Section 3 Classification of Flooring Materials

Laboratory floors generally use epoxy resin flooring (epoxy resin roller-coated flooring, epoxy resin self-leveling flooring, anti-static epoxy roller-coated flooring, and anti-static epoxy self-leveling flooring), carborundum wear-resistant flooring, polished-tile floors, and PVC vinyl flooring.

I. Epoxy Resin Flooring

1. Epoxy Resin Roller-Coated Flooring

Performance: excellent properties such as seamless dust prevention, easy cleaning, acid/alkali resistance, and mildew resistance; colors are freely selectable, attractive and bright, and construction is fast.

Uses: places with modest dust-prevention requirements such as laboratories, ordinary industrial plants, GMP-industry plants, and parking lots.

Advantages: short construction period and low price.

Disadvantages: very high demands on the flatness and hardness of the base floor; scratches appear easily; service life is relatively short, generally 3–5 years. Wear resistance, pressure resistance, and impact resistance are not high, and resistance to strongly corrosive chemicals is not high.

Construction conditions: moisture content must be below 8%, relative humidity below 55%; construction should be avoided on rainy days, when atmospheric relative humidity is above 85%, or when temperature is below 10 ℃.

Recommendation: can be used in ordinary chemistry laboratories; this floor may be chosen where hand carts are used infrequently, laboratory staff are few, the required cleanliness grade is not high, the expected service life of the laboratory is short, and the customer follows a low-investment philosophy.

2. Epoxy Resin Self-Leveling Flooring

Performance:

  • (1) The coating self-levels; the surface is flat and glossy with a mirror effect;
  • (2) Seamless and dust-free; the smooth surface is easy to clean;
  • (3) Solvent-free and environmentally friendly;
  • (4) The dense surface resists attack by many chemicals;
  • (5) Multiple colors available for customers.

Uses: applied as floor coatings in industrial plants, GMP-industry plants, laboratories, operating rooms, sterile rooms, and shopping centers.

Advantages: short construction period and moderate price.

Disadvantages: very high demands on the flatness and hardness of the base floor; scratches appear easily; service life is relatively short, generally 3–5 years. Wear resistance, pressure resistance, and impact resistance are not high, and resistance to strongly corrosive chemicals is not high.

Construction conditions: moisture content must be below 8%, relative humidity below 55%; construction should be avoided on rainy days, when atmospheric relative humidity is above 85%, or when temperature is below 10 ℃.

Recommendation: this floor may be chosen for chemistry laboratories and sterile rooms where hand carts are used infrequently, laboratory staff are few, the cleanliness requirement is ordinary, the expected service life of the laboratory is not long, and the customer has high aesthetic requirements.

II. Anti-Static Epoxy Resin Flooring

1. Anti-Static Epoxy Resin Roller-Coated Flooring

Performance:

  • (1) Seamless and dust-free; the surface is easy to clean and is flat and glossy;
  • (2) Solvent-free, environmentally friendly type;
  • (3) Quickly dissipates static charges, preventing damage to electronic components and fires caused by static accumulation;
  • (4) Surface resistance is stable and durable, unaffected by weather humidity and surface wear;
  • (5) The dense surface resists attack by many chemicals;
  • (6) Multiple colors available for customers.

Uses: suitable for places requiring static protection such as electronics factories, telecommunications, microelectronics factories, precision-machinery factories, and electronics rooms.

Advantages: short construction period; average price.

Disadvantages: very high demands on the flatness and hardness of the base floor; scratches appear easily; service life is relatively short, generally 3–5 years. Wear resistance, pressure resistance, and impact resistance are not high, and resistance to strongly corrosive chemicals is not high.

Construction conditions: moisture content must be below 8%, relative humidity below 55%; construction should be avoided on rainy days, when atmospheric relative humidity is above 85%, or when temperature is below 10 ℃.

Recommendation: can be used in places requiring static protection such as electronics factories, telecommunications, microelectronics factories, precision-machinery factories, and electronics rooms.

2. Anti-Static Epoxy Resin Self-Leveling Flooring

Its performance is similar to that of anti-static epoxy roller-coated flooring, and its type is similar to that of self-leveling flooring.

III. PVC Vinyl Flooring

PVC vinyl flooring is used in a very wide range of places, including commercial premises, hospitals, schools, and indoor stadiums. By form it is divided into sheet (roll) flooring and tile flooring. PVC sheet/vinyl flooring comes in rolls, while PVC tile flooring comes in individual tiles; the places where tile and sheet flooring are used differ somewhat. Compared with sheet flooring, PVC tile flooring has far richer colors and patterns; tiles are more suitable for small-area places and are also used where a good decorative effect is needed. Generally, for areas below 500 square meters, tile flooring is used more often because tiles are easy to join. For large-area places such as schools, hospitals, and indoor stadiums, laying PVC sheet/vinyl flooring is more suitable. Also, places such as hospitals require seamless floors; PVC sheet/vinyl flooring can meet these requirements, whereas tiles cannot achieve seamless joints. PVC sheet/vinyl flooring has much better elasticity than tiles: good resilience, easy laying and installation, antibacterial properties, durability, and simple maintenance. Its widths include 1830 mm and 2000 mm, the length of each roll is 15 m or 20 m, and total thickness ranges from 1.6 mm to 3.2 mm, as shown in Fig. 8-31.

Performance: environmentally safe, widely applicable, small joints, wear and scratch resistance, high resilience and impact resistance, anti-slip, waterproof, and sound-absorbing.

Uses: can be used in places with relatively high cleanliness grades such as ordinary chemistry laboratories, sterile rooms, and operating rooms.

Advantages: the surface of PVC flooring receives special antibacterial treatment; the surfaces of some high-performance PVC floors additionally contain a special antibacterial agent with strong ability to kill most bacteria and inhibit bacterial reproduction.

Disadvantages: relatively high price; high requirement for base-layer flatness.

Construction conditions: high base-layer flatness is required, and a local leveling layer may have to be made.

Recommendation: compared with its high price, its value and performance are clearly improved over other floors; moreover, sterile rooms and operating rooms are generally relatively small in area, so it is recommended that customers adopt it in laboratories with high dust-free, sterile, and non-radioactive requirements.

Fig. 8-31 PVC sheet/vinyl flooring samples and example

IV. Carborundum Wear-Resistant Flooring

Features:

  1. Constructed together with freshly poured cement and integrated with the cement; it is not afraid of moisture and is firm and resistant to delamination;
  2. Surface wear resistance is increased severalfold; it is especially wear-resistant and impact-resistant, with performance several times better than ordinary terrazzo;
  3. Machinery is used to level and trowel the facing, and a surface hardener coating is applied, increasing wear resistance and giving a bright, smooth finish; flatness is clearly better than ordinary cement floors;
  4. Waterproof, fireproof, oil-resistant, and resistant to ordinary acids and alkalis;
  5. Multiple colors available for customers.

Uses: factory workshops, warehouses, large environmental laboratories, parking lots, exhibition halls, and maintenance centers.

Advantages: no ordinary floor leveling layer is needed; short construction period; average price.

Disadvantages: because the base layer is dense, cracking is prone to occur in regions with large temperature differences.

Construction conditions: moisture content must be below 8%, relative humidity below 55%; construction should be avoided on rainy days, when atmospheric relative humidity is above 85%, or when temperature is below 10 ℃.

Recommendation: can be used in environmental laboratories, safety-compliance laboratories, factory buildings, and similar places.

V. Floor Tiles

Floor tiles are generally used to pave floors in public areas such as laboratory waiting areas, bathrooms, washing/disinfection rooms, and corridors, especially in waiting areas. Because the waiting area is the public space that receives patients, hospitals usually require elegant and dignified decoration, and high-grade floor tiles are actually a good choice with a relatively upscale and grand decorative effect; in some larger waiting areas in particular, rich patterns can be decorated on the floor according to the designer's intent.

Floor tile is a floor decoration material, also called floor brick. It is fired from clay and comes in many specifications. It is hard, pressure- and wear-resistant, and moisture-proof. Some types are glazed and have a decorative function. They are mostly used on the floors and slabs of public and civil buildings.

As a material laid over large areas, floor tiles use their own colors and textures to create living environments of very different styles. There are very many varieties and patterns of floor tiles with a wide range of choices; by material they can be divided into glazed tiles, full-body tiles (anti-slip tiles), polished tiles, and vitrified tiles, as shown in Fig. 8-32 and Fig. 8-33.

Fig. 8-32 Floor tiles

Fig. 8-33 Example of floor-tile paving

Performance: surface easy to clean; flat and glossy; good wear resistance; good fireproof, waterproof, and anti-corrosion performance; high grade; long service life.

Uses: ordinary laboratories, laboratory office areas, etc.

Advantages: long service life (generally 10–15 years) and good visual effect.

Disadvantages: cannot withstand the rolling of large mechanical vehicles such as forklifts and dump trucks. Construction period is relatively long. Price is on the high side.

Construction conditions: environmental requirements are low; an indoor temperature above 13 ℃ is sufficient.

Recommendation: can be used in ordinary chemistry laboratories and sterile rooms; this floor may be chosen where the expected laboratory service life is long, investment is large, and the customer has high aesthetic requirements.

VI. Terrazzo

In public areas such as laboratory waiting areas and corridors, terrazzo can also be used for floors; high-craftsmanship terrazzo also has a quite upscale decorative effect.

Terrazzo is a product in which crushed stone is mixed into cement to make a concrete product whose surface is then polished. It is commonly used to make floor tiles, countertops, sinks, and other products. High-gloss terrazzo and ordinary terrazzo (also called ground stone or terrazzo flooring) refer to smooth floors in which terrazzo stone fragments are embedded in a cement mixture and the surface is ground smooth with water, as shown in Fig. 8-34 and Fig. 8-35.

Fig. 8-34 Example of a terrazzo floor

Fig. 8-35 Terrazzo

Terrazzo flooring is a composite flooring material with cement as its main raw material. Because of its low cost and good service performance, it is widely used in very large-area public buildings: hospitals, pharmaceutical and machinery industries, government offices, schools, commercial premises, airports, stations, and docks. The greatest advantage of terrazzo flooring is moisture protection; during the warm damp March weather in southern China it can keep the floor very dry.

VII. Marble

In some large hospitals, in pursuit of a high-grade decorative effect and an elevated decoration grade, marble—a high-class material—is usually used to pave floors and clad walls in public areas. Laboratory scale is proportional to hospital scale, and the laboratories of large hospitals are correspondingly large; in such cases, to make the laboratory waiting area match and be consistent with the decoration style of the whole hospital, marble is also used to pave the floor. Although the surfaces of some high-grade ceramic tiles can now closely imitate marble texture, the genuine high-class texture cannot be replaced by substitutes.

Marble, also called cloud stone, is recrystallized limestone whose main component is CaCO₃. Limestone softens under high temperature and pressure and recrystallizes into marble as the minerals it contains change. Its main components are calcite and dolomite; it has many colors, usually with conspicuous veining and many mineral grains. Its Mohs hardness is between 2.5 and 5. Because marble generally contains impurities, and calcium carbonate is also easily weathered and eroded under the action of carbon dioxide, carbides, and moisture in the atmosphere, the surface quickly loses its luster. Marble is generally relatively soft in physical property—this is relative to granite. Marble is a major category of natural architectural decorative stone, generally referring to metamorphosed or unmetamorphosed carbonate rocks that have a decorative function and can be processed into building stone or craftwork. It is named after the splendidly colored and veined stone produced at Diancang Mountain in Dali, Yunnan, China. Marble broadly refers to marble rock, limestone, dolomite, and skarn and marble rock formed by various alterations of carbonate rocks.

Marble is very beautiful after polishing. It is mainly processed into various shapes and boards for the walls and floors of buildings. Naming principles differ according to marble variety: some are named by place of origin and color, such as Dandong Green and Tieling Red; some by pattern and color, such as Snowflake White and Artemisia Leaf Green; some by the image of the pattern, such as Autumn Scenery and Ocean Waves; and some have traditional names, such as White Jade and Crystal Black Jade. Therefore, because of different places of origin, the same type often has different names or different rocks share the same name. It has relatively high compressive strength and good physical and chemical properties and is easy to process. With economic development, its range of application keeps expanding and its consumption keeps growing, playing an important role in people's lives. In particular, decorative boards have entered the building decoration industry in large quantities for luxurious public buildings, as shown in Fig. 8-36.

Fig. 8-36 Marble

VIII. Granite

Because marble is not hard enough and wears easily when used for floors, granite can also be used in laboratory waiting areas in place of marble to pave floors.

Granite is an igneous rock formed when magma cools below the Earth's surface; its main components are feldspar and quartz. The etymology of granite is the Latin granum, meaning grain or granule. Because granite is a plutonic rock that often forms well-developed, visually distinguishable mineral grains, it is named accordingly. Granite does not weather easily, has attractive colors, and its appearance and luster can be maintained for more than a hundred years. Because of its high hardness and wear resistance, in addition to high-class architectural decoration and hall floors, it is also the material of choice for open-air sculpture. Granite has a hard texture and is difficult to erode by acids, alkalis, or weathering, so it is often used as a building material. The character for "flower" describes the beautiful markings of this rock, while "hard/ridge" expresses that the rock is very hard—that is, a hard rock with flower-like markings, as shown in Fig. 8-37.

Fig. 8-37 Granite