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Flooring Choices

C

Crusher

New member
My landlord has agreed to replace my sealed concrete floor with something better. I was think to have it replaced with a VCT floor or an epoxy floor. Any thoughts? I want something easy to clean and durable.
 
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I think VCT would be good. If its in the kitchen, i would avoid anything with grout or groutlines, as they are very hard to keep clean. Our kitchen has the old 5 or 6" clay tiles, and the grout is impossible to keep clean without moving everything and flooding the kitchen.
 
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I would go with the epoxy floor. VCT can be a problem around water, grease, and heat. We can use VCT in our county in Arizona, but it can’t be under cooking equipment or near any sink by health code standards. I put down the Behr two part epoxy floor in my kitchen and I am very happy with it so far…of course I am not open yet either! LOL. Good luck with your decision.
 
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One more thing…He will need to surface grind, or shotblast, the floor in order for the epoxy to adhere really well to the concrete.
 
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As a flooring contractor turned pizza guy, I would strongly suggest epoxy over VCT. As for the dust, shot blasting is about 99% dust free. If they insist on grinding make sure they perform a wet grind, if they do it dry you’ll have a big dusty mess. If they elect to go with hard tile (porcelain or quarry tile) just be sure to insist the flooring people use an epoxy grout. Cement grouts tend to break down with grease and prolonged water exposure. Epoxy grout used to be real hard to use but with new technologies, it’s becoming more and more popular and less expensive than before. The cost of hard tile should be less than the epoxy flooring. Hard tile in my opinion (biased as it is) would be the best choice.

Pizzaviking
 
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If you wanted to go the vct route, you could purchase, and have cut to fit, the approved flooring for your fryers and simply put underneath. You could either glue it down or have the weight of the equipment to keep it in place. I have tile in the lobby of my delco and 12x12 vct tiles in the back. Much easier to keep clean.
It simply boils down to personal preference.
 
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Epoxy coating is what I have in my kitchen. It is a 2-part that I had to order, as the ones I saw at the home repair stores were single part. The 2-part is durable and reasonably simple to install, if you have the time and drive. If you are not doing the installation, then I would insist on a professional installer. The floor prep, cleaning and then installation all have to be done quite well for the system to work as it’s supposed to. I do have a couple spots where the epoxy has flaked, but it isn’t in a tragic location, or large (size of a dime or less). Epoxy will chip if struck in a thin spot with a sharp, heavy edged something. The concrete subfloor must be very good, as any chipping or degredation of the concrete itself will undermine the flooring.

Both VCT and epoxy can get slick when wet . . . even with the traction grit the epoxy kit supplies. Be aware of that codistion and what your plan is to deal with it. The slip resist shoes work very well for us; non-slip mats also work great. Epoxy is a BREEZE to sweep and mop. The grit eats the brooms a littlequicker, but not so awful.

My favorite floor to work on has been the terra cotta tiles. Do ask about a grout that isn’t concrete based: it holds onto food, degrades over time with water, and can wear uneven if not installed well. Once you get grease into that concrete grout, it is HECK to get back out.
 
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