Flatness of Resinous Flooring

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Author Message Ralph Liebing, RA, CSI, CDT Senior Member Username: rliebing Post Number: 1295 Registered: 02-2003 Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 09:27 am:    Need advice and comments [and spec text] for the Section on Resinous Flooring, which requires a finished product that has NO [truly zippo] water ponding [not even smallest surface size and depth]. Matter of flatness has been addressed by structural engineer, but concern is over-riding finish material that retains water, etc. Is zero-ponding possible? Possible impact on cost? Sheldon Wolfe Senior Member Username: sheldon_wolfe Post Number: 539 Registered: 01-2003 Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 10:00 am:    If the surface is sloped to a drain, it should be possible to eliminate ponding, provided the overall slope is greater than the irregularities in the resin flooring. Otherwise, no ponding means a perfectly flat surface, which is not possible; that's why we use tolerances. Sounds like a college exam problem. "Given a perfectly flat floor with a frictionless surface, what will happen to a liquid spilled on the floor?" Answer: Depending on the surface tension of the liquid, it will either scatter in small globules, or disperse itself in a perfectly uniform thickness across the entire floor. A single drop could become a molecule-thick coating. A practical example is the film a drop of oil creates on water. George A. Everding, AIA, CSI, CCS, CCCA Senior Member Username: geverding Post Number: 619 Registered: 11-2004 Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 11:10 am:    Sounds like floating a battleship in a glass of water. You can do it if you have a drydock the right size and shape. I agree with Sheldon - I'm not sure you could eliminate standing water even if your floor were a sheet of stainless steel polished to a mirror surface. George A. Everding AIA CSI CCS CCCA Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies St. Louis, MO Steven Bruneel, AIA, CSI-CDT, LEED-AP Senior Member Username: redseca2 Post Number: 323 Registered: 12-2006 Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 11:44 am:    Fun Stuff! When defining the allowable ponding water on a horizontal surface, like an interior floor, or one that is intended to be sloped from every point to the provided drains, like a roof or wet area walking surface, we include another factor in the equation: time. Many performance specifications state that "no ponding water is allowed X hours..."; though I have never seen a standard to reference for such a test. The wonderful examples above demonstrating ponding water occurring with very little water involved would be short lived phenomena unless the water was constantly being replenished. Sheldon Wolfe Senior Member Username: sheldon_wolfe Post Number: 540 Registered: 01-2003 Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 01:47 pm:    I've seen the time limit on roofs, but not on floors (Ralph didn't indicate location, but I assumed interior). That works for water, which evaporates fairly quickly, but fuel oil would be around for some time. Lynn Javoroski FCSI CCS LEED® AP SCIP Affiliate Senior Member Username: lynn_javoroski Post Number: 1392 Registered: 07-2002 Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 03:13 pm:    From a friend of mine, also in the resinous flooring business: Hi Lynn, WOW! Zero puddling! No, it’s not possible. However, we have gotten close in a number of BSL-4 and 3 AG labs that we have done. This requires a concrete finish as flat as possible, there must be an allowance built in for possible concrete grinding to achieve the proper slope. We tackled these projects with ¼” thick trowel epoxy overlay floors that then have been terrazzo ground after cure. This would be followed by one or two thinner resin rich layers applied with more grinding between layers The polymer portion of this work could easily be $50 per square foot depending on size and the degree of slope required. The quality of the concrete finish greatly influences the difficulty and cost of the polymer overlay. It will be critical that the concrete floor have sufficient coverage of the rebar to allow for the ¼” to ½” concrete removal if needed. Additional dollars would need to be allocated for a surveyor with laser equipment to be on site to verify slopes etc… throughout the process. If this was meant to be a flat floor with no slope the same procedure would be used but with less grinding between layers. We have done flat floor areas for semi conductor plants where tools needed to be on ultra-flat, level floors. This is much easier to achieve and 1 mm variance over 10 ft. can be readily achieved. Hopefully this helps. If you want to know who the information is from, contact me (no product promotion here). But I thought his information valuable. Mark Gilligan SE, Senior Member Username: mark_gilligan Post Number: 456 Registered: 10-2007 Posted on Friday, February 10, 2012 - 03:33 pm:    How do you differentiate the standing water from ponding from that occurs due to surface tension after you spill water? Suggest that this criteria cannot be satisfied without the constructions documents defining specific floor slopes. I do not see how the concrete flatness criteria can overcome this reality. Kick this back to the individual who selected the flooring product. This is an example of the game of pretend. By this I mean the flooring supplier pretends that he cannot tolerate any ponding and the designers pretend that they have specified something that meets the criteria. The contractor then pretends that he has satisfied the criteria. The successful conclusion of the game requires the owner and the floor supplier to pretend that the completed building complies with the criteria. We have a problem when somebody doesn’t understand that this is a game.