Complex flooring project
Flowcrete has supplied Iveco with a range of solutions as part of the company’s vast and complex flooring project at its new manufacturing facility in Pretoria. The 55,000m2 installation was the largest flooring project in South Africa at the time and required multiple specialist and bespoke systems to be applied.
Before the floor finish could be applied the concrete substrate had to be assessed to find out what damage had been caused by a fire that had broken out during construction. To fix this floor layer the underlying concrete slabs were taken up and the area rescreeded. Support beams and sliding doors that had been fire damaged were removed and the floor cavities left behind were filled in with Conrep SF65.
The epoxy resin floor coating Flowcoat SF41 was installed across the main production areas of the facility as well as on the walkways. The hard-wearing and chemically resistant nature of this solution makes it ideal for large-scale manufacturing plants, as it will maintain a seamless, impermeable and bright surface despite the inevitable heavy work load, oil and grease spillages, hot water washes and the physical impacts of heavy equipment.
Flowcoat SF41 can optimise the working environment of industrial facilities in a number of ways. Its adjustable anti-slip profile means that the use of graded aggregates can be tailored to reduce the risk of slips and trips depending on the location.
This system was also used for the demarcation lines, creating bright and clear yellow signage to aid navigation around the busy, multi-complex site. Flowcoat SF41 was utilised for this, as Iveco wanted a solution that was thicker and more durable than the standard demarcation line product.
Several areas of the facility required the floor to have specific properties. The laboratory and paint mixing rooms had the polyurethane resin system Flowfresh HF ESD installed across the floors and Flowfresh WR ESD was applied as coving around the drains.
These systems not only create a seamless and easy-to-clean floor, but they also have electrostatic dissipative properties to avoid static charge build up. This was important within the laboratory as static charges in the floor can damage sensitive electrical equipment and within a paint room it can be a dangerous ignition source.