Under the Hood with Resin Underfoot: Flooring for the Automotive Sector

The busy activity within car workshops, service centres and garages will place a number of challenges on the floor, such as exposure to corrosive automotive chemicals, the movement of heavy vehicles, pressure from bulky equipment, impacts from dropped tools and more.

Should the floor finish not be up to the task at hand then the floor could start to crack, chip, dust or delaminate. Once this happens then not only will the area look messy and unsightly, but it will also spoil the brand’s visual identity, become much harder to clean and could even pose a dangerous trip risk.

Robust resin flooring solutions have become a popular choice in the automotive industry thanks to the ability of this type of material to create a hardwearing, decorative finish that will maintain its functional and decorative properties for the long term.

This was exemplified at the NRMA Motorserve workshop in Caringbah, Sydney. The daily workload onsite involves logbook services, vehicle repairs, essential servicing and vehicle inspections – all of which could potentially damage the floor in a number of ways.

Fortunately, thanks to a string of successful installations in other NRMA Motorserve workshops, the servicing and repairs specialist knew that the polyurethane resin flooring solution Flowcoat UV would be ideal for its requirements. Flowcoat UV has been designed to provide a seamless, chemical resistant and anti-slip surface, suitable for demanding industrial facilities.

1,300 m² of the high-performance floor coating was applied in a combination of mid grey and dark grey colours across the driveway, workshop bays and spray booth areas. This colour choice both complemented NRMA’s blue and yellow corporate colours and allowed the white line markings to clearly stand out.

NRMA Motorserve took advantage of the versatile nature of resin finishes to improve on-site safety levels, specifying a more comprehensive level of slip resistance in the spaces where employees faced a higher risk of slips and trips.

Utilising resin floors enables the end user to tailor the finish to the specific requirements of each facility or even vary it between different parts of the same facility. For example, the taxing conditions within James Frizelle Sunshine Automotive’s new workshop in Arundel, Queensland, meant that a coating was required that would provide a level of protection above and beyond what was necessary at NRMA Motorserve.

James Frizelle Sunshine Automotive’s multi-purpose site would house a number of service areas, including an Isuzu Truck workshop and wash bay, Isuzu Ute workshop and a used car workshop. The floor in these environments would face point loading, traffic and pressure from extremely heavy vehicles (with some trucks weighing up to 26,000 kg) while the wash bay floor would need to withstand prolonged exposure to large quantities of hot soapy water.

4,000 m² of the highly durable cementitious urethane system Flowcrete SR was installed in a cool grey colour thanks to the fact that its thick, seamless nature would maintain an effective, attractive and easy to clean surface for a prolonged period of time.

Drainage was incorporated into the Flowcrete SR floor in the wash bay and coving was applied along the edge between the floor and the wall, ensuring that the finish would not harbour any contaminants or ponding water.

It wasn’t just heavy loads, oils, grease, water and impacts that posed a danger to the floor’s integrity, as the building’s large windows and doors meant that light would pour into the workshop unobstructed. To protect against prolonged UV exposure, the UV stable, coloured sealer Flowseal UV was applied on top of Flowcrete SR.

To find out more about how resin solutions can be utilised to optimise the floor area within an automotive facility, get in touch with one of Flowcrete’s resin flooring experts today.