Against a dark blue background, the podcast title 'Static Bursts' appears in white at the top of the image, with an orange and white stopwatch icon between the two words. A lightning spark appears at the right hand side of the image with a cascade of sparks radiating out across the rest of the image. The podcast title Episode 18: ESD Flooring Selection (Part 1) is overlaid in white and a dark blue semi-opaque square covering the middle of the image. The company name and logo Staticworx appears in orange (first half) and white (second half) at the bottom.

Static Bursts (Ep #18): ESD Flooring Selection (Part 1)

Most people looking to purchase an ESD floor are starting at ground zero, with little knowledge about the product. In this two part series, Dave and Rick discuss the key criteria for selecting an ESD floor. Part one covers the application (environment and work performed in the space); aesthetics; installation methods; and maintenance requirements.

The Gist: How to Choose a Static-Control Floor

  • The Gist: How to Choose a Static-Control Floor

    Key Factors:

    • What’s my application (business environment and work performed in the space)?
      • Can I control things other than the floor – e.g. workbench, chairs, shoes?
      • In 9-1-1 and similar applications, the floor must prevent static generation
    • What is your vision for the space (aesthetics)?
      • What do you want the floor to look like? Feel like?
      • What impression do you want to make for visitors/clients?
    • Installation strategies
      • Can you afford to shut down the space?
        • Interlocking and glue-free rubber tiles can go right over an old floor
      • Do you want to use adhesives (chemicals)?
    • What are your maintenance requirements?
      • Can you vacuum or mop?
        • Can you afford to close the space for several hours – to wax, for example?

““…back to this 9-1-1 application, we would be talking about a floor that has to get rid of static electricity by preventing static electricity, regardless of what kind of chair someone’s sitting in, regardless of what kind of footwear they’re wearing. So that’s a dichotomy, very extreme differences in the way the floor would possibly perform.””

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Rick: Welcome to Static Bursts. Our podcast series will discuss the threat static electricity poses to your business, and how to address those risks.

Dave: I’m your host, Dave Long, founder and president of Staticworx. We make static-control flooring.

Rick: And I’m your co-host, Rick Frauton. Our topic in this two-part series is what to consider when selecting an ESD floor and how to get the most value over time from your investment.

Dave: So what I thought I would talk about today is how to actually choose a static control floor. And I decided to kind of break this down into more of a generic conversation. Because it occurred to me that when people are looking at these floors, they’re starting at kind of ground zero. They’re not fluent in the language of electrical resistance and ohms and volts and kilovolts and ASTM test methods. So I thought what we would do is we would start off by talking about just key factors.

The first key factor is what’s my application. So my application might be I’m a manufacturer of semiconductors; we build electronic products in clean rooms. We’re a state-of-the-art company. And we have concerns about micro contamination. And the devices we build are highly sensitive to static discharge.

At the other end of the spectrum, we could be looking at a situation in a 9-1-1 call center, where they’re using, I don’t know, Motorola wireless radios or some type of navigation equipment where they’re trying to track the location of a caller. But they’re worried about a system, in this case, their entire communication system, being sensitive to static electricity. Those are two very diverse applications.

So you need to think about what your application is. And one of the key factors is, is my static control flooring application one where I can control other things besides the floor? So we’re talking about a factory here, and that would be we can control the workbench that you work at; we can make your chair static control; we can tell you what kind of shoes to wear; what kind of items to put on top of your shoes, so that as you walk on the floor, you can be grounded.

At the other end of the spectrum back to this 9-1-1 application, we would be talking about a floor that has to get rid of static electricity by preventing static electricity, regardless of what kind of chair someone’s sitting in, regardless of what kind of footwear they’re wearing. So that’s a dichotomy, very extreme differences in the way the floor would possibly perform. So that’s a factor that you need to think about. Because when you’re looking at specs and you looking at brochures, it’s not going to be clear to you – if you’re a specifier – on the applicability of that floor based on your application, because it’s going to be assumed by the manufacturer of the floor, that you understand whether or not that floor will work based on the kind of footwear that you might be using. And as I can attest, from talking to thousands of people over the last 35 years, that that’s not the way it works.

Rick: Your business environment and the work performed in that space are key factors in determining the most suitable type of static-control flooring. Every business has unique needs. And the marketing materials provided by flooring manufacturers couldn’t possibly address all of them. What are some other factors to consider?

Dave: So the next thing I want to talk about is your vision for the floor. What do you want it to look like? What do you want it to feel like? And I’ll give you a really good example: A couple years ago, we did a job for a semiconductor company in North Carolina and one of their architects and their management’s actual requests was we want to have a fun place to work. So they had clean rooms and they had manufacturing areas where they had to do certain things with the flooring in order to meet the criteria of those spaces. But they had a lot of lab areas. And in that particular space, they decided they wanted to have a very dynamic environment. They wanted it to be a place where people were energized where they worked. So they actually purchased from us static-control carpet, we call them ESD carpet tiles, but they bought this carpet in the form of planks. And they did this really cool thing where a certain number of the planks had this blue stripe in it. If you go on our website, you can see pictures of this particular job, but it made for a very dynamic environment. So their vision for the space was one where people would feel energized.

Your vision for your space might be, this is a lab area and we’re trying to get funding from banks and different types of organizations that might fund our business. And we need this to look like a hospital or a laboratory. So your vision might be I want the floor to be white. I want the floor to maybe have the logo of my company in it, but I want it to look like something where if I spilled food on the floor, I could eat it. So vision for space is kind of a big deal. I can’t tell you what your vision should be. It’s going to be dependent on your needs and on the impression you want to make on people who come into your space. What do you expect people to think about your company? These are things that have nothing to do with static control, but they have everything to do with what you’re going to get when you’re done.

Next key factor would be installation strategies. Let’s pick a really difficult one. You own a clean room. For years that clean room did not handle a static-sensitive product. Now it does. The clean room has an old VCT floor. That’s vinyl composition tile. It’s in perfect condition but it has no static-control properties. The cleanroom is operational, and you really don’t want to tear it apart, or lose the capability of the clean room for a period of time, while you basically do demolition where you remove the old floor. You might be interested in something that can float on top of the old floor. That’s going to influence what options you have. You might be looking at an interlocking floor because you can snap it together without generating contamination, and it will sit on top of the old floor. Or you might be looking at an option where you’re buying rubber like our gf rubber that has an adhesive already bonded to the back of it. That would allow you, if you do the installation properly, to adhere to the old floor and have a seamless floor that meets any clean room application.

Back to the 9-1-1 call center, could be a situation where you want to put in new static-dissipative carpet tile, but because you can’t shut down that call center, the people working in the call center might not appreciate the idea of liquid adhesives being used. You might need carpet tile that can be attached to adjacent carpet tiles with something that looks kind of like a plastic sticky label that has adhesive on it that will bond the corners of tiles in a permanent way without exposing people to chemicals that they may or may not understand. So installation logistics are an important factor.

Rick: With that we can add aesthetics and installation methods to the list of key factors in the process of selecting an ESD floor. What else is there to consider?

Dave: Maintenance. So maybe you’re looking at a static-control floor, but you’ve got certain restrictions that might affect you maintenance-wise. So let’s, let’s take a really interesting example. It’s an MRI room. MRI rooms, if you know anything about MRIs, they have giant magnets in them. If the maintenance materials that you need to use are attracted by a magnet, you might discover that the vacuum cleaner that you bring into the MRI room is going to end up inside the MRI machine. And you can google this kind of stuff and you’ll actually see some interesting pictures of chairs and vacuum stuck inside of MRI machines.

So a floor like that you may have to use plastic mops to take care of it. That means you can’t use carpet. You might have to use a rubber floor because obviously in an MRI area, people who are getting MRIs have problems with their knees, with their ankle, with their backs. They’re going to walk on a floor, and the floor needs to be maintained in a certain way that requires it to get wet. They can’t slip and fall; they’re already in a position where they’re compromised, otherwise they wouldn’t be getting an MRI. So maintenance is something you need to think about. If you’re going to be shutting down an area to do maintenance, like some of these vinyl floors that need certain waxes, that’s a problem in a lot of cases because that means that for four or five hours, if you’re running a three shift operation, a particular area cannot be used.

Rick: So far, we’ve discussed application and aesthetics as well as installation and maintenance methods as key factors in the selection process for static-control flooring. We will continue this conversation in our next episode of Static Bursts when we cover factors such as ergonomics, sound attenuation, and perhaps most importantly, the total cost of ownership over time.

Dave: We hope you learned something today. If you have questions about the podcast, give us a call at 617-923-2000. Even though we specialize in solving problems with flooring, if you have a question about static discharge, how to install a floor, how to test the floor, we’ll be glad to help you. Thanks for listening.

Rick: Welcome to Static Bursts. Our podcast series will discuss the threat static electricity poses to your business, and how to address those risks.

Dave: I’m your host, Dave Long, founder and president of Staticworx. We make static-control flooring.

Rick: And I’m your co-host, Rick Frauton. Our topic in this two-part series is what to consider when selecting an ESD floor and how to get the most value over time from your investment.

Dave: So what I thought I would talk about today is how to actually choose a static control floor. And I decided to kind of break this down into more of a generic conversation. Because it occurred to me that when people are looking at these floors, they’re starting at kind of ground zero. They’re not fluent in the language of electrical resistance and ohms and volts and kilovolts and ASTM test methods. So I thought what we would do is we would start off by talking about just key factors.

The first key factor is what’s my application. So my application might be I’m a manufacturer of semiconductors; we build electronic products in clean rooms. We’re a state-of-the-art company. And we have concerns about micro contamination. And the devices we build are highly sensitive to static discharge.

At the other end of the spectrum, we could be looking at a situation in a 9-1-1 call center, where they’re using, I don’t know, Motorola wireless radios or some type of navigation equipment where they’re trying to track the location of a caller. But they’re worried about a system, in this case, their entire communication system, being sensitive to static electricity. Those are two very diverse applications.

So you need to think about what your application is. And one of the key factors is, is my static control flooring application one where I can control other things besides the floor? So we’re talking about a factory here, and that would be we can control the workbench that you work at; we can make your chair static control; we can tell you what kind of shoes to wear; what kind of items to put on top of your shoes, so that as you walk on the floor, you can be grounded.

At the other end of the spectrum back to this 9-1-1 application, we would be talking about a floor that has to get rid of static electricity by preventing static electricity, regardless of what kind of chair someone’s sitting in, regardless of what kind of footwear they’re wearing. So that’s a dichotomy, very extreme differences in the way the floor would possibly perform. So that’s a factor that you need to think about. Because when you’re looking at specs and you looking at brochures, it’s not going to be clear to you – if you’re a specifier – on the applicability of that floor based on your application, because it’s going to be assumed by the manufacturer of the floor, that you understand whether or not that floor will work based on the kind of footwear that you might be using. And as I can attest, from talking to thousands of people over the last 35 years, that that’s not the way it works.

Rick: Your business environment and the work performed in that space are key factors in determining the most suitable type of static-control flooring. Every business has unique needs. And the marketing materials provided by flooring manufacturers couldn’t possibly address all of them. What are some other factors to consider?

Dave: So the next thing I want to talk about is your vision for the floor. What do you want it to look like? What do you want it to feel like? And I’ll give you a really good example: A couple years ago, we did a job for a semiconductor company in North Carolina and one of their architects and their management’s actual requests was we want to have a fun place to work. So they had clean rooms and they had manufacturing areas where they had to do certain things with the flooring in order to meet the criteria of those spaces. But they had a lot of lab areas. And in that particular space, they decided they wanted to have a very dynamic environment. They wanted it to be a place where people were energized where they worked. So they actually purchased from us static-control carpet, we call them ESD carpet tiles, but they bought this carpet in the form of planks. And they did this really cool thing where a certain number of the planks had this blue stripe in it. If you go on our website, you can see pictures of this particular job, but it made for a very dynamic environment. So their vision for the space was one where people would feel energized.

Your vision for your space might be, this is a lab area and we’re trying to get funding from banks and different types of organizations that might fund our business. And we need this to look like a hospital or a laboratory. So your vision might be I want the floor to be white. I want the floor to maybe have the logo of my company in it, but I want it to look like something where if I spilled food on the floor, I could eat it. So vision for space is kind of a big deal. I can’t tell you what your vision should be. It’s going to be dependent on your needs and on the impression you want to make on people who come into your space. What do you expect people to think about your company? These are things that have nothing to do with static control, but they have everything to do with what you’re going to get when you’re done.

Next key factor would be installation strategies. Let’s pick a really difficult one. You own a clean room. For years that clean room did not handle a static-sensitive product. Now it does. The clean room has an old VCT floor. That’s vinyl composition tile. It’s in perfect condition but it has no static-control properties. The cleanroom is operational, and you really don’t want to tear it apart, or lose the capability of the clean room for a period of time, while you basically do demolition where you remove the old floor. You might be interested in something that can float on top of the old floor. That’s going to influence what options you have. You might be looking at an interlocking floor because you can snap it together without generating contamination, and it will sit on top of the old floor. Or you might be looking at an option where you’re buying rubber like our gf rubber that has an adhesive already bonded to the back of it. That would allow you, if you do the installation properly, to adhere to the old floor and have a seamless floor that meets any clean room application.

Back to the 9-1-1 call center, could be a situation where you want to put in new static-dissipative carpet tile, but because you can’t shut down that call center, the people working in the call center might not appreciate the idea of liquid adhesives being used. You might need carpet tile that can be attached to adjacent carpet tiles with something that looks kind of like a plastic sticky label that has adhesive on it that will bond the corners of tiles in a permanent way without exposing people to chemicals that they may or may not understand. So installation logistics are an important factor.

Rick: With that we can add aesthetics and installation methods to the list of key factors in the process of selecting an ESD floor. What else is there to consider?

Dave: Maintenance. So maybe you’re looking at a static-control floor, but you’ve got certain restrictions that might affect you maintenance-wise. So let’s, let’s take a really interesting example. It’s an MRI room. MRI rooms, if you know anything about MRIs, they have giant magnets in them. If the maintenance materials that you need to use are attracted by a magnet, you might discover that the vacuum cleaner that you bring into the MRI room is going to end up inside the MRI machine. And you can google this kind of stuff and you’ll actually see some interesting pictures of chairs and vacuum stuck inside of MRI machines.

So a floor like that you may have to use plastic mops to take care of it. That means you can’t use carpet. You might have to use a rubber floor because obviously in an MRI area, people who are getting MRIs have problems with their knees, with their ankle, with their backs. They’re going to walk on a floor, and the floor needs to be maintained in a certain way that requires it to get wet. They can’t slip and fall; they’re already in a position where they’re compromised, otherwise they wouldn’t be getting an MRI. So maintenance is something you need to think about. If you’re going to be shutting down an area to do maintenance, like some of these vinyl floors that need certain waxes, that’s a problem in a lot of cases because that means that for four or five hours, if you’re running a three shift operation, a particular area cannot be used.

Rick: So far, we’ve discussed application and aesthetics as well as installation and maintenance methods as key factors in the selection process for static-control flooring. We will continue this conversation in our next episode of Static Bursts when we cover factors such as ergonomics, sound attenuation, and perhaps most importantly, the total cost of ownership over time.

Dave: We hope you learned something today. If you have questions about the podcast, give us a call at 617-923-2000. Even though we specialize in solving problems with flooring, if you have a question about static discharge, how to install a floor, how to test the floor, we’ll be glad to help you. Thanks for listening.

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Against a dark blue background, the podcast title 'Static Bursts' appears in white at the top of the image, with an orange and white stopwatch icon between the two words. A lightning spark appears at the right hand side of the image with a cascade of sparks radiating out across the rest of the image. The podcast title Episode 13: Why One Type of ESD Flooring Doesn't Fit All Applications are overlaid in white and a dark blue semi-opaque square covering the middle of the image. The company name and logo Staticworx appears in orange (first half) and white (second half) at the bottom.

Static Bursts (#Ep 13): Why One Type of ESD Flooring Doesn’t Fit All Applications

In this short 3-minute podcast episode, Dave and Rick talk about why no single type of ESD flooring material is suitable for every application. Flooring materials like ESD vinyl must be used in conjunction with special ESD footwear. Those materials are unsuitable for facilities in which personnel wear regular street shoes. In spaces where street shoes are allowed – data centers, 9-1-1 call centers and government offices, for instance – the ESD floor must dissipate static to ground and also inhibit static generation in the first place.

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Against a dark blue background, the podcast title 'Static Bursts' appears in white at the top of the image, with an orange and white stopwatch icon between the two words. A lightning spark appears at the right hand side of the image with a cascade of sparks radiating out across the rest of the image. The podcast title Episode 14: How Adhesives Impact the Cost of ESD Flooring Installations are overlaid in white and a dark blue semi-opaque square covering the middle of the image. The company name and logo Staticworx appears in orange (first half) and white (second half) at the bottom.

Static Bursts (Ep #14): How Adhesives Impact the Cost of ESD Flooring Installations

Three types of conductive adhesives are typically used to install ESD floors: epoxy, acrylic, and pressure-sensitive. Each adhesive has advantages and disadvantages. Dave explains the differences, details pros and cons, and discusses why – and in what circumstances – one adhesive might be preferable over another. The fourth option is to choose a glue-free installation, such as interlocking ESD tiles. Interlocking tiles are chemical-free, have no fumes or mess, and can be installed in a functional workspace without disrupting operations.

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Against a dark blue background, the podcast title 'Static Bursts' appears in white at the top of the image, with an orange and white stopwatch icon between the two words. A lightning spark appears at the right hand side of the image with a cascade of sparks radiating out across the rest of the image. The podcast title Episode 15: The Importance of Qualifying ESD Flooring are overlaid in white and a dark blue semi-opaque square covering the middle of the image. The company name and logo Staticworx appears in orange (first half) and white (second half) at the bottom.

Static Bursts (Ep. #15): The Importance of Qualifying ESD Flooring

Properly qualifying an ESD floor requires more than testing for electrical resistance. We used to believe that the conductivity of a floor predicted its potential for static charge generation. We now know that resistance and charge generation are independent qualities: one does not relate to the other. A floor can be conductive and still generate static electricity. We also know that flooring materials perform differently with different types of footwear. In this episode, Dave and Rick discuss why it’s important to test the floor as part of an integrated ESD flooring/footwear system – and to test for both conductivity and charge generation.

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Against a dark blue background, the podcast title 'Static Bursts' appears in white at the top of the image, with an orange and white stopwatch icon between the two words. A lightning spark appears at the right hand side of the image with a cascade of sparks radiating out across the rest of the image. The podcast title Episode 16: ESD Chairs: A Bridge Between Two Perfect Methods of Grounding are overlaid in white and a dark blue semi-opaque square covering the middle of the image. The company name and logo Staticworx appears in orange (first half) and white (second half) at the bottom.

Static Bursts (Ep #16): ESD Chairs: A Bridge Between Two Perfect Methods of Grounding

In this episode, Dave and Rick explain how ESD chairs work and why they act as a bridge between two perfect methods of grounding (an ESD floor and wrist strap). The ESD floor grounds and prevents charge generation while people walk. Once the person sits and lifts his or her feet, they are no longer grounded. There may be a wrist strap at the work station, but until the person puts it on they’re a live wire. If they touch a component – or expensive prototype, for example – before putting on the wrist strap, any charge on their body will transfer to the component. ESD chairs ground the person in the chair, prevent charge generation and protecting against random ESD events.

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Against a dark blue background, the podcast title 'Static Bursts' appears in white at the top of the image, with an orange and white stopwatch icon between the two words. A lightning spark appears at the right hand side of the image with a cascade of sparks radiating out across the rest of the image. The podcast title Episode 17: Replacing a Failing Floor Without Losing Production Time is overlaid in white and a dark blue semi-opaque square covering the middle of the image. The company name and logo Staticworx appears in orange (first half) and white (second half) at the bottom.

Static Bursts (Ep #17): Case Study – Replacing a Failing Floor Without Losing Production Time

StaticWorx was asked to evaluate a failing floor in an electronics manufacturing facility. After a fire the client had purchased a new ESD vinyl tile floor. Three months into the installation the floor was already lifting. In addition to unmitigated vapor, the building had been built using tilt-up construction. Silicone bond-breakers - sprayed on the concrete to keep the wall slabs from adhering to the subfloor - contaminated the concrete, preventing the tile from adhering properly. As the building was operational and the client wanted to avoid shutdown, Dave recommended interlocking ESD vinyl tile. StaticWorx installed a 10’ x 10’ test patch. Two months later, the interlocking floor was intact. StaticWorx covered the entire floor in the operational facility with interlocking vinyl tile - without the client’s losing a day of production.

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Against a dark blue background, the podcast title 'Static Bursts' appears in white at the top of the image, with an orange and white stopwatch icon between the two words. A lightning spark appears at the right hand side of the image with a cascade of sparks radiating out across the rest of the image. The podcast title Episode 19: ESD Flooring Selection (Part 2) is overlaid in white and a dark blue semi-opaque square covering the middle of the image. The company name and logo Staticworx appears in orange (first half) and white (second half) at the bottom.

Static Bursts #19: ESD Flooring Selection (Part 2)

When choosing an ESD floor, it’s important to consider all the variables related to your specific application. Will you roll heavy loads on the floor? Do you need noise attenuation, anti-fatigue characteristics, or reflectivity? How long do you plan to stay in the building? When evaluating options, remember that the cost per square foot is only one part of the total cost of owning the floor. Installation, labor, maintenance, operational downtime add up – in the short term as well as over time.

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Against a dark blue background, the podcast title 'Static Bursts' appears in white at the top of the image, with an orange and white stopwatch icon between the two words. A lightning spark appears at the right hand side of the image with a cascade of sparks radiating out across the rest of the image. The podcast title Episode 20: The Pitfalls of ESD Flooring Selection: How to Avoid Flooring Failure (Part 1) is overlaid in white and a dark blue semi-opaque square covering the middle of the image. The company name and logo Staticworx appears in orange (first half) and white (second half) at the bottom.

Static Bursts #20: The Pitfalls of ESD Flooring Selection: How to Avoid Flooring Failure (Part 1)

Three fundamental mistakes account for a majority of ESD flooring failures: selecting the wrong floor for the application: failure to consider total cost of ownership; failing to test the floor after it’s been installed. Avoiding these mistakes helps ensure success. This first of a two-part series on avoiding ESD flooring failures explains why it’s important to select a floor based on the specific application and details the primary considerations that should be taken into account: assessing the type of footwear people will wear in the space and considering goals and objectives, including how the space will be used.

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Against a dark blue background, the podcast title 'Static Bursts' appears in white at the top of the image, with an orange and white stopwatch icon between the two words. A lightning spark appears at the right hand side of the image with a cascade of sparks radiating out across the rest of the image. The podcast title Episode 21: Installing ESD Flooring: Avoiding Pitfalls (Part 2) is overlaid in white and a dark blue semi-opaque square covering the middle of the image. The company name and logo Staticworx appears in orange (first half) and white (second half) at the bottom.

Static Bursts #21: Installing ESD Flooring: Avoiding Pitfalls (Part 2)

The cost of flooring materials is only part of the total cost of ownership. To calculate the long-term cost of owning a floor, consider installation, maintenance, repairs, and downtime required for maintenance and repair. Aesthetics are another consideration. this podcast, Dave and Rick describe scenarios that occur when people base flooring decisions solely on the cost of the material. Dave also explains why it’s crucial to test an ESD floor immediately after it’s been installed.

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Background graphic is a still from the StaticWorx GroundSafe ESD Flooring – Your Trusted Partner explainer animation. In the foreground at the bottom are two boxes. The top is a bright blue with the StaticWorx logo and "GroundSafe ESD Flooring" underneath in white. The second is a dark blue-gray and includes the text in white: “GroundWorx ESD Flooring – Your Trusted Partner”
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StaticWorx high-performance static-control floors protect electronic components, explosives, and high-speed computers from damage caused by static electricity. ESD flooring is part of a system. Choices should always be based on objective, researched evidence. When you partner with us, we look at all possible items that may need to integrate with the floor, and, focusing on your goals and objectives, help you find the right floor for your application.