Floor wear

Please select the from the following questions:

• I want to use the SAT on a floor that was installed many years ago. Will this affect the results?
• How does wear affect the slip resistance of a floor?

I want to use the SAT on a floor that was installed many years ago. Will this affect the results?

The age of the floor surface under examination will not directly affect the results produced by the SAT. However, the results produced are likely to be dissimilar to those produced from an equivalent new flooring due to the wear of the older flooring. As wear affects the microroughness of flooring materials, the wear characteristics of the test flooring will be automatically taken into account by the SAT through the roughness data supplied. Flooring materials often wear preferentially in areas of high pedestrian traffic (ie in doorways or narrow corridors). If this is the case, a number of repeated assessments may be undertaken around the test site.

How does wear affect the slip resistance of a floor?

Different floors can react in different ways to the natural wear which occurs through pedestrian use. Floor surfaces generally become smoother through wear, although others may become gradually more slip resistant. In order to fully assess the wear characteristics of floor surfaces over time, it is recommended that floors are assessed once every 3 to 6 months, depending on the level of pedestrian traffic.