In that 2018 study, 39 laboratories in eight nations participated. The program was supervised by Carl Strautins of Safe Environments in Australia. Testing included five different flooring surfaces: three ceramic tiles and two abrasive films. Both hard and soft rubber test sliders were used, and all of the surfaces were tested wet for DCOF.

In 2022, Mr. Strautins then conducted a follow-up floor slip resistance testing program in which 20 laboratories participated. [In the new study’s results [(Proficiency Testing Report No. 26833, Safe Environments), SDA is identified as Lab K.] Two types of surfaces, two specific commercially-available ceramic tiles (one black and one gray), were used. For the study, these tiles were distributed to the labs for wet DCOF testing using the pendulum tribometer, using only the Slider 96 hard slider, which mimics standard shoe soles.

Statistical analysis of the results indicated that the wet Slip Resistance Value (or Pendulum Test Value) was approximately 20.3 for the black tile, with a maximum permissible error of 2; and 40.6 for the gray tile, with a maximum permissible error of 2.5.

Results submitted by the 20 labs were classified as “satisfactory performance,” “questionable performance,” and “unsatisfactory performance.” For both tested surfaces, Safety Direct America’s test results were well within the limits for satisfactory performance. This again provides reassuring proof that SDA’s floor slip resistance testing lab provides accurate data for pendulum floor slip tests.

Only one lab of the twenty participating labs had one result that was in the “unsatisfactory” category, which proves that the pendulum device has reproducibility and precision between labs, which is required for all sound scientific devices. The English XL (VIT) and Brungraber Mark II (PIAST) tribometers were not able to show that they had reasonable precision, which is why ASTM F1677 and ASTM F1679 were withdrawn by the ASTM in 2006. These instruments get wildly different answers on identical tiles depending on whether the user is working for the plaintiff or the defense in a big-money slip and fall lawsuit. Those instruments are therefore not considered valid scientific tribometers. Unfortunately, they are too often still allowed in American courtrooms where expert liars present bogus data to help win lawsuits using unproven, easily-manipulated instruments.

The BOT-3000E can also get wildly unreliable readings on many polished floors, which is why the latest test method, the Tile Council of America’s (TCNA) ANSI A326.3, clearly states that “it can provide a useful comparison of surfaces, but does not predict the likelihood a person will or will not slip on a hard surface flooring material.”

Unfortunately, the TCNA has proven over the decades that it works to help tile and flooring manufacturers sell slippery products with test methods that say almost all floors aren’t slippery, and their tests have never been based on any good science or research. They promoted ASTM C1028 before it was withdrawn, and then created ANSI A326.3 to fill the void left when that horribly misleading SCOF test needed to go away because it was so dangerous and was sending so many American to emergency rooms.

The most significant and useful pendulum test (and floor slip resistance test) in the world today is the Sustainable Slip Resistance (SSR) test. Initial wet slip resistance is first measured with the pendulum DCOF tester. Then the sample is abraded for 500 cycles with a standard abrasive pad uniformly loaded with 1 kg to mimic 1-2 years of heavy foot traffic on the flooring. A second wet pendulum test then shows how much the slip resistance has changed due to abrasion (or simulated wear of the flooring sample).

This is the most significant test because the value of a flooring to the buyer depends not only on the initial slip resistance, but the slip resistance after an economically reasonable life span. McDonald’s Restaurants in Australia, for example, has specified that the sample must have a wet Pendulum Test Value of 35 or more after abrasion before they install it in their restaurants. Otherwise, it has been found that an initially slip-resistant flooring can have become slippery wet after only a few weeks in a busy fast-food restaurant. A floor that doesn’t maintain it’s slip resistance over time is a floor that will need to be replaced often, costing the building owner unnecessary expenses.

The 2022 study by Strautins and Plucinski published on May 5, 2023 has analyzed results from the SSR test. Only five labs participated this time. Two samples were tested at each slip resistance test lab.

The test results after analysis indicated that Safety Direct America reported the most accurate results of the five, as indicated by Z scores. Therefore, we can conclude that Sotter Engineering Corporation’s Safety Direct America floor slip resistance test lab is the world’s top lab for accuracy in the world’s most important and informative floor slip resistance test.

If you need your flooring assessed for slip resistance, we conduct testing in our lab and around North America and beyond. We don’t specialize in lying in court when your floor has caused an avoidable injury to an innocent pedestrian, but we specialize in providing reliable and accurate slip resistance test data to help building owners and architects make informed decisions and avoid slip and fall accidents on their properties.

Our “recommended slip test plus wear package” includes both the ANSI A326.3 test (because so many people have been fooled into believing that it’s the “latest, greatest American test” and those results are too often needed to show to misinformed building inspectors), and also includes the Sustainable Slip Resistance Test which will evaluate the slip resistance of your flooring sample using 50 years of international pendulum testing research into real-world slip and fall accidents, and it’ll include testing the DCOF both before and after simulated wear.

Reach out to us and get your flooring tested for DCOF slip resistance today!

The post New Australian Study Shows Sotter Engineering (Safety Direct America) is World’s Top Pendulum Floor Slip Resistance Testing Laboratory appeared first on Safety Direct America.

When the “tile council” was found by the ASTM to be promoting junk science to make the American tile industry happy with “passing” slip resistance assessments on even the slipperiest of flooring, the TCNA needed another test to keep American flooring manufacturers happy. So they published ANSI A326.3. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…

If you trusted the TCNA when they promoted the now-withdrawn nonsensical SCOF test ASTM C1028, which measured how slippery a floor was to someone who is standing still (static) on it, then shame on them. Everyone with half a brain around the world knew this test was no good. If you’re believing that their newest slip resistance test ANSI A326.3 is based on good science, then shame on YOU. You should know by now that the TCNA is in the business of making the tile industry happy, not using internationally accepted science to help reduce slip and fall injuries. If they were in the business of using internationally accepted science, they wouldn’t need to write their own test methods (with the help of major American tile producers).

The British pendulum tester has over 50 years of research behind it, and it’s the primary way of assessing floor slip resistance around the world in at least 50 nations. The European Union and the United Kingdom’s BS EN 16165 (2021) describes the pendulum dynamic coefficient of friction (DCOF) test, and so does New Zealand and Australia’s AS 4586 (2013). Singapore, China, Israel, and many other nations have discovered that the pendulum is easily the most reliable and trustworthy way of assessing the real-world slip resistance of flooring both in the lab and in the field. There’s no need to re-invent the wheel here in the USA, which has historically been home to numerous bad floor slip resistance test methods that have had to be withdrawn by the ASTM over the decades. (See the ASTM F13 committee’s dismal record of publishing and/or promoting and then having withdrawn their nonsensical, non-science-based test methods such as C1028, F489, F1677, F1678, F1679, F609, and on and on and on.)

Most slippery floors can still “pass” the incredibly low bar the TCNA sets for safety in ANSI A326.3, and the test method is chock full of disclaimers and warnings, including that “it can provide a useful comparison of surfaces, but does not predict the likelihood a person will or will not slip on a hard surface flooring material.” Then why do the test? Why not utilize the 50 years of peer-reviewed international research that can help assess the real-world slip resistance of a flooring using the British pendulum tester described in ASTM E303 (2022)? The answer is: when you need some bogus data claiming your slippery floor isn’t slippery.

As an example, we had a concrete polishing client who knew that if he polished the concrete in supermarkets just before a rain, then there was sure to be complaints and slips as people tracked water on to his freshly polished floors. He was creating virtual ice rinks in numerous supermarkets and he knew it. He knew it from decades of experiencing this issue and dealing with the fallout (lawsuits, complaints, late-night phone calls from store managers, etc., etc.). He also knew that after months of heavy foot traffic following his polishing of the floors, the floors got roughened up and the slips and complaints virtually stopped when the floors got wet.

He asked us to perform tests using the British pendulum tester and the BOT-3000E using the TCNA’s test method ANSI A326.3 on both freshly polished concrete floors and on floors that had been roughened up after months of heavy foot traffic. The pendulum said that a freshly polished floor was quite a bit more slippery when wet than one with some roughness and texture. Our client knew this to be correct based on his real-world experience. ANSI A326.3 said that the more finely he polished the floor, the safer it got. That’s the exact opposite of what we both knew to be true (and all of the store managers), but the store owners could theoretically use this bogus BOT-3000E data on polished concrete floors to help defend the numerous slip and fall claims they were fighting.

Static friction testing in the USA using ASTM C1028 and the misinformation that anything above a 0.60 SCOF for a level floor was considered “safe” no doubt caused countless life-changing injuries to innocent people. The misinformation helped tile manufacturers and floor polishers sell their popular but slippery polished and glossy products and services and helped the TCNA sell lots of floor slip resistance tests. ANSI A326.3 will no doubt continue this misinformation crisis into the future, causing countless more innocent people to suffer in hospital beds, and send them into premature graves so that tile manufacturers can continue to sell shiny tile that’s slippery when wet, with the help of junk science that says slippery floors aren’t slippery.

ANSI/NFSI B101.1 was published in 2009 to mimic ASTM C1028. It was also an SCOF test and it suffered from the same problems that ASTM C1028 did. It was allowed to expire around the same time that C1028 was withdrawn.

There’s a “national safety institute” in the USA that revived this really awful test after many years of claiming it was a reliable test and charging lots of money for “high traction certifications” of products through the use of this bogus test. I suppose once you’ve fooled enough people with misleading misinformation and nonsense, you’ve just got to keep going.

ANSI B101.1 just creates false data saying that slippery floors aren’t slippery, so this “safety institute” re-published it through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 2020 and still uses it today to make flooring manufacturers and floor polishers happy clients at the peril of pedestrians across the country.

Fool me once…

We specialize in reliable, internationally accepted floor slip resistance testing services to help make the world a safer and better place. We’ll leave the lies and misinformation to the American “tile councils” and national “safety institutes”. May they all have restless nights of sleep for what they do to innocent people for a quick buck.

The post Fool Me Once: The Floor Slip Resistance Testing Misinformation Campaign Fooling the USA appeared first on Safety Direct America.

“type of use,

“traffic,

“expected contaminants,

“expected maintenance,

“expected wear, and

“manufacturers’ guidelines and recommendations.”

The caveats are the most crucially important parts of this standard! We will suggest a way of dealing with them. (There are also additional caveats and disclaimers in other parts of the standard.)

The standard gives no suggestions for how to evaluate the six factors above. It stands to reason that if these six factors (and others) are ignored (as they usually are) or not considered adequately, meeting the minimum DCOF number (e.g., 0.42 or 0.55) is virtually meaningless. According to pendulum test data, as well as real-world observations, a floor can be very slippery and still exceed the 0.42 criterion.

The ANSI standard totals 17 pages, and it and any updates are available free from Tile Council of North America (TCNA). We shall not try to detail it here, but the TCNA is the same organization that spent nearly two decades wreaking havoc across the USA by promoting the use of the utterly misleading ASTM C1028 test, before it had to be withdrawn by the ASTM for being so meaningless and dangerous. C1028 was likely the cause on tens of thousands of preventable slip and fall accidents over those two decades.ASTM C1028 said almost all floors were not slippery, and gave “passing” ratings to the most slippery floors in existence.

We suggest that pendulum DCOF slip resistance test data be used to assess whether a flooring is suitable for a specific application. This is the basis for our “Recommended Slip Test Package,” which includes both (1) an ANSI A326.3 DCOF AcuTest using the BOT-3000E (to satisfy those who have been fooled into believing this test is based on good science), and (2) a DCOF test using the pendulum slip resistance tester, which has a peer-reviewed published national standard in at least 50 nations and has been in use since 1971 (to assess the real-world slip resistance of a floor based on good science and over 50 years of international research). The pendulum is the most commonly used pedestrian slip tester in use worldwide.

Some recommended minimum DCOF values (with caveats) for level surfaces from the new ANSI A326.3 are as follows:

Interior, dry 0.42 (page 2 of the standard)

Interior, wet with water 0.42 (p. 2)

Interior, wet plus (as declared by manufacturer; including barefoot areas) 0.50 (p. 5)

Exterior, wet 0.55 (p. 5)

Oils, greases 0.55 (p. 6)

These minimum values can still allow for very slippery floors to be installed in areas where they will certainly cause problems, so we recommend pendulum DCOF testing to assess real-world slip resistance of flooring and avoid slip accidents on your property. The BOT-3000E used in the ANSI A326.3 DCOF Test can suffer from a phenomenon called stiction (the rubber slider sticks to certain polished floors giving erroneous high readings), which allows the machine to give excellent scores to polished concrete and polished stone. This could have those fooled by this floor slippage test polishing their pool decks! (Talk about a personal injury attorney’s dream come true!?) A British pendulum standard simply recommends a minimum wet Pendulum Test Value (PTV wet) of 36 or higher for level floors that are liable to get wet in use for a rating of “low slip potential”. However, since 1999 Australia has had a detailed set of PTV wet standards that are specific to many different situations. Recommended minimum wet PTV values in that standard range from 12 to 55.

We suggest that the appropriate Australian Pendulum Test Value minimum, or a minimum for a situation of similar applicability, be applied instead of the ANSI A326.3 test results for DCOF. ASTM E303-22 is very much similar to the Australian pendulum test now that it was updated and revised in 2022. We recommend using ASTM E303 to assess floor safety using the latest American slip resistance test.

Stuck with an existing floor that’s had complaints of slips? Coat it with our transparent, long-wearing SparkleTuff Anti-Slip Floor Coating. It can retain its wet slip resistance after more than a million people have walked across it. The floor need only be clean and dry to apply SparkleTuff using the roller cover we supply. We have yet to find a flooring to which SparkleTuff won’t adhere!

The post 2022 Revised ANSI A326.3 Has Five Situation-Specific DCOF Minimums — And Crucial Caveats appeared first on Safety Direct America.

“Until recently, there were four American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards for measuring the COF of walkways using the BOT 3000E tribometer. The following developments have now effectively reduced that number to one:

“1. The standards development committee that created the A137.1 and A326.3 standards is ANSI A108. In 2017, ANSI A108 incorporated the ANSI A326.3 measurement method standard into the A137.1 Standard which covers the full specification for manufacturing ceramic tile. Although the internet has many references to measuring slip resistance per ANSI A137.1, that standard itself calls for using ANSI A326.3 which is a method valid for all hard surface floors and not just ceramic [tile].”

(Since the original publication of this blog post, ASTM E303-22 was published in June of 2022, which is now the latest slip resistance test method for assessing real-world slip resistance based on 50 years of international research in at least 50 nations. This is the test we recommend for assessing slip risk.)

“2. In January 2020, the National Floor Safety Institute [NFSI] announced that their ANSI accreditation to develop floor safety standards has been terminated. [Since then, the article announcing this has been taken down from the internet, the NFSI somehow regained their publishing status with ANSI, and the NFSI started re-publishing their debunked standards through ANSI.] The two NFSI/ANSI standards for measuring floor slip resistance, B101.1 and B101.3, had both missed their respective deadlines [2014 and 2017] to be revised/renewed by the NFSI and have been, until January 2020, in an uncertain status. With the termination of the NFSI/ANSI accreditation, there can no longer be a renewal and those two standards effectively lapse.

“There is no longer any ANSI standard for measuring the Static Coefficient of Friction (SCOF), thus completing the transition in the United States away from the SCOF method to the globally recognized DCOF method.”

The new ANSI A326.3 is virtually identical to the older ANSI A137.1 tile slip test except that it did not involve the participation of the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI). The Tile Council of North America [TCNA] was Secretariat for A326.3, which was released in April 2017 and updated again in 2021.

The TCNA endorsed and promoted the use of the horribly misleading and dangerous ASTM C1028 SCOF test for nearly two decades before it was withdrawn by the ASTM in 2014 for being based on junk science, and the TCNA continues to cater to the tile manufacturers that they appear to work for with ANSI A326.3, which states that “it can provide a useful comparison of surfaces, but does not predict the likelihood a person will or will not slip on a hard surface flooring material.” It should therefore not be used to assess slip risk. It goes on to say that “the measured DCOF value shall not be the only factor in determining the appropriateness of a hard surface flooring material for a particular application” and “no claim of correlation to actual footwear or human ambulation is made.”

To trust ANSI A326.3 to assess real-world slip risk is to ignore what the test method itself says. Instead, using ASTM E303 can give architects, flooring manufacturers, and specifiers reliable data based on 50 years of internationally-accepted, peer-reviewed science into slip and fall accidents in over 50 nations. This is the dynamic coefficient of friction (DCOF) test used all over the world outside the highly litigious USA to help building owners and building designers avoid slip and fall lawsuits on their properties.

ANSI B101.1 was a method for assessing static coefficient of friction (SCOF) using the BOT-3000E. As discussed above, static friction applies only to pedestrians who are standing still and should not be used to assess the safety of moving pedestrians. This is why the ASTM C1028 SCOF method was withdrawn by the ASTM in 2014, and why the ANSI/NFSI B101.1 was allowed to lapse.

ANSI/NFSI B101.3 gave “acceptable” readings to almost every floor on earth, slippery or not. These two bogus test methods should never again be used to assess floor slip resistance. Instead, use the test method that the entire European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, China, India, Israel, and numerous other nations have been using for 50 years – the pendulum DCOF test described in ASTM E303-22. This latest test for floor slip resistance is based on good science and 50 years of international research.

The post BOT-3000E Manufacturer Advises Against Using ANSI/NFSI B101.3 and B101.1 to Assess Floor Slip Resistance appeared first on Safety Direct America.

Some COF measuring instruments, such as BOT-3000E and English XL, are not capable of measuring values above 1.00. However, the pendulum, Tortus, and even the obsolete ASTM C 1028-07 can measure levels above 1.00. A smooth dry floor and a soft rubber slider (simulating athletic shoe bottoms or bare feet) may give dynamic or static COF exceeding 1.0, 2.0 or even 3.00.

Stumbling may occur when going from a low COF floor such as polished marble to an unexpectedly high COF surface such as plush carpet. However, this does not mean that high-COF floors are not safe. One can even walk barefoot on a bed of nails — but be careful, please!

The post Maximum Coefficient of Friction is not Limited to 1.00 appeared first on Safety Direct America.

The Brungraber Mark II and English XL tribometers had provisional standards published by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). They never met the ASTM requirements for precision, and the ASTM withdrew them with no replacements after ten years of waiting for a precision statement to be submitted for either instrument. A more recent version of the Mark II, the Brungraber Mark IIIB, has never been the subject of an official published or peer-reviewed standard. These devices seem to be used mainly by “expert witnesses” (or “expert court liars”) who wish to somehow make a case for their client. The gadgets do not have applicable official standards in other countries either, and thus are not backed by any standards-setting organization anywhere in the world.

The BOT-3000E slip test device has standards issued by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Some have expired. The current one favored by the manufacturer of the instrument, and by Tile Council of North America (TCNA), is ANSI A326.3. We do not recommend using ANSI A326.3 or the BOT-3000E alone for assessing the slip resistance of a floor. The TCNA is famous for promoting slip resistance tests that are easy to “pass” so as to help American tile manufacturers, not building owners. Previous standards (still being sold) for the device include B101.1, B101.3, and A137.1. ANSI A326.3, it should be noted, does not yet have a standard using a softer rubber that would be helpful for measuring barefoot areas.

The most widely accepted test method is known as the “British” Pendulum tester, which was invented by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards and has been in constant use for pedestrian traction since 1971. It is the subject of ASTM Standard E303, has been endorsed by Ceramic Tile Institute of America since 2001, and was validated against human traction testing by the University of Southern California Medical Center’s Department of Biokinesiology & Physical Therapy.

The pendulum has for years been established as an official national standard for pedestrian traction in at least 50 nations including (but not limited to) Australia, Belgium, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dubai, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. The American test method for the pendulum slip resistance test device is called ASTM E303-22.

An advantage of the pendulum is that its safety standard — the minimum wet Pendulum Test Value that is considered safe — is not “one size fits all”, but has some 40 long-standing situation-specific minimums, for example for external level surfaces, external ramps (mild and steep), commercial kitchens, swimming pool decks, external stairways, hospital bathrooms, etc. What is safe for a 10th-floor indoor elevator lobby may not be safe for a communal shower room or pool deck. This is floor slip resistance testing for the 21st century.

The rubber the pendulum uses to simulate shoe heels or bare feet can be hard or soft, with appropriate safety standards for each. Hard rubber is obviously not a good medium for representing bare feet. Soft, flexible media (like skin) can flow around the micro-rough features of a surface that give it good wet slip resistance when hard media (standard shoe soles) are concerned. Therefore a swimming pool deck, for instance, should be tested with soft rubber as well as a hard rubber to see what the real-world slip resistance will be for people wearing shoes as well as people walking barefoot.

The pendulum is also used in the test for Sustainable Slip Resistance established by McDonalds Restaurants after years of research. This test assesses how durable wet slip resistance of flooring is likely to be after many pedestrians have walked it. Another use of the pendulum is for dry testing of gym floors used for basketball, volleyball, etc. in ASTM F2772.

It is extremely important to consider precision when deciding which slip resistance test instruments offer valid results for assessing real-world pedestrian safety. There are instruments that have been developed only to aid in legal defense in the USA, and these instruments allow the user to get whatever answer they are being paid to get for the lawyer who has hired the “expert.” Valid instruments will have international acceptance, have published, peer-reviewed official test standards, and will have been shown to have acceptable precision in interlaboratory studies. The pendulum slip resistance tester meet these criteria, whereas the Brungraber Mark IIIB and English XL devices do not.

Want to win a lawsuit at any cost? Hire someone with a Brungraber Mark IIIB. The device has no published standard anywhere on earth and can get you the result you need to put together an unscrupulous win-at-all-costs case. Want to know if your floor is actually slippery or not using real science? Use a device with an official published standard for its use, such as the pendulum slip resistance tester or the SlipAlert Tribometer.

The post A Review of Standards for Pedestrian Slip Resistance Testing appeared first on Safety Direct America.

For centuries scientists have known that the force, F, needed to overcome friction and drag one object over another is approximately proportional to the normal force N (that is, the force of gravity or whatever else, often expressed in pounds) pressing the two surfaces together:

F = µN

where µ is called the coefficient of friction (COF). The lower limit to µ is zero, but there is no upper limit; it can exceed 1.0 by a wide margin in some cases. Usually, however, it is less than 1.0.

Now to SCOF vs. DCOF. If the two objects are at rest, µ is called the static coefficient of friction, or SCOF. If one surface is moving, µ is the dynamic coefficient DCOF. Frequently under dry conditions SCOF is greater than DCOF, which is typically about 20 percent lower.

When there is water or another lubricant (oil, dust, grease, etc.) on the interface between the two objects, the SCOF vs. DCOF  situation can be drastically different. For one thing, there’s the possibility of hydroplaning causing a much lower DCOF because the two solid surfaces may not be touching; the upper object can “skimboard” or “water ski” along the liquid film with almost zero friction. For a heel touching down lightly on the floor, hydroplaning wholly or partially can happen at a very low speed. On the other hand, under static conditions hydroplaning can’t happen. Thus with lubrication SCOF vs. DCOF can show a very big difference between the two.

For some years wet SCOF was used in a misguided attempt to assess slip safety of walking surfaces. A common test method was American Society for Testing and Materials ASTM C1028. In 2014 ASTM finally recognized that this was counterproductive and withdrew C 1028 with no replacement.

Static friction is appropriate to a pedestrian standing still on a surface, but most slipping injuries happen when the pedestrian is moving. Thus, worldwide, dynamic friction is used by experts to assess pedestrian safety, and SCOF vs. DCOF is not an issue.

The most widely used dynamic test method in the world is the pendulum DCOF skid tester. The digital tribometer BOT-3000E also assesses dynamic friction. The latest American National Standards Institute (ANSI) method using the BOT-3000 is ANSI A326.3, although we don’t recommend using the BOT-3000E alone to assess the slipperiness of a floor. The ANSI A326.3 test method itself says it shouldn’t be used for that purpose, but rather as a “comparison of surfaces”.

Perhaps more important than initial slip resistance of flooring, when it comes out of the factory, is long-term slip resistance. Many initially slip-resistant floors lose their wet slip resistance within a few weeks or months of being installed. That’s why McDonalds Restaurants developed their Sustainable Slip Resistance test to evaluate the effect of wear. It involves laboratory testing with the pendulum before and after a standard abrasive wear protocol. Property owners want their floors to be safe throughout a reasonable economic lifetime of the flooring, and this test helps them achieve that. Just testing as the flooring comes out of the box does not.

Safety Direct America offers both laboratory and field slip resistance testing of flooring and tiles using the pendulum DCOF tester and/or the BOT-3000E DCOF AcuTest. Sustainable slip resistance testing is also a frequently requested option that we provide.

The post Floor Slip Rating: SCOF vs. DCOF appeared first on Safety Direct America.

The manufacturer of the BOT-3000E states that “The ANSI A326.3 standard calls for a specific SBR rubber sensor which simply is not suited for rough, exterior surfaces … a method which uses the BOT to test rougher surfaces would have to prescribe a more robust sensor material.” Most outdoor surfaces that are safe for pedestrians, such as typical sidewalks, roads and crosswalks, have surfaces that are much rougher than typical indoor surfaces.

The BOT-3000E, in our vast experience testing with it, should never be used to assess the slip resistance of polished concrete floors. Using the BOT-3000E to test a polished concrete pool deck would be incredibly dangerous. ANSI A326.3 was published by a “tile council” that works for tile manufacturers and polishing associations to help them sell slippery floors to unsuspecting consumers. It’s like trusting a candy salesman when he says that his sugary candy couldn’t possibly cause cavities in teeth.

A number of expert witnesses in slip and fall litigation — some of them unabashedly crooked — use test devices and methods that were withdrawn with no replacement years ago by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), for reasons that included poor precision. These include the English XL and its withdrawn standard ASTM F1679, and the Brungraber Mark II with ASTM F1677. The users of these instruments are now using a round-about way of trying to give their instruments with poor precision some sort of “validity” by “passing” ASTM F2508, but “passing” this standard does not validate these instruments at all. But with the notorious precision problems associated with the XL, Mark II and Mark III slip test devices, their users are always trying to find some way of unscrupulously fooling juries.

Selection of flooring for areas that get wet in use (restrooms, plazas, commercial kitchens, flower shops, etc.) is often based solely on initial slip resistance — that is, when the flooring comes out of the box before being installed. Unfortunately wet slip resistance is not an immutable property that remains constant forever. Some flooring in areas with high foot traffic loses its good wet slip resistance in a matter of a few weeks, creating a dangerous condition. That is why McDonalds Restaurants spent years developing the test for Sustainable Slip Resistance. The flooring is first tested wet with the pendulum (using a hard or soft rubber slider, or both, as appropriate), abraded using a standard technique, then tested again with the pendulum DCOF tester. Flooring that scores a wet Pendulum Test Value of 35 or higher after abrasion is said to have Sustainable Slip Resistance.

The pendulum test has more than 40 safety standards for specific situations such as external ramps; bathrooms, wards and corridors in hospital and ages care facilities; supermarket aisles; communal shower rooms; wet stairs; and swimming pool decks, ramps and stairs leading into the water. These standards have been in effect essentially unchanged (though reaffirmed) since 1999.

Two ceramic tile and porcelain manufacturers, Daltile and Marazzi, state that “ceramic and porcelain tiles shouldn’t be used in areas where oil, grease, or water is expected on the floor both indoors or out.” Then they proceed to recommend guidelines for wet DCOF minimums in wet, oily or greasy areas. One might question how useful these contradictory statements would be when a property owner is defending against a large personal injury lawsuit. It appears that the manufacturers will not turn down sales for the forbidden areas, but they appear to have ducked any responsibility with their caveat.

Neither manufacturer acknowledges that the slip resistance of their product is likely to change with wear. Once your check clears for the slippery tile you’ve purchased from them, you’re on your own. Remember, they warned you when they gave you the “DCOF results” that their test results do “not predict the likelihood a person will or will not slip on a hard surface flooring material.” Did you think it did despite this warning? Your lawyer’s gonna LOVE you for all the work you send him defending your preventable slip and fall lawsuits!

The post ANSI A326.3 Acutest Does Not Predict Likelihood of Slip appeared first on Safety Direct America.