Ensuring a flooring that is easy to maintain and clean is very high on any schools agenda.
Woe betide an education specifier that chooses a floor covering that isn’t safe, is difficult to clean or doesn’t live up to its promises.
Eastwood High School in Newton Mearns, Renfrewshire, was one of the first schools to be built under the Scottish Futures Trust initiative and was opened to pupils in August 2013.
It’s a spacious centre for learning with classrooms wrapped around a central atrium and hub. The school is home to more than 1,400 students by day and offers a wide range of facilities for community use after hours. With so many people passing through, architects Cooper Cromar insisted on a flooring that looked fantastic, but would be very hard-wearing and really easy to clean.
Ian Churcher, Architectural Technologist at Cooper Cromar, turned to international vinyl flooring specialist Gerflor. With more than 70 years of design-led technological innovation, he knew the company would be able to deliver to a very rigorous brief. He said at the time: “We’ve used Gerflor before for education and fire station projects; we know the products offer outstanding performance.
"They have an extensive colour range for designers to work with and we always find them competitively priced. Gerflor also provide an excellent level of customer service.”
After consultation with Gerflor, Ian Churcher specified the Tarasafe Ultra range of specialist slip-resistant vinyl safety flooring. A product that’s inlaid with mineral crystals particles, as opposed to industry standard carborundum. This gives a brighter appearance, it also comes with a tough PVC wearlayer. It meets the EN Standard of 22196 for anti- bacterial activity (E. coli - S. aureus - MRSA) (3) returning >99% levels of growth inhibition for optimum hygiene and easy maintenance. Tarasafe is 100 per cent recyclable, which was one of the deciding factors in the specification choice at the time.
Kenny Smith, Contracts Director at long-established Hamilton-based MacGregor Flooring Company Ltd, oversaw all the installation work back in 2013 and commented at the time. “Laying the acoustic flooring makes no difference to us, but it makes a big difference to the end user,” he said.
The second and other pivotal consideration for the end user would be cleaning 9,000m² of flooring. Now one year on the specified flooring looks fantastic and has met up to each and every challenge with the cleaning and maintenance being both easy and trouble free. Just like any good school, performance is everything, and the Gerflor products have achieved top marks in this case.
A re-visit to Eastwood High School recently highlighted the on-going benefits of using Gerflor products. Installing Tarasafe proved to be the right choice as it offers both the safety the school needed, together with hitting the green buttons they desired. Many safety floors aren’t recyclable at the end of their life. Not the case with Tarasafe as it’s totally 100% recyclable. This was a crucial determining factor at the time of specification. And being able to ensure that the cleaning criteria had been met was also paramount.
In 2013 Ian Churcher also specified Gerflor’s unique SparClean treatment. Designed to form a completely smooth surface between the mineral chips, it doesn’t impair the anti-slip performance, but eliminates dirt traps. Independent testing by Patrick Michael Associates shows that SparClean pays for itself within three years with the money saved by reduced need for detergent and water.
Ian Churcher further comments: “We specified SparClean straightaway. We insisted because SparClean’s whole life cycle cost is very good and it also keeps the floor looking great.”
And happily that seems to have been the case, as their maintenance staff love the easy-to-clean Gerflor flooring. So one year on and Eastwood High School is delighted with its choice of Gerflor flooring, enabling them to get to grips with the business of education and inspiring young minds. Hardworking flooring for inspiring places.