When it comes to commercial kitchens and food-handling facilities, your choice of flooring impacts your day-to-day operations and worker safety. Many older commercial kitchens and food facilities have been skating by Australian Standards for commercial flooring for years without considering it. However, having the right type of flooring, like kitchen epoxy flooring can save you time, and money and ensure that your worker safety is up to par.
SWEF has been installing commercial epoxy flooring for many years in the Sydney area for businesses like garages, workshops and warehouses. By using a commercial epoxy floor, you can mitigate damage to your subfloor, create an impermeable, waterproof surface that is easily cleanable and provide a safer work environment, as SWEF’s kitchen epoxy flooring comes with an anti-microbial coating.
What is Commercial Kitchen Epoxy Flooring?
Commercial kitchen epoxy flooring is a floor coating created by pouring an epoxy resin across the entire subfloor of a commercial kitchen, creating a hardened surface that’s anti-slip, waterproof, anti-microbial, and can stand up to the heavy foot traffic of a commercial kitchen floor.
Unlike other types of commercial epoxy floors, industrial kitchen flooring must meet different requirements for waterproofing and sealing to adhere to Australian food safety standards. Namely, it must be impervious to spillages and cannot absorb the spilled liquid. A commercial epoxy kitchen floor guarantees this impermeability by using a cured epoxy resin across the entire kitchen.
SWEF’s services include a grind and seal method to resurface and revitalise your existing commercial epoxy floors. So if your old commercial epoxy floor coating is suffering from wear and tear or is reaching the end of its lifespan, but does not need to be replaced, then a cost-effective solution is to grind and seal. This increases the longevity of your commercial kitchen flooring epoxy without impeding your business operations for an extended period.
Why You Should Have Epoxy Flooring in Your Commercial Kitchen
When it comes to a commercial kitchen, flooring is one of the trickiest elements to get right. Food safety standards are essential, while cost and worker safety are other considerations. Older industrial kitchen flooring is generally tile or linoleum, which has a tendency to wear and tear quickly, leading to instability and breakages that make it unsafe to walk over whilst carrying hot food, boiling water or sharp knives.
Laminate flooring is generally too expensive to install in a large space and is also susceptible to ballooning from water damage. This is where commercial epoxy floors come into play. Let’s explore why you should have them in your commercial kitchen.
They Are Anti-Slip!
One of the most common workplace injuries in commercial kitchens is the ‘slip-and-fall’ injury. Unlike other types of commercial flooring, SWEF’s commercial kitchen flooring epoxy uses a commercial non-slip epoxy floor coating to add grip to the surface, while maintaining its impermeability. This makes epoxy resin a fantastic choice for industrial kitchen flooring.
Epoxy Floors Are Anti-Microbial
When handling and preparing food, having an environment that’s free of bacteria is essential. Unlike other types of commercial flooring that may trap germs and bacteria, like grout sections of tiles, commercial kitchen flooring epoxy is anti-microbial. We mix an anti-microbial component into our epoxy resin, making it the best choice for those who need a clean and safe working environment for food handling.
Additionally, SWEF’s commercial epoxy floors are chemical-resistant, meaning any cleaning agents or other chemicals that might be used in a commercial kitchen setting can be cleaned up easily, without eating away at the floor’s surface.
Superior Longevity Under Stress
One of the things that sets commercial epoxy floors apart from competing commercial kitchen flooring types is superior longevity under constant stress. From temperature fluctuations in the heat of cooking to heavy foot traffic, our commercial kitchen flooring epoxy is up to the challenge. Specially formulated to withstand boiling water, our commercial kitchen flooring epoxy resin won’t melt until temperatures reach 275℃.
The durability of epoxy floors is second to none! They’ll last between 15 and 20 years or more with proper care! With our grind and seal resurfacing options, your commercial kitchen epoxy flooring could last well beyond 20 years!
How Much Does It Cost?
The average application cost per square metre for a commercial epoxy floor is between $25 and $35 per square metre. However, all of our jobs are done to meet your specific business needs, so if you require additional coatings or decorative commercial kitchen flooring epoxy, then your price may increase.
Reach out to us today to receive your site visit and customised quote based on your kitchen size and specific requirements.
Why Should You Hire SWEF For Your Commercial Kitchen Epoxy Flooring?
SWEF is dedicated to providing the best quality commercial epoxy floors for all of our customers. We span the breadth of industrial applications, from commercial garage floor coating to working with large industrial kitchens and restaurants, SWEF delivers clean, safe and long-lasting kitchen epoxy flooring for Sydney’s ever-growing food industry.
Only the Safest with SWEF
Unlike other types of commercial flooring, SWEF’s epoxy resin is anti-slip when poured and has anti-microbial properties to protect your body on all fronts against the potential hazards of kitchen work. At SWEF, we guarantee to install a level, clean surface to prevent slip and fall accidents.
Resurfacing Options
We can also re-surface an existing commercial epoxy floor using our grind and seal technique, which resurfaces an existing epoxy commercial kitchen floor by grinding uneven surfaces until smooth, filling holes and then resurfacing with a fresh coat if necessary. This grind and seal method greatly increases the longevity of your kitchen epoxy flooring.
Minimal Downtime During Installation
As a business ourselves, we understand that time is money. To that end, we work to ensure that all downtime in your operations is minimised during our installation process. We’re happy to work around your working schedule and are flexible as to when our installers perform your kitchen epoxy flooring installation. Speaking of installations…
How Do We Install Your Commercial Kitchen Epoxy Floor?
Once we receive your inquiry, our installation team will visit your kitchen to have a detailed discussion as to your requirements for your commercial kitchen floor. This will cover colour options, size requirements, and any decorative finishes you may require (such as labeling specific zones on the floor with lettering or stamping during the installation process). This will also cover when you’d like your flooring installed and how much downtime you can anticipate.
Once this is complete, we’ll move to installation on a specified date. To do this, we’ll need your space to be emptied in order to cover the required surface areas, if necessary. If you’d like us to work around your fixed appliances, that’s definitely possible.
Our installation begins by cleaning your sub-floor to remove any dirt, dust, grime and any material interfering with the smooth pouring of our epoxy resin. Once the floor is cleaned, we then wash the surface and let it dry for 24 hours.
After the floor is dry, we begin pouring our epoxy resin solution, comprised of resin, a hardening agent, an accelerator designed to expedite hardening time and a plasticiser, to give the resin its impermeable quality. Our first pour will apply a coat that’s generally an inch thick. This requires 24 to 36 hours to dry. Once dry, our second coat can be applied (we recommend two coats), adding inch to the flooring height and sealing the initial coat properly. An additional 24 hours to 36 hours is recommended for the complete curing and hardening of the second coat.
Suppose you simply require a grind and seal application of an existing epoxy commercial kitchen flooring. In that case, this will reduce the application time by approximately 24 hours, as the sealant layer on top of your freshly ground and filled epoxy flooring will only take about 24 to 36 hours to cure and harden.
Final Thoughts
In addition to installing commercial kitchen epoxy flooring, our team is also capable of servicing warehouses, workshops and commercial garages, no matter your floor size! We’re also proud to offer decorative finishes for your epoxy flooring so that you can inject your business’ character into your floor!
If you need a commercial kitchen floor installed, choose SWEF to do the job!
