Anti-Slip Coatings — Do-It-Yourself

  • Beware of Slippery Finished-in-Place Floors Installed by Clueless Contractors

    Some floors are covered with premanufactured stuff, such as marble, granite or ceramic tiles, wood, or vinyl composite tile. Other floors are created in place — including epoxy, terrazzo, and concrete. Topical sealers added to premanufactured floors also constitute a finished-in-place surface — the pedestrian is not walking on the flooring, but on the sealer.…

    [Read more]

  • Surveillance to Detect Slip and Fall Hazards on Commercial Floors

    Surveillance of floors to detect spills, dropped produce, and other hazards is an important part of many safety plans, particularly on floors that have poor wet slip resistance. This includes most floors in customer areas of supermarkets. In one supermarket slip and fall case, a court ruled that inspections every 12 minutes were necessary in…

    [Read more]

  • Financial losses from slip and fall accidents

    Slip and fall accidents are the #1 reason Americans show up at emergency rooms, according to data from the CDC. Slippery floors are a silent epidemic in America, and lawsuits are filed daily across the nation involving major injuries and deaths from slippery floors. Unless the negligent party is the victim’s employer, the victim of…

    [Read more]

  • Roughness and Wet Floor Slip Resistance

    We all know intuitively that roughness has a lot to do with floor slip resistance. Very smooth floors tend to have low wet slip resistance, and to some types of shoe solings (as on some dancing shoes) can have low dry slip resistance too. However, “rough” appearing floors aren’t always slip-resistant, and this has to…

    [Read more]

  • What’s the Cost of a Slip and Fall on a Commercial Property?

    A recent article in Risk & Insurance (May 2018, p. 32) cites some data for costs of slip and fall claims. Claims can result in a sharp increase in insurance premiums. If the property is self-insured, costs can come directly off profit. Falls among adults are the most common cause of traumatic brain injury. Commercial…

    [Read more]

  • Test Your New Pool Deck’s Slip Resistance BEFORE Opening the Pool!

    It is amazing how often both large and small swimming pool decks are installed with no thought to wet slip resistance until falls, sometimes catastrophic, begin to happen. By the time the first serious slip injury happens, the flooring vendor has usually cashed his check and is unconcerned about the problem. Wet bare feet have…

    [Read more]

  • How to Make Your Shoes Less Slippery

    At Safety Direct America, we focus on making surfaces less slippery and easier to walk on with our slip resistance testing and anti-slip coatings. But what if you find yourself at work or in a public place, and discover that your shoes are the real problem? Whether your shoes are slippery because they’re too new,…

    [Read more]

  • A Caveat about Dal-Tile’s Situation-Specific Minimum DCOF AcuTest Values

    This blog has previously praised Dal-Tile for recognizing that “one size fits all” does not work when it comes to slip resistance standards (or bikinis, for that matter). For instance, Dal-Tile has recommended a minimum ANSI A137.1 DCOF AcuTest wet dynamic coefficient of friction of 0.60 for swimming pool decks, public showers, and locker rooms.…

    [Read more]

  • ANSI Issuing Another Standard Slip Test Method for Flooring Materials – and It Also Shouldn’t be Used as a Safety Assessment

    The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is issuing a new test method, with minimum dynamic coefficient of friction (DCOF rating), for slip resistance of hard flooring materials, and it should never be used to assess the slip resistance safety of a floor. No minimum DCOF is provided for exterior applications. The BOT-3000E digital tribometer is…

    [Read more]

  • Fixing Your Slippery Epoxy/Polyurea/Polyaspartic Floor

    In the video below, we discuss fixing slippery epoxy floors, slippery polyaspartic floors, and slippery polyurea floors quickly and easily with SparkleTuff Anti-Slip Floor Treatment, which requires to special preparation to the epoxy floor whatsoever. We are continually amazed at how often contractors will install an epoxy (or polyurea or polyaspartic) floor coating (especially to…

    [Read more]