Finish can leave you flat (on your face)
Q: I have installed timber floors for years and never had problems with slips, but was recently called back to a job where the finish on an engineered floor was badly worn, exposing the grain. The client complained that the worn surface made the floor slippery. I visited the site and it doesn’t feel slippery tome.
A: Timber has been used as a floor surface for generations, but its potential slipperiness has only been taken seriously over the last decade or so.
This might be a result of increasing attention to health & safety, including the rapid growth of litigation. This is fuelled by the spiralling ‘no-win-no-fee’ compensation culture, which forces flooring manufacturers, suppliers and installers to stay on their guard.
Several months ago, I wrote about problems associated with using exterior timber decking materials, specifically their potentially high slipperiness when they ‘weather’ (specifically, organic materials growing on
their walking surface). I stated that slipperiness wasn’t the result of any inherent problem with the timber’s walking surface, but rather through the presence of organicmaterials (lichen,moss or algae).
The same is true of indoor wood flooring, whether solid or engineered.
Slipperiness is rarely down to the walking surface, but usually the result of the finish that has been applied.
Clean, bare wood tends not to be slippery (whether an unfinished floorboard or scaffold plank), but the finishes can be. Finishes are applied to timber floors for good reasons, including reducing discolouration
and extending the floor’s lifespan.
When modern finishes are applied to the surface of timber floors, they cease to be wood; pedestrians walk on the top layer. If applied properly, you’re walking on quite a thick layer of finish, usually made up of numerous thinner layers. This is true of manually applied finishes and of engineered materials, but NOT of laminates (for discussion in a future issue).
As previously, I will fall back on my simple rules of slipperiness. If the finish (manually or factory applied) is ‘gloss’ and reflective, it is highly likely to be slippery when wet or contaminated. If it’s matt, the slipperiness might be a little lower.
Your question, however, relates to slipperiness of worn timber. How the surface became worn is obviously a concern, but if this wear extends through the finish and into the timber, then slipperiness should be the last of your concerns.
Unfinished timber generally reacts to pedestrian traffic by increasing its roughness to a reasonable level (especially Dr Paul Lemon, The Slips Doctor, on timber floors across the grain), so any areas of wear that pass through the finish are unlikely to be slippery.
I recommend that you immediately find out why the surface is wearing. This wear may be partly due to dirt particles being trafficked onto it, possibly through an ineffective entrance matting system.
As this column focuses on slipperiness, I should say that the presence of dirt / grit particles can increase the
likelihood of slipping!
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