What’s happening in the video… The interior concrete floors in this meat processing facility were really taking a beating with all of the food by-products corroding the concrete floor during production coupled with daily hot water wash downs.

This trowel application of urethane mortar [Mortarthane™ HF] on newly prepped concrete flooring was the specified resurfacer to help alleviate these problems while making this aesthetically uniform and great looking concrete flooring easy to clean.

Plus urethane cement provides chemical resistance and added traction which keeps the employees on sure footing.

When it comes to interior concrete floor protection, a urethane cement resurfacer is often the top choice of food manufacturing facilities.

See videos about Industrial Floor Coatings

Frequently asked questions about choosing the best floor coating for a food plant floor…

How do you compare urethane cement to epoxy coatings for food plant floors?

There are epoxy systems that are of consideration for selecting food plant floor coatings for any food processing facility.  The choice comes down to, do we use an epoxy system floor coating, or do we use a cement based urethane floor coating system?

Epoxy floor coating systems are usually two part epoxies. They are available in an A and a B and a part C, aggregate. And then there is a cement based system, a urethane cement based system that also has a part A, a part B and a part C.

The three big things to consider here are time, elasticity, and longevity. Epoxy floor coating systems by nature are rigid. Urethane cement based floor coating systems are elastic in nature and they move with interior floors . They have very similar properties to concrete because it has a cement base in it.

The epoxy systems are rigid systems, and there is a big differential that we were speaking about here. So when a hot or cold element is introduced to a floor, let’s say in a meat processing facility, when they are power washing the floors with 200 degree water, that’s a drastic change in temperature resulting in thermal shock.

Now a rigid epoxy system will not breathe at the same rate as a urethane cement based system. The urethane cement based system will accommodate this, what they call, the coefficient of thermal expansion, because it breathes just like concrete.  It will move together with the concrete.

If the cleaning method referred to above is done repeatedly to an epoxy coated floor which is rigid by nature, the epoxy is just going to sit there and not move but the concrete slab beneath it will move, expanding and contracting. Therefore at the end of the day, it is a very simple answer.

Urethane cement food plant floor coating systems

Using the urethane cement floor coating system is probably the first choice for food manufacturing floors principally since most food plant operations use a hot and cold cleaning process. Whether there is a blast freezer, whether cleaning the floors with hot water at any point, whether there is an oven line generating constant heat on that floor, that’s where you use urethane cement based systems.

Where you want to use epoxy based systems and they certainly have their place, are more in dry good storage areas, and out of the way pedestrian walk areas; stocking areas. Definitely near shipping and receiving areas and staging areas at that facility.

You do not want to use an epoxy floor coating system anywhere near where hot or cold temperatures could be or might be an issue. That’s where you want to use your cement based urethane system.

Related videos – You may also be interested in:

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	Watch these quality installers apply a urethane floor resurfacer to an almost impossible to reach floor area.
	See why a concrete floor coating receives a cove application up the concrete wall.
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	See the most popular resurfacer for bakery floors.
	Quick bakery flooring installation. See how it was done.

See more videos about food plant floor coatings.