Protect Your Facility with a Dual-Mat System
As the winter season approaches and inclement weather looms, proper floor care becomes even more crucial. As individuals enter your facility, they will inevitably track in moisture with them. If not properly addressed, this debris can accumulate, creating a potential hazard to your floors and occupants. Proper floor mats can help trap the extra moisture, dirt and debris brought in while simultaneously safeguarding your floor from damage.
Prepare for winter with the right mat system to maintain a safe and hygienic environment.
Why Mats?
Winter brings grime and salt. These contaminants can damage floors with scrapes and stains and cause slippery surfaces. All of these become a danger and can be an added cost to your business. In some cases, the added wear and tear can accelerate large capital spending. Mats placed at all entry points serve as the first line of defense in protecting your facility. In fact, when a facility isn’t equipped with entrance matting, 1,500 people can remove up to 42% of a floor’s finish1. With proper matting, you can effectively safeguard your floors from the harmful effects of the outside.
Snow and ice are some of the most common causes of slips2. High-performance mats include fibers with absorbent properties that effectively soak up the moisture brought in by wet shoes. As a result, this helps remove moisture from facility occupants’ shoes to provide increased slip resistance.
Furthermore, the exterior of a shoe harbors around 421,000 units of bacteria3. By incorporating mats that can effectively scrape and absorb a significant portion of this bacteria, they serve as a crucial defense against the spread of potentially harmful microorganisms.
Creating a Mat System
It’s important to understand the different types of mats and where to place them. The entryway is a vulnerable place because it’s where people tread just before entering your facility4. To identify any potential floor hazards, the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) have a set of entrance matting standards5. These standards include information on proper mat selection, installation, care and maintenance.
Scraper Mats
Adding scraper mats at all entrances helps prevent slips and minimize dirt and debris carried in by shoes from outside. Typically, these mats are made from nitrile rubber and feature a recessed grating system6. This combination results in a rough elevated pattern that effectively removes large chunks of debris from shoe soles. Some scraper mats are designed with drainage holes to effectively remove water from the mat as it pulls it from shoes.
For optimal placement, position these mats directly outside each entrance. This allows those entering your facility to easily scrape off larger contaminants and moisture before stepping inside. Overall, scraper mats work to prevent outside debris from being tracked into your facility.
Carpet Floor Mats
Carpet mats act as a second line of defense to the scraper mat. They’re made with fast-drying microfibers, which effectively capture and retain remaining moisture and contaminants from the initial scraping. These microfibers act as miniature sponges, absorbing and trapping the remaining bacteria, dirt and liquid residue, thus preventing them from being tracked farther inside.
These mats should be placed right inside the doorway, immediately after the scraper mats. Their absorbing properties can assist in catching any leftover contaminants and moisture, providing a two-step defense system against winter grime. Together with scraper mats, this combination contributes to creating and maintaining a cleaner facility.
Winter is Coming… Is Your Facility Prepared?
Consider partnering with a certified service provider that can take care of removing dirty scraper mats and carpet floor mats and replacing them with clean mats on a regular basis. This can ensure your facility always has clean, high-quality mats during winter months. Planning with this proactive approach in mind, along with creating a thorough mat system, helps enhance the safety and cleanliness of your facility.