As its utility becomes clearer to facilities managers worldwide each year, the value of epoxy flooring keeps growing. Now, it’s a $42 billion global phenomenon.
But what makes epoxy floors and coatings so popular? Unique among building materials, epoxy rises to meet many of the challenges faced in contemporary warehouse interiors.
With this guide, McLean Company’s experts are here to unlock five unique benefits of epoxy. Then, discover how you can use it yourself to enhance your commercial storage, warehousing, or industrial space.
Challenges of Warehouse Flooring
Warehouse floors need to withstand extraordinary pressure, just due to typical, day-to-day use. A typical forklift, for instance, exerts around 300 pounds of pressure per square inch against the ground as it drives.
Yet, the out-and-out strongest flooring material isn’t automatically the best choice for a warehouse. It might trade off strength for greater vulnerability to other risks.
Goods in warehouse storage often need considerable protection from water damage, corrosion, pathogen contamination, or heat—protection not easily granted by all materials. Likewise, a floor material that’s effectively strong and protective, but too slippery, can increase the risk of worker injury; and any theoretically “perfect” floor is, almost inevitably, expensive—risking the facility’s financial bottom line.
Given the complex challenges warehouse managers face, there’s not a one-size-fits-all flooring solution. Thus, it’s often surprising to learn the extent to which one unique material solves quite a few flooring problems in one fell swoop!
The Best Warehouse Floor Solution? Epoxy Flooring and Coating
Epoxy is an excellent warehouse flooring material. Epoxy-based solutions can include:
- Complete, poured, wholly epoxy floors
- Hybrid solutions (combining epoxy and other materials into a “just-right” compound flooring mixture)
- An epoxy coating, surface layer, or sealant over a floor primarily built from another material (e.g. concrete, metal)
Epoxy-based solutions rise to meet industrial flooring challenges. What precise benefits do they offer within commercial warehouses and similar facilities?
Top 5 Benefits of Epoxy Flooring In An Industrial Warehouse
Epoxy-based solutions improve warehouse floors’ safety, strength, resilience, and longevity— among plenty of other enhancements. Yet, from this diverse range of positive effects, five benefits stand out.
Safety
The most vital benefit of epoxy flooring? Safety.
Unlike certain other materials used in warehouse design, epoxy resin is non-toxic, and it can easily increase a floor’s slip-resistance. It’s also safer for the environment than most popular alternatives, with more VOC-free options on the market each year.
Non-Toxic
Toxins in substances used in warehouse composition can pose serious risks to worker health. Fortunately, epoxy resins have relatively low toxicity before and during curing. Throughout the application process, OSHA-compliant procedures and PPE can protect all involved from any deleterious health effects from the substance at this stage.
After epoxy resins are cured and set, they are wholly non-toxic; they’re ultimately safe for general workspaces.
Slip-Resistant
While toxins often make headlines, dangerous falls are too often under-considered risks. In fact, in a typical year, 240,000 to 450,000 industrial workers sustain serious injuries and miss work due to slipping on a low-friction surface. Moreover, the National Safety Council (NSC) reports slipping and falling is the second leading cause of death inside warehouses, accounting for 15% of all warehouse-based deaths.
The vast majority of slip and fall accidents are caused by preventable, poor floor conditions. Fortunately, epoxy flooring solutions can nearly eliminate slippery floors from your warehouse altogether!
OSHA recommends increasing the friction of a warehouse floor’s surface to a coefficient (COF) of 0.5 or greater, to increase slip-resistance. While this recommendation isn’t a mandate, floors with greater friction COF are easier for soles of shoes (and machinery bottoms) to “grip,” thus limiting the risk of unintended motion or sliding.
CoF: Crucial To Safety
Researchers at Purdue University set a COF of 0.5 as the baseline friction necessary to qualify a surface as slip-resistant. The Americans With Disabilities Act specifies wheelchair ramps must have a CoF of 0.8 to prevent wheelchairs from accidentally sliding back down, and it specifies a floor needs a CoF ranging from 0.6 to 0.8 to be accessible.
Unfortunately, many popular flooring materials fail to meet the friction CoF guidelines and standards, particularly when wet (due to spills, snow melt, etc.) Steel, polished concrete, and laminated veneer lumber (LVL) floor surfaces can easily become too slippery for warehouse safety.
Epoxy’s Default CoF Is Safe
In contrast, the friction CoF of epoxy flooring and surface coatings vary. Most epoxy floor surfaces have a friction CoF of 0.5-0.55 by default. However, these levels can be dangerously reduced by spills.
Fortunately, the nature of epoxy makes contemporary friction-increasing solutions easy and cost-effective. Distinct surface preparation, composite or matrix compounds with epoxy and rubber or metals, and abrasive additives (like iron shavings) reliably increase epoxy floors’ CoF to 0.7-0.8—even when wet!
These options make the material ideal for enhancing the anti-slip function of a warehouse floor.
Low-VOC (Environmentally Safer)
Epoxy’s safety benefits go beyond both slip-resistance and its non-toxic nature. Though it is a man-made product, the material is more environmentally friendly than many warehouse flooring alternatives. It’s sustainable, as it produces less waste, and it can reduce the need for demolition when it’s installed over existing floors.
Moreover, there are many contemporary low-VOC (and even VOC-free) options among epoxy resin products and compounds. These epoxies release fewer or no volatile organic compounds into the environment, increasing safety for all.
Strength
If you hold a block of epoxy in your hand, it might not initially strike you as particularly strong. Yet, as results show again and again, the material offers an incredible increase to a floor’s strength. And, it does so without many of the drawbacks associated with more “intuitively” strong materials.
How Strong Does A Warehouse Floor Need to Be?
Warehouses handle high-impact machinery work, heavy load transport, and storage, and they bear fairly significant weight through typical use. Thus, load capacity standards are high.
Uniform Load Vs. Concentrated Load Capacity
ACSE & ICC standards for warehouse floors
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) standards note, “[A] storage warehouse designed for heavy loads” must be built to bear a uniform load of 250 lbs / sq. ft. That is, engineers should assume a typical, heavy storage warehouse will bear an average of 250 lbs on every square foot of its surface (if the weight were evenly distributed).
And that’s just the baseline standard to ensure the facility can handle “uniform,” loads: essentially, the total distributed weight the floor will bear on average, over time.
But, commercial and industrial surfaces also need to handle concentrated loads. That is, weight disproportionately or entirely concentrated on a single point or area. Also called “point loads,” these concentrations of mass are often columns or densely populated work zones.
These disproportionate loads (heavier than the space’s “uniform” load) require particular design consideration, to prevent warping or damage to the floor’s structure. Standards set by the International Code Council (ICC) require all storage and wholesale warehouse load-bearing surfaces to capably support point loads of 1000 lbs. Moreover, roofing and truss structure support points within warehouses must reliably bear concentrated loads of 2000 lbs.
Notes on Point Loads
It’s worth noting concentrated loads are not calculated as distributions across a surface; they’re rated as a single point. Thus, ICC’s standards reflect a single-point measurement.
Point loads can be “dead” (i.e. specific locations [points] of stationary, high-mass objects, like load-bearing columns or permanently installed heavy machinery). But, they can also be “live,” and only impact the floor at specific times. The 300 psi force of a forklift’s front axle, mentioned in the introduction, is a live point load each time the lift is used.
Unpacking Epoxy Floors’ High Load-Bearing Capacity
Fortunately, commercial engineering experts know epoxy floors readily meet—and often exceed—these incredible standards.
How is epoxy’s strength as a material measured? And what makes the material such a great floor strengthener?
Compressive, Flexural, and Tensile Strength
When evaluating a floor material’s strength, warehouse engineers consider three measurements:
- Compressive strength. This is the extent to which an object can withstand a load applying compressive force, without succumbing to that compression.
- Compression is the result of any forces that, when strong enough, crush, crumple, fracture, deform, or otherwise reduce an object’s size.
- Tensile strength. The is the degree to which an object can withstand tension.
- Tension is a force that stretches, elongates, or even pulls apart an object, when strong enough.
- Flexural strength. This metric is the same as tensile strength in a uniform, homogenous object. But, it specifically measures the extent to which an object withstands bending forces.
- Capitulation to bending forces includes sagging, hogging, warping, deforming, or other types of bending of an object’s surface or composition.
- Bending forces resisted by an object’s flexural strength include:
- Asymmetrical tension
- Opposed compressive forces
- The action of “in-plane” and “out-plane” bending forces
- These forces are inherent to complex deformation
All three metrics are necessary to ensure a warehouse floor is functionally strong.
Floor Material Strength Ratings
Load-bearing capacity ratings are typically calculated as a specific fraction of an object or material’s compressive strength.
For example, ASCE’s formula for determining a floor’s load bearing capacity takes the material’s known compressive strength, then multiplies it by a rate ranging from 0.4 to 0.6 (the exact rate depends on project-specific factors).
All three types of strength are measured in psi units: how many pounds of force, per square inch, the material effectively withstood in tests before compressing, stretching, or bending.
While industry standards have some variation, the stronger a floor is, the more you can do on it—and, the longer it endures. How much stronger is epoxy than the competition?
How Strong Is Epoxy? Flooring Materials’ Strength Comparison Chart
Note. All ranges reflect typical material strength measurements as noted in engineering reference guides cited in the end notes.
| Flooring Material | Compressive Strength (PSI) | Flexural Strength (PSI) | Tensile Strength (PSI) |
| Concrete
(typical) |
3000 – 5000 | 400 – 700 psi | 300 – 700 |
| Concrete
(high-performance) |
7,000 – 17,000 | 2000 – 3,000 | 1,700 |
| Ceramic Tile | 18,000 – 36,000
(20,000 avg.) |
1,450 – 5,000 | 40 – 600 |
| Steel plate flooring
(general) |
25,000 – 36,000 | 53,000 – 744,000+ | 33,000 |
| Steel plate flooring
(stainless steel) |
30,000 – 45,000
(grade 301 thru 304) |
8,410 – 136,000 | 90,000 |
| Vinyl (flooring) | 4000 – 5000 | 600 – 800 | 300 – 400 |
| Epoxy
Resin (general) |
10,000 – 20,000 | 5,000 – 274,000+ | 5,100 – 6,000
(typical epoxy adhesive) |
| 12,000 – 20,000
(industrial grade) |
|||
| 8,000 – 9,000
(high-strength structural epoxy) |
|||
| 15,000 – 25,000
(specialty, high-performance bond-filled) |
|||
| Epoxy
flooring surface or coating |
9,000 – 20,000+ | 10,000 | 3,500 – 5,000 (epoxy mortars) |
| 12,000
(typical epoxy coatings) |
The numbers don’t lie. Epoxy is either as strong as—or stronger than—nearly every mainstream commercial flooring material. It out-matches even high-performance concrete on every test of strength. Ultimately, only steel plates beat epoxy in terms of floor material strength.
Resilience
The third, crucial benefit granted by epoxy floors? Resilience.
Resilient surface materials last longer, they need less frequent repairs, and they better protect anything on said surface from damage. This describes epoxy precisely.
Resistance To Damage, Corrosion, and Disease
Epoxy floors and floor coatings have inherent damage-resisting properties. Expert designers can enhance these properties by choosing optimal epoxy types for a project, using different curing methods, and optimizing applications.
Popular resilient traits that can be brought out in epoxy include:
- Water resistance (waterproof and water-tight sealants)
- Intumescence (fire- and heat-resistance)
- Anti-chemical-corrosion properties (acid-proof and rust-resistant epoxies)
- Resistance to blunt and cutting forces (i.e. compression strength)
Moreover, epoxy’s non-porosity and extremely high melt-point let it maintain structural integrity in the face of environmental extremes. The material’s surface is also inhospitable to microbes; combined with its adaptive texture, its hygienic and easy to sterilize. This makes it particularly well-suited to medical and pharmaceutical warehouses.
Longevity
Longitudinal studies show epoxy coatings typically extend the lifespan of concrete floors from 3 years to 20+. There are two traits which particularly contribute to epoxy’s lifespan-enhancing capacity: durability and easy maintenance.
Durable
Many aspects of epoxy enhance a floor’s durability: its corrosion protection, resistance to rust, fire, and water damage, and strength. Its strength, resilience, and cleanliness add up to a powerful endurance-enhancing agent.
Its durability, in turn, increases a warehouse floor’s lifespan.
Easy To Keep Well
Simple Cleaning and Maintenance
Epoxy is fairly easy to maintain. The material has greater stain resistance than other popular warehouse floor options. So, it’s easy to clean up tracked-in dirt, grease, and oil spills with commonplace industrial custodian supplies.
No extreme cleaning agents are required to keep these floors shiny and new. In the rare instances, discoloration does occur, it can typically be fixed simply. Sanding the affected part of the surface layer, applying a simple anti-UV topcoat, and curing it eminates the issue.
Repairability
Beyond maintenance, epoxy’s reparability is equally crucial to its resilience. Repairing epoxy resin is often easier than enacting similar repairs on concrete, porcelain, or stonework. Dents, chips, cracks, and scratches can often be addressed in a single day, with the expert application of epoxy putty or filler with the right tools.
More extensive damage can be fixed by cleaning out and filling cracks with a custom epoxy injection or resin patch mixture, and then curing it.
Enhancing Concrete’s Fixability
In contrast, chips and cracks in concrete floors typically demand more extensive prep work and complex tools to fix. As it’s easier to repair damage to epoxy surfaces than other floors, commercial property managers can repair them earlier on when damage accumulates—further increasing the floor’s longevity..
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Cost-Effective
Finally, epoxy flooring is a cost-effective option. When a warehouse saves money on flooring, you can re-invest it. It’s a benefit that keeps serving.
How affordable is an epoxy resin floor? To make this call, it’s wise to take three expenses into consideration.
Affordable Base Cost
Epoxy flooring has a fairly affordable base cost, particularly when compared to similarly-strong materials. While the rate for different materials fluctuates, this market snapshot (sourced from Architectural Digest and Forbes) is fairly representative of long-term trends.
| Typical Price Range of Flooring Materials, Per 1 Square Foot | |
| Material | Cost (USD) |
| Epoxy | $3 – $12 |
| Concrete | $6 – $12 |
| Ceramic | $15.50 (avg.) |
| Porcelain | $16.50 (avg.) |
| Steel* | $20 – $26 |
| Vinyl (VCT / LVT) | $1 – $10 |
*range for ¼ in. thick “steel diamond” floor plate
Epoxy is one of the most affordable flooring materials, with only less-strong options like vinyl reliably pricing it out.
Quick Installation
Epoxy floors and coating can be installed quickly—often in 24-72 hours. The swift installation lets a warehouse get back to business sooner. The net result? Labor costs don’t spiral out of control, and the space can start generating revenue sooner rather than later.
Make Your Warehouse Safe, Strong, and Resilient—For Less
Discover epoxy flooring solutions and more with McLean Company
There’s no single, perfect floor for every warehouse. That’s why we encourage you to go beyond research and talk to one of our experts. At McLean Company, we’re excited to discover how we can turn your vision for your commercial space into reality.
Ready to dive into the transformative potential of your flooring project? Call us at 978-774-4330 for a free consultation. Or, let us send a bit more information your way by filling out the contact form below!