Moisture problems are the #1 cause of failed flooring installations. Often the result of aquifers or other environmental conditions, moisture may be invisible. So how do you know if you have a moisture problem? How do you fix the problem? What happens if you choose to ignore moisture readings? If you’re in a 24/7 operational facility, such as a call or data center, a police station, a flight tower or other critical space, how do you solve a moisture problem – adhesive breakdown, for example – without shutting down or compromising your core mission? Dave Long, president of Staticworx, Inc., discusses these and other issues related to mitigating moisture in new construction, renovations, and occupied workspaces.
Static Bursts #21: Installing ESD Flooring
Avoiding Pitfalls (Part 2)
The cost of flooring materials is only part of the total cost of ownership. To calculate the long-term cost of owning a floor, consider installation, maintenance, repairs, and downtime required for maintenance and repair. Aesthetics are another consideration. this podcast, Dave and Rick describe scenarios that occur when people base flooring decisions solely on the cost of the material. Dave also explains why it’s crucial to test an ESD floor immediately after it’s been installed.
The Gist: Installing ESD Flooring: Avoiding Pitfalls (Part 2)
- When evaluating cost of flooring, consider total cost of ownership.
- Installation
- Maintenance
- Repairs
- Downtime to install, maintain or repair
- If an operation can’t be interrupted, you need the floor to last.
- Also consider how the flooring material adheres to the subfloor
- How easy (or hard) will it be to pull tiles up to replace or gain access underneath
- Can the floor be installed without adhesive?
- TacTiles provide a glue-free installation and install faster than adhesives
- Cost of ownership of epoxy (the least expensive option)
- How important are aesthetics? Will you be giving tours of the facility?
- Epoxy never looks as good as it does immediately after installation
- After a few years, it may look dull and drab with lots of micro-abrasions
- If aesthetics are important, vinyl or rubber may be a better choice
- Vinyl and rubber have higher initial costs but can be brought back to original shine
- How important are aesthetics? Will you be giving tours of the facility?
- Some floors – e.g. epoxies – are harder than others to repair
- Repair may necessitate downtime
- Repairs may show
- Another mistake is failing to test the floor after it’s been installed
- Testing ensures that the floor complies with standards and specifications
- Person doing the work or independent lab can do tests
- Require a signed certification that floor meets your specs and ESD standards
- The only way to know you’ve gotten what you paid for
“…when I talk about cost of ownership, I’m…talking about maintenance. I’m talking about repairs. I’m also talking about appearance … you can easily forecast some of these things and not just look at the original check that you have to write for the material you’re going to buy.”
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Rick: Welcome to Static Bursts. Our podcast series will discuss the threat static electricity poses to your business, and how to address those risks.
Dave: I’m your host, Dave Long, founder and president of StaticWorx. We make static control flooring.
Rick: And I’m your co-host, Rick Frauton.
In our previous episode, we discussed some of the mistakes that are commonly made when selecting an ESD floor – such as failure to consider the type of footwear that will be worn in the space. Today, we continue the discussion as we focus on the total cost of ownership of an ESD floor over time. Dave reminds our listeners not to make the mistake of thinking only about the initial costs of flooring materials, but also to consider the costs related to installation, maintenance and repairs, as well as the cost of any downtime associated with these activities.
Dave: What am I talking about when I’m talking about cost of ownership? I’m not just talking about the original cost to put the floor in. People get so hung up on the original cost. Obviously there’s a price for that. But what’s the price for replacing a floor once an operation can’t be interrupted? In other words, has the specifier thought about what needs to be done to either replace that floor, take care of that floor or repair that floor in what could be a very chaotic environment?
So best example, an FAA flight tower. How do you replace flooring in a flight tower? Do you tell the airlines not to operate any planes for two or three hours? Probably not. Do you tell people to offload their responsibilities to a different flight tower? There’s a reason the flight tower is located where it is; obviously you’re not going to do that. So you’ve got to have a strategy in place where when you select the flooring that goes in that flight tower, that it’s going to last as long as possible, but also that if a tile needs to be repaired or replaced or if you need to gain access to cabling underneath that tile because maybe the subfloor is a raised access floor – you need to think about how is that floor attached to whatever the subfloor is, and how easy is it to pull a tile up, put another one in its place or gain access to the area below?
And there’s a number of strategies for that, starting with the idea that some of these floors can actually be installed without using any adhesive. It’s a chemical that you have to apply to a surface and allow it to dry for a certain amount of time. So one of the strategies that a lot of flight people find to be very attractive, is they call them TacTiles. What they really are is a four inch by four inch pieces of plastic with adhesive on them, and they actually lock carpet tiles together. And that way, if for some reason in the future you need to relay out the floor and replace the tile because maybe it becomes damaged, they’re very easy to take apart and put back together again. Whereas adhesive might be a more permanent installation method. But it also might be an installation method that takes us longer to deploy.
Rick: So the cost of installing with an adhesive is a significant factor for floors that require it. But there are alternatives to using adhesive and some types of ESD floors don’t need it, such as epoxy coatings. Epoxy floors may be less expensive than other flooring types in terms of the initial material cost, but does that tell the whole story?
Dave: Cost of Ownership with epoxies? Let’s think about an epoxy floor. It gets put down and allowed to dry in an empty room and it looks like glass. That’s the last time it’s ever going to look like glass. Epoxy floors are extremely durable. They’re easy to roll equipment over. But they’re also rather difficult to repair in short time spans. So when you’re looking at using a coating, one of the things you need to think about is what kind of activities will go on this floor that might cause it to become damaged. Because it might actually be the least expensive solution for a factory. But if you’re looking at the possibility of having to repair it, because maybe this factory, you give a lot of tours to customers and visitors, and you want it to always look the way it did when it was brand new, you might discover that, Yeah, the epoxy looked great for two years, but now here we are in year five, and it’s got all these micro abrasions in it and it doesn’t have any shine. And now it doesn’t look good.
I remember years ago, I went to a company in Sterling, Virginia, and I sat in the lobby, and when they moved into the building, they were currently occupying, they took a lot of pictures on move-in day, and their floor looked beautiful. It was a coating and it was very shiny. And they’d been in this building now, I guess maybe about seven years. But I went up to their conference room. The owner of the company said to me, I’m pretty sure we’re going to want another epoxy floor. And I said to him, Have you compared the pictures in your lobby from when that floor was brand new to what your floor looks like right now. And I took a little bit of a gamble. And I said, because they do not look anything like each other. As far as I can tell, your floor is now dull and drab, and you have no way to make it look nice again. So he looked at me and he said, you know, it’s funny, but I’ve heard that from other people. What would you suggest? I said, Well, first of all, I’m not telling you not to use a coating because we make coatings. What I’m telling you is that if you’re interested in having a floor that you can bring back to its original luster, you might want to think about either rubber or vinyl tile. Both those products require more maintenance than an epoxy floor, particularly the vinyl floor. But anytime during the lifecycle of that floor you have the ability to make it look brand new again. If that’s something that’s important to you, you may want to consider it.
They ended up actually going with vinyl tiles – less expensive than rubber, a little more expensive than the epoxy coating that we had offered them. But at the end, two years in, they actually sent me an email and said, we were a little bit reluctant with going with the vinyl. When we first put it in, we had a little bit of trouble getting our maintenance company to do things the way we wanted to. But now we’re extremely happy. Because whenever we damage a tile, we can just pick it up and put a new one in its place. The problem we had with epoxies was once we had a damaged area, we had to shut down that area to do a repair. And on top of that, the repairs always looked different than the adjacent area right next to it. So we feel like we made a good decision.
So when I talk about cost of ownership, I’m not just talking about maintenance, I’m talking about repairs. I’m also talking about appearance. If you just start to look at your own application, you can easily forecast some of these things and not just look at the original check that you have to write for the material you’re going to buy.
Rick: Dave, so far, you have warned against overlooking the type of footwear that will be on an ESD floor, and we now know that the total cost of ownership is not limited to the flooring material alone. What is another common mistake to avoid when investing in an ESD floor?
Dave: So the third one, not testing the floor after it’s installed. Two weeks ago, I got a phone call from a company that told me they put in 70,000 square feet of ESD flooring in their factory in Florida. They recently tested the floor and they found an area of about 1000 square feet that does not meet ANSI/ESD S20.20 standards. The floor is registering on their resistance meter over 1 billion ohms which is the same thing as one times 10 to the ninth (1 x 10E9). And that’s not acceptable if your measure is over 1 billion ohms.
So they wanted to know why I thought that floor may have failed. When we talked about their testing, one of the things that came out of the conversation is, they didn’t actually test the floor when it was brand new. That means that floor may never have been in compliance. That could possibly mean that during the entire life of that floor, any product that was handled in that area was made in an environment that’s not compliant with their ISO certification. So you need to test your floor when it’s brand new. Hopefully the people doing the work for you have the ability to do that for you. Doesn’t mean you don’t want to hire an independent party to come in afterward. But you should have proof of purchase and that means knowing exactly what you bought.
Along a similar line, one of the FAA locations contacted us because they were testing flooring in their flight tower, and they discovered that the flooring did not meet their specifications. Their specification calls for the flooring to have a minimum resistance of a million ohms. When they tested their floor, they were able to get readings, two orders of magnitude more conductive than a million ohms. That means that according to their spec, which has a minimum resistance of ten to the sixth (10E6), they were measuring resistance of a floor that was as low as 10 to the fourth (10E4). The reason the FAA has a standard and is concerned about conductivity to begin with, is because they’re worried about the potential for people to get electrocuted.
I’ve never heard of anyone getting electrocuted working on an ESD floor. But the FAA has a 600 page document that deals with grounding, lightning and surge suppression and minimum resistance values of the floor in order to protect their people. So in their case, whoever put the floor in either did not understand their specification, installed material that was non -compliant and did not realize it was non-compliant. But in any case, didn’t test the floor.
Our suggestion is always, after your ESD floor is installed, the company that put it in for you – and that could be the manufacturer who supplied the material – should be willing to have someone, even if it’s the installer, test the floor and provide you, in writing, certification that, based on your specification, the floor meets the standards and the tests using the test methods in your specification, and they should be willing to sign it. I suggest that when you have the floor tested, you should always have someone also do a walking body voltage test. I think that strategy will help avoid the possibility of the wrong floor getting installed in the first place. Because I can tell you if I showed you an ESD carpet, and then I showed you with the same carpet in the same color, but without ESD properties, you wouldn’t be able to know why one was different than the other unless you put an ohm meter on them to measure the difference.
Rick: So unless you test and certify your new ESD floor after it’s been installed, you don’t really know for sure whether it complies with the applicable standards for your industry. That means you would have no real proof of purchase and instead of offering ESD protection, your new floor could actually be posing a serious risk to your business.
Dave: Final word of advice here is require in writing certification, proving that the floor you bought actually meets the standards in the specification that you wrote. If you look at these three mistakes as something that are easily avoided, I think it will cover 95% of the possible problems you would have in the future.
We hope you learned something today. If you have questions about the podcast, give us a call at 617-923-2000. Even though we specialize in solving problems with flooring, if you have a question about static discharge, how to install a floor, how to test the floor, we’ll be glad to help you. Thanks for listening.
Rick: Welcome to Static Bursts. Our podcast series will discuss the threat static electricity poses to your business, and how to address those risks.
Dave: I’m your host, Dave Long, founder and president of StaticWorx. We make static control flooring.
Rick: And I’m your co-host, Rick Frauton.
In our previous episode, we discussed some of the mistakes that are commonly made when selecting an ESD floor – such as failure to consider the type of footwear that will be worn in the space. Today, we continue the discussion as we focus on the total cost of ownership of an ESD floor over time. Dave reminds our listeners not to make the mistake of thinking only about the initial costs of flooring materials, but also to consider the costs related to installation, maintenance and repairs, as well as the cost of any downtime associated with these activities.
Dave: What am I talking about when I’m talking about cost of ownership? I’m not just talking about the original cost to put the floor in. People get so hung up on the original cost. Obviously there’s a price for that. But what’s the price for replacing a floor once an operation can’t be interrupted? In other words, has the specifier thought about what needs to be done to either replace that floor, take care of that floor or repair that floor in what could be a very chaotic environment?
So best example, an FAA flight tower. How do you replace flooring in a flight tower? Do you tell the airlines not to operate any planes for two or three hours? Probably not. Do you tell people to offload their responsibilities to a different flight tower? There’s a reason the flight tower is located where it is; obviously you’re not going to do that. So you’ve got to have a strategy in place where when you select the flooring that goes in that flight tower, that it’s going to last as long as possible, but also that if a tile needs to be repaired or replaced or if you need to gain access to cabling underneath that tile because maybe the subfloor is a raised access floor – you need to think about how is that floor attached to whatever the subfloor is, and how easy is it to pull a tile up, put another one in its place or gain access to the area below?
And there’s a number of strategies for that, starting with the idea that some of these floors can actually be installed without using any adhesive. It’s a chemical that you have to apply to a surface and allow it to dry for a certain amount of time. So one of the strategies that a lot of flight people find to be very attractive, is they call them TacTiles. What they really are is a four inch by four inch pieces of plastic with adhesive on them, and they actually lock carpet tiles together. And that way, if for some reason in the future you need to relay out the floor and replace the tile because maybe it becomes damaged, they’re very easy to take apart and put back together again. Whereas adhesive might be a more permanent installation method. But it also might be an installation method that takes us longer to deploy.
Rick: So the cost of installing with an adhesive is a significant factor for floors that require it. But there are alternatives to using adhesive and some types of ESD floors don’t need it, such as epoxy coatings. Epoxy floors may be less expensive than other flooring types in terms of the initial material cost, but does that tell the whole story?
Dave: Cost of Ownership with epoxies? Let’s think about an epoxy floor. It gets put down and allowed to dry in an empty room and it looks like glass. That’s the last time it’s ever going to look like glass. Epoxy floors are extremely durable. They’re easy to roll equipment over. But they’re also rather difficult to repair in short time spans. So when you’re looking at using a coating, one of the things you need to think about is what kind of activities will go on this floor that might cause it to become damaged. Because it might actually be the least expensive solution for a factory. But if you’re looking at the possibility of having to repair it, because maybe this factory, you give a lot of tours to customers and visitors, and you want it to always look the way it did when it was brand new, you might discover that, Yeah, the epoxy looked great for two years, but now here we are in year five, and it’s got all these micro abrasions in it and it doesn’t have any shine. And now it doesn’t look good.
I remember years ago, I went to a company in Sterling, Virginia, and I sat in the lobby, and when they moved into the building, they were currently occupying, they took a lot of pictures on move-in day, and their floor looked beautiful. It was a coating and it was very shiny. And they’d been in this building now, I guess maybe about seven years. But I went up to their conference room. The owner of the company said to me, I’m pretty sure we’re going to want another epoxy floor. And I said to him, Have you compared the pictures in your lobby from when that floor was brand new to what your floor looks like right now. And I took a little bit of a gamble. And I said, because they do not look anything like each other. As far as I can tell, your floor is now dull and drab, and you have no way to make it look nice again. So he looked at me and he said, you know, it’s funny, but I’ve heard that from other people. What would you suggest? I said, Well, first of all, I’m not telling you not to use a coating because we make coatings. What I’m telling you is that if you’re interested in having a floor that you can bring back to its original luster, you might want to think about either rubber or vinyl tile. Both those products require more maintenance than an epoxy floor, particularly the vinyl floor. But anytime during the lifecycle of that floor you have the ability to make it look brand new again. If that’s something that’s important to you, you may want to consider it.
They ended up actually going with vinyl tiles – less expensive than rubber, a little more expensive than the epoxy coating that we had offered them. But at the end, two years in, they actually sent me an email and said, we were a little bit reluctant with going with the vinyl. When we first put it in, we had a little bit of trouble getting our maintenance company to do things the way we wanted to. But now we’re extremely happy. Because whenever we damage a tile, we can just pick it up and put a new one in its place. The problem we had with epoxies was once we had a damaged area, we had to shut down that area to do a repair. And on top of that, the repairs always looked different than the adjacent area right next to it. So we feel like we made a good decision.
So when I talk about cost of ownership, I’m not just talking about maintenance, I’m talking about repairs. I’m also talking about appearance. If you just start to look at your own application, you can easily forecast some of these things and not just look at the original check that you have to write for the material you’re going to buy.
Rick: Dave, so far, you have warned against overlooking the type of footwear that will be on an ESD floor, and we now know that the total cost of ownership is not limited to the flooring material alone. What is another common mistake to avoid when investing in an ESD floor?
Dave: So the third one, not testing the floor after it’s installed. Two weeks ago, I got a phone call from a company that told me they put in 70,000 square feet of ESD flooring in their factory in Florida. They recently tested the floor and they found an area of about 1000 square feet that does not meet ANSI/ESD S20.20 standards. The floor is registering on their resistance meter over 1 billion ohms which is the same thing as one times 10 to the ninth (1 x 10E9). And that’s not acceptable if your measure is over 1 billion ohms.
So they wanted to know why I thought that floor may have failed. When we talked about their testing, one of the things that came out of the conversation is, they didn’t actually test the floor when it was brand new. That means that floor may never have been in compliance. That could possibly mean that during the entire life of that floor, any product that was handled in that area was made in an environment that’s not compliant with their ISO certification. So you need to test your floor when it’s brand new. Hopefully the people doing the work for you have the ability to do that for you. Doesn’t mean you don’t want to hire an independent party to come in afterward. But you should have proof of purchase and that means knowing exactly what you bought.
Along a similar line, one of the FAA locations contacted us because they were testing flooring in their flight tower, and they discovered that the flooring did not meet their specifications. Their specification calls for the flooring to have a minimum resistance of a million ohms. When they tested their floor, they were able to get readings, two orders of magnitude more conductive than a million ohms. That means that according to their spec, which has a minimum resistance of ten to the sixth (10E6), they were measuring resistance of a floor that was as low as 10 to the fourth (10E4). The reason the FAA has a standard and is concerned about conductivity to begin with, is because they’re worried about the potential for people to get electrocuted.
I’ve never heard of anyone getting electrocuted working on an ESD floor. But the FAA has a 600 page document that deals with grounding, lightning and surge suppression and minimum resistance values of the floor in order to protect their people. So in their case, whoever put the floor in either did not understand their specification, installed material that was non -compliant and did not realize it was non-compliant. But in any case, didn’t test the floor.
Our suggestion is always, after your ESD floor is installed, the company that put it in for you – and that could be the manufacturer who supplied the material – should be willing to have someone, even if it’s the installer, test the floor and provide you, in writing, certification that, based on your specification, the floor meets the standards and the tests using the test methods in your specification, and they should be willing to sign it. I suggest that when you have the floor tested, you should always have someone also do a walking body voltage test. I think that strategy will help avoid the possibility of the wrong floor getting installed in the first place. Because I can tell you if I showed you an ESD carpet, and then I showed you with the same carpet in the same color, but without ESD properties, you wouldn’t be able to know why one was different than the other unless you put an ohm meter on them to measure the difference.
Rick: So unless you test and certify your new ESD floor after it’s been installed, you don’t really know for sure whether it complies with the applicable standards for your industry. That means you would have no real proof of purchase and instead of offering ESD protection, your new floor could actually be posing a serious risk to your business.
Dave: Final word of advice here is require in writing certification, proving that the floor you bought actually meets the standards in the specification that you wrote. If you look at these three mistakes as something that are easily avoided, I think it will cover 95% of the possible problems you would have in the future.
We hope you learned something today. If you have questions about the podcast, give us a call at 617-923-2000. Even though we specialize in solving problems with flooring, if you have a question about static discharge, how to install a floor, how to test the floor, we’ll be glad to help you. Thanks for listening.
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Other Podcast Episodes
Have you ever wondered why we recommend static-dissipative flooring for some applications and conductive for others? Shouldn't both types of flooring work for any application? No, because electrical standards vary by industry.In episode 2 of Static Bursts, Dave and Rick discuss the technical difference between static-dissipative and conductive floors. Standards for flight towers, communications facilities and other end-user applications require flooring with electrical resistance measuring between 1.0 x 10E6 and 1.0 x 10E9. Standards for electronics manufacturing, however, allow for any floor measuring below 1.0 x 10E9. Dave explains why it's important to know and follow industry standards for the specific application where the ESD floor will be installed.
How can you predict whether an ESD flooring material will perform in your workspace? What tests should you do to qualify the floor & why does it matter how the tests are performed? In 2014, ESD standard S20.20 changed to include point-to-point and system resistance tests as well as walking body voltage tests. Learn why these tests matter, what they entail, how to perform the tests properly, and why it’s crucial to evaluate the flooring-footwear combination. Dave Long, president of Staticworx, discusses a process called the Qualification Phase – i.e., the tests that should be performed on flooring materials under consideration, before you select an ESD floor.
New floors are typically installed over the following pre-existing surfaces: VCT (vinyl composition tile), VAT (vinyl asbestos tile), or coatings over concrete. While it is possible and sometimes preferable to install a new floor directly over an old surface, a number of steps should be taken to ensure that the new floor does not fail. The steps including destructive testing to determine whether the bond between the existing surface and subfloor (or existing surfaces) is intact and exactly what lies below the current surface - subfloor? Old tile or coating? Layers of tiles? – as well as testing for asbestos and other regulated chemicals. Dave Long and Rick Frauton discuss situations in which companies have run into trouble, installing new flooring over old, and explain the steps necessary to avoid similar problems.
Moisture or vapor in the concrete subfloor can cause your floor to fail, resulting in serious costs down the line – in some cases, vacating the premises and installing a new floor. People often assume, falsely, that in arid climates, moisture is non-existent. In this episode, Dave and Rick discuss what happens when people fail to do their due diligence (perform moisture tests or ignore readings), and offers advice on how to avoid costly problems.
How do you calculate the actual (full) cost of an ESD floor? Upfront costs for material and installation are only part of the total expenditure. To evaluate the actual, long-term cost of an ESD floor, it’s important to consider the costs of maintenance and repair. In this episode of Static Bursts, Dave and Rick discuss maintenance and repair of ESD epoxy, vinyl, carpet and rubber flooring and what you can expect from each flooring material.
Installing a floor in a 24/7 operational facility comes with its own set of challenges. As with any flooring installation, it’s important to consider logistics: Will chemicals be used? Adhesives? Coatings? Are there toxins or odors to deal with? What is the condition of the current floor or subfloor? Will the old floor require removal? Dave and Rick discuss the optimal way to install an ESD floor in 24/7 operational spaces – without adhesive or chemicals and with neither downtime nor disruption.
ESD Epoxy coatings have evolved over the years to meet the needs of different industries. Generation 1 coatings, consisting of a single layer of black paint, were cheap, easy to repair and ugly. Today’s Generation 3 epoxy coatings are attractive, easy to install and repair, and offer significant improvements in ESD performance. In this podcast, Dave and Rick discuss the history and evolution of ESD epoxy coatings – from their introduction in the 1950s, through improvements in Gen 2 coatings, to the high-performance Gen 3 coatings available today.
In this three-minute episode, Dave and Rick discuss how to write specifications for ESD flooring. Learn why you should never rely solely on technical specifications provided by ESD flooring manufacturers and how properly write specs that comply with industry ESD standards.
In this episode, Dave and Rick discuss ESD floors and electrical safety. At some point when discussing grounded conductive floors, the question of safety always arises, along with whether or not grounding a conductive floor puts people in harm’s way. Referring to an actual case study, Dave talks about a situation in which a floor installed for the FAA was too conductive to meet the FAA safety standards. The client had been told that drying the pressure-sensitive adhesive would solve the problem, making the entire floor less conductive. Dave talks about why this is not true, and why it’s extremely important to adhere to electrical standards as they are written.
ESD flooring is a generic term. In this episode, Dave and Rick discuss what people mean by ESD flooring. Dave provides a basic tutorial on how ESD floors work, and why – rather than relying on a manufacturer’s spec sheet - it’s crucial to test the electrical properties of any ESD floor under consideration.
ESD carpet can be an ideal floor for many different spaces, particularly for critical 24/7 operations where a soft walking surface and/or sound attenuation is necessary or desired. Carpet is also attractive and, compared to certain higher-cost materials, reasonably priced. There are, however, hidden costs buyers should be aware of before selecting ESD carpeting. In this podcast, Dave and Rick discuss the reasons carpet construction, fiber geometry, modification ratio and carpet design are crucial for understanding the real cost of ESD carpet.
In this short 3-minute podcast episode, Dave and Rick talk about why no single type of ESD flooring material is suitable for every application. Flooring materials like ESD vinyl must be used in conjunction with special ESD footwear. Those materials are unsuitable for facilities in which personnel wear regular street shoes. In spaces where street shoes are allowed – data centers, 9-1-1 call centers and government offices, for instance – the ESD floor must dissipate static to ground and also inhibit static generation in the first place.
Three types of conductive adhesives are typically used to install ESD floors: epoxy, acrylic, and pressure-sensitive. Each adhesive has advantages and disadvantages. Dave explains the differences, details pros and cons, and discusses why – and in what circumstances – one adhesive might be preferable over another. The fourth option is to choose a glue-free installation, such as interlocking ESD tiles. Interlocking tiles are chemical-free, have no fumes or mess, and can be installed in a functional workspace without disrupting operations.
Properly qualifying an ESD floor requires more than testing for electrical resistance. We used to believe that the conductivity of a floor predicted its potential for static charge generation. We now know that resistance and charge generation are independent qualities: one does not relate to the other. A floor can be conductive and still generate static electricity. We also know that flooring materials perform differently with different types of footwear. In this episode, Dave and Rick discuss why it’s important to test the floor as part of an integrated ESD flooring/footwear system – and to test for both conductivity and charge generation.
In this episode, Dave and Rick explain how ESD chairs work and why they act as a bridge between two perfect methods of grounding (an ESD floor and wrist strap). The ESD floor grounds and prevents charge generation while people walk. Once the person sits and lifts his or her feet, they are no longer grounded. There may be a wrist strap at the work station, but until the person puts it on they’re a live wire. If they touch a component – or expensive prototype, for example – before putting on the wrist strap, any charge on their body will transfer to the component. ESD chairs ground the person in the chair, prevent charge generation and protecting against random ESD events.
StaticWorx was asked to evaluate a failing floor in an electronics manufacturing facility. After a fire the client had purchased a new ESD vinyl tile floor. Three months into the installation the floor was already lifting. In addition to unmitigated vapor, the building had been built using tilt-up construction. Silicone bond-breakers - sprayed on the concrete to keep the wall slabs from adhering to the subfloor - contaminated the concrete, preventing the tile from adhering properly. As the building was operational and the client wanted to avoid shutdown, Dave recommended interlocking ESD vinyl tile. StaticWorx installed a 10’ x 10’ test patch. Two months later, the interlocking floor was intact. StaticWorx covered the entire floor in the operational facility with interlocking vinyl tile - without the client’s losing a day of production.
Most people looking to purchase an ESD floor are starting at ground zero, with little knowledge about the product. In this two part series, Dave and Rick discuss the key criteria for selecting an ESD floor. Part one covers the application (environment and work performed in the space); aesthetics; installation methods; and maintenance requirements.
When choosing an ESD floor, it’s important to consider all the variables related to your specific application. Will you roll heavy loads on the floor? Do you need noise attenuation, anti-fatigue characteristics, or reflectivity? How long do you plan to stay in the building? When evaluating options, remember that the cost per square foot is only one part of the total cost of owning the floor. Installation, labor, maintenance, operational downtime add up – in the short term as well as over time.
Three fundamental mistakes account for a majority of ESD flooring failures: selecting the wrong floor for the application: failure to consider total cost of ownership; failing to test the floor after it’s been installed. Avoiding these mistakes helps ensure success. This first of a two-part series on avoiding ESD flooring failures explains why it’s important to select a floor based on the specific application and details the primary considerations that should be taken into account: assessing the type of footwear people will wear in the space and considering goals and objectives, including how the space will be used.
Learning Center Articles
- ESD Basics
- Installation & Maintenance
- Selecting & Specifying an ESD Floor
- Technical Information
- 7 Common Mistakes Selecting an ESD floor
- A Guide to ESD Flooring Selection
- Avoid Costly Failures: What You Need to Know When Specifying ESD Flooring
- Choosing ESD Flooring for:
- ESD Footwear: What Is It and When Is It Necessary?
- ESD Footwear for Electronics Manufacturing and Handling Applications
- Facility Managers’ Guide to Selecting ESD Flooring
- The Need for Due Diligence in Specifying Static-Free Flooring
- Standard of Care for Specifying Floors in Mission-Critical Spaces
- Understanding the Hidden Costs of ESD Flooring
- The Case Against Overly Conductive Flooring
- Conductive vs Dissipative
- Electrical Resistance
- Electrical Resistance in Mission-Critical Spaces
- Ensuring Accuracy: Why It’s Critical to Clean Floors and Probes Before ESD Testing
- ESD Standards and Test Methods
- Resistance, Resistivity, and Real World Application
- Walking Body Voltage
StaticWorx high-performance static-control floors protect electronic components, explosives, and high-speed computers from damage caused by static electricity. ESD flooring is part of a system. Choices should always be based on objective, researched evidence. When you partner with us, we look at all possible items that may need to integrate with the floor, and, focusing on your goals and objectives, help you find the right floor for your application.