A few years ago Sotter Engineering Corporation’s Safety Direct America (SDA) floor slip resistance testing laboratory participated in a global interlaboratory program that showed SDA to be one of the world’s three most accurate labs in use of the pendulum floor slip resistance tester. The pendulum is a national standard for pedestrian floor and tile […]
Archive | Sustainable Slip Resistance
RSS feed for this sectionYour Questions About SparkleTuff™ Transparent Anti-Slip Floor Coating
Since Safety Direct America introduced its popular transparent anti-slip floor coating, SparkleTuff™, in September of 2016, we’ve fielded questions from thousands of prospective customers. Here are the most popular ones. 1. Will it adhere to my flooring (epoxy, vinyl, wood, tile, marble, granite, glass, etc.)? Yes. We have yet to find a flooring type that […]
SparkleTuff™ Transparent Anti-Slip Floor Coating Has Outstanding Chemical Resistance, Zero VOCs
We are sometimes asked if SparkleTuff™, our long-lasting transparent anti-slip floor coating with excellent wet slip resistance, has good resistance to chemicals and cleaning/sanitizing agents. It does! It even stands up well to concentrated sulfuric and hydrochloric acids, ethanol, and sodium and ammonium hydroxides! SparkleTuff™ Anti-Slip Floor Coating is a polysiloxane, a type of coating […]
Suggested Specifications for Lifetime Slip Resistance of Flooring
When we’re buying new automobile tires we’d like to know not only that the tires are good at the time of purchase, but that they will have a reasonably long lifetime for us. Michelin, for instance, offers models with mileage warranties (within a time limit) from 36,000 to 80,000 miles. When buying slip-resistant flooring, customers […]
How to Get Reliable and Useful Floor Slip Resistance Test Results
Slip and fall injuries can carry total liabilities that are often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or even more. Investment in flooring is long-term and often involves appreciable capital, whether you are an individual homeowner or have a string of large office buildings and shopping centers. Though the charges for floor slip resistance […]
CoatingsPro article: How to Specify a Slip-Resistant Floor Coating
An article in the March 2020 edition of CoatingsPro™ Magazine details how to specify an anti-slip floor coating, specifically a transparent one. (A printable version of the article is also available.) After establishing a reliable method to determine wet slip resistance, the article discusses initial slip resistance safety criteria; durability testing of the coating’s slip […]
Germany’s DIN 51130 Slip Test: What’s it Good For?
In Europe, a slip resistance test for flooring is prescribed by German Institute for Normalization (DIN) standard DIN 51130. A person wearing industrial-type treaded shoes walks, facing down slope, on a variable-angle ramp which has the flooring to be tested on it. The flooring is coated with motor oil. The walker (without holding the handrails) […]
SparkleTuff Outdoors on Level Surface and Stairs: 30-second video
The video below shows an outdoor level surface and stairs at a large mall, coated with transparent SparkleTuff™ Anti-Slip. A pedestrian walks down the stairs, which are partially wet from the previous day’s rain. With a material cost of about a dollar a square foot, SparkleTuff™ has excellent wet slip resistance by all respected test […]
A Review of Standards for Pedestrian Slip Resistance Testing
There are a number of floor slip test methods established by standards-setting organizations that assess pedestrian slip resistance. Here we’ll review the most widely known and current ones. They are distinguished by the devices used in the testing. Terms such as DCOF rating, coefficient of friction, slip coefficient, slip resistance rating, and friction coefficient all […]
Surveillance to Detect Slip and Fall Hazards on Commercial Floors
Surveillance of floors to detect spills, dropped produce, and other hazards is an important part of many safety plans, particularly on floors that have poor wet slip resistance. This includes most floors in customer areas of supermarkets. In one supermarket slip and fall case, a court ruled that inspections every 12 minutes were necessary in […]