemicals. However, the main advantage of PU resin flooring is it’s resistance to high temperature and direct heat. It is ideal for in front of ovens in a bakery where hot trolleys are left to stand and cool.
Available in a number of different finishes, its flexibility ensures that it is well equipped for impact absorption.
Classified as a thermoset resin, PU resin floors take significantly longer to cure than PMMA resin floors, which means more operational downtime during installation and any repair.
Probably the best known and most widely used kind of industrial resin flooring, epoxy resin is a thermoset material that offers the performance and durability of resin flooring and is the optimum resin flooring choice for electrical conductive flooring.
There are several types of epoxy resin available, offering various advantages depending on use, but all epoxy resin flooring is very hard and bonds fully to concrete, thereby protecting the underlying concrete base from impact, wear, abrasion, water ingress, oil and a wide range of chemicals.
If an epoxy resin floor is damaged, however, it must be fully replaced, and with the longest cure time of all resin flooring options, an unplanned replacement could be very costly to a business.
