In the fall of 2017, Europe’s leading equipment rental provider Cramo wanted to improve the impact resistant of concrete floors in the company’s central workshop in Tuusula. Cramo Finland chose FSP as the contractor, who recommended coating the floor with highly durable polyurea.
So far, Cramo Finland Oy’s Service Manager Tuomas Niinisalo has been pleased with the coating project, which covered a part of the concrete floor area in the central workshop facility in Tuusula. The Tuusula facilities also include Cramo’s largest depot, which supplies machines and serves over fifty facilities all over Finland.
“This was a pilot project, but if our experiences are positive, we will choose the polyurea coating for the other Cramo facilities in Finland, as well. We wanted to find a hard and flexible coating for concrete floors, which would endure heavy wear and tear and extreme mechanical stress,” explains Niinisalo.
The surface was completed with an anti-slip coating to improve occupational safety. A profiled floor surface reduces the risk of slipping, in case there is, for example, oil on the floor.
Besides occupational safety, the aim is to reduce the amount of maintenance and reparations a concrete floor requires. The whole project started when Niinisalo saw a video of the durability of polyurea. On the video, someone took a heavy sledge hammer and used it to hit a polyurea-coated wall built of concrete blocks.
The blocks shattered into pieces, but the polyurea on their surface remained as an undamaged sheet. In the end, this convinced Niinisalo to test the material in concrete floors.
Durability as the goal
“Our objective is to prevent the concrete floor from wearing, because at the workshop we are moving excavation machines that run on metal tracks and wheel loaders with studded tyres. The construction machines on metal tracks can weigh up to 30 tons. They cause a massive amount of stress on the concrete floor surface and increase the need for maintenance,” Niinisalo explains.
“We also wanted to utilise new surface treatment techniques and coatings, because creating innovations” is one of the main themes incorporated in Cramo’s new strategy. In addition, using polyurea was a quick and easily implemented surface treatment solution.”
The project was started with cleaning and grinding phases, during which oil and other impurities where removed from the floor before applying the actual polyurea. Other strong points of polyurea include resistance to water and corrosion. In addition, it does not contain volatile organic compounds, and is therefore an environmentally friendly option.
During the fall of 2017, FSP has also performed other polyurea coating projects in facilities all over Finland. For example, in Iisalmi FSP is studying the suitability of polyurea for different purposes, such as the floors of person hoists and booms of concrete injection units.
“The purpose of coating the floor of a person hoist with polyurea is creating an anti-slip surface. Polyurea is a more durable and easily installed solution than rubber coating,” sums up FSP’s Business Director Jarno Huttunen.
Cramo
- Full-service rental solutions provider that rents modular spaces in addition to construction machinery and equipment, and also offers its customers support services for construction, renovation and maintenance
- Leader in its field in the Nordic Countries and in Central and Eastern Europe
- Operates in 14 countries with approximately 320 offices
- Approximately 2,500 employees, of which around 500 in Finland in over 50 facilities
- Turnover of € 712 million in 2016
- Cramo Finland Oy is part of Cramo Group
