Egg Manufacturing – Wet Environment with Tough Cleaners

It’s important to protect your concrete slab – it’s a structural component of the building that’s housing your operation. In dry environments, this is relatively easy. But when you’re dealing in wet environments, that require caustic and acidic cleaners, then you’ll need to install a durable, industrial flooring system that can belongs in this environment.

Where Flooring Estimators Go Wrong

When the project location looks like the picture above, the first thing you’ll need to observe is that these floors are chronically wet. And that’s because this egg processing plant needs to keep a clean operation, so the equipment is always being washed. But where the flooring estimator goes wrong is assuming that epoxy is a good flooring material for this concrete.

Epoxy IS NOT a good flooring material for this wet environment. It is very moisture sensitive, and will delaminate from the substrate if moisture breaches.

Urethane cement is the correct choice. Urethane cement has a high tolerance to vapor transmission, and is partially permeable. This allows subtle vapor to transfer through, which prevents blistering, delamination, and other bond breakers.

In this wet environment, we’ll also need texture to be added tot he floor. Wet process areas require a slip-resistant finish. This is for the safety of the workers, and the company. So we broadcasted 1500 lbs of 40 mesh sand into the wet urethane cement.

This specific company uses caustic cleaners. This is important to know so that we can install the correct top coat. In this case, nitric acid is a common cleaner for the stainless steel equipment. Therefore, a novolac epoxy was an optimal choice for the top coat.