If the flooring gets failed, never blame the product first. The majority of flooring failures are due to application mistakes or carelessness.
Failures can have root causes:
- Prior to flooring application
- During flooring application
- After application, prior to service
- During service
Failure factors prior to flooring application
- Design failures: two weak substrate, poor reinforcement.
- Wrong flooring product selection: unsuitable for actual working conditions.
- Incompatible products
- Age of material: Shelf life exceeded
- Improper storage conditions: temperature/humidity/leaks…
- Wrong mixing proportion: not all component added or even improper weight or packaging)
- Bad or no substrate evaluation:
- Streng: Compression, Cohesion or pull-out
- Moisture content
- Dew point
- Wrong mixing tools/equipment
- Inadequate surface preparation
- Substrate too old (primers which are not sticky)
- No scabbing, grinding, shot or sand blasting when required
- No priming/ inadequate priming/no dampening/saturation
- No broadcasting, no blinding when required
- Inadequate QS type
- Superficial condensation (not checking ambient conditions and dew point)
- Excessive surface humidity – H2O reacts with isocyanides resulting of CO2
- Insufficient mixing time (leaving lumps in mortars, color streak in resin resins, etc.
- Only one of a two component system applied (no hardener in Epoxy system)
- Not pouring epoxy into another container (may leave unmixed material in the bottom edges)
- Supervision of application required: improperly trained applicators
- Inadequate applications:
- two low temperature -> no reaction (cementitious or epoxy)
- high ambient humidity -> bad film formation of water based resins
- liquid applied membranes: delayed film formation causes blistering
- single layer facade mortar: carbonation
- No homogenisation of components prior to mixing. Setting of pigment or aggregate, causes not homogeneous results or performance.
- Water or solvent addition to increase yield: make application easier but ruins product.
- Wrong or inadequate application tools
- Improper application thickness: too thin may not have enough material to achieve full properties or too thick may cause setting, cracking…
- Contamination of surface in between layers/coats by foreign materials: dust, chemical incompatible products (silicones), welding particles, etc,
- Pot life not controlled: end of pot life not visible
- Contamination from release agents on the pin-rollers used.
- Sabotage: addition of foreign substrate to the mix.
- Weakening of the concrete substrate due to sulfate contamination in high water table.
Proper training or simply reading the Product Data Sheet and Method Statement with prevent most of above factors.
Failure factors after application and before service of flooring
- Other trades present, working on the floor without properly protecting it.
- Welding
- Scratching by pulling loads over the surface
Failure factors during service of flooring
- Inadequate service temperature
- Unsuitable chemical environment
- Unsuitable floor cleaning methods
- Unexpected or modified working condition over the service time of application.
These can be traced back to bad product selection, or lack of information when specifying a product or system. And another thing should be consider is the design of industrial floor. A good design helps to avoid flooring failures.
