Pallmann tell us about its new training centre in Würzburg, Germany.

The new Orange World training centre has been located on the premises of the wood floor and surface specialist, Pallmann, since June. The converted warehouse and production hall serves employees, customers, suppliers and people interested in wood floors as a meeting place for training courses, workshops and various wood floor-related events. A break area with a show kitchen and a large outdoor terrace invites people to get together. Orange World was completed just in time for the Würzburg Wood Days on 24 June, an industry get-together that Pallmann has been organising for many years. Under the motto ‘Friends in Würzburg’, it was held for the first time on site in the new seminar centre. The tight schedule for the renovation required exacting co-ordination of the individual work steps, from the preparation of the subfloor to the laying of the wood floor made of oak high-sided slats.

‘During the conversion of the warehouse into the new training centre, we were able to show how fast drying our products are, how they fit together in the system and how we use them most efficiently so that the floor is ready for the event,’ explains Heinrich Gaier, application engineer at Pallmann. ‘As a team together with Uzin, everything worked perfectly.’

Tight schedule meets the requirements of today’s construction sites
As a professional in the field of surface finishing and thanks to the complete range for installing wood floors, Pallmann has experience with the requirements of the construction site. ‘Tight deadlines are almost a standard part of today,’ says Gaier. As the new Orange World is to serve as a lively meeting place for employees and customers – a highly frequented and busy area – the floor had to be very resistant. For optimal protection of the fully bonded high-slat wood floor, a triple application of the two-component wood floor lacquer Pall-X 98 was applied for very heavily used wood floors.

For the canteen and show kitchen area, the Pallmann team produced an oak table over six metres long and three metres wide. ‘This is an absolutely unique piece made of Belgian oak and a special eye-catcher,’ says Pallmann managing director Stefan Neuberger. ‘It is probably the largest table in Europe made from one piece of heartwood.’

Machining the subfloor in the former warehouse
The substrate preparation began with shot-blasting of the existing monolithic concrete slab. Missing areas were previously filled with UZIN NC 946 rapid screed. ‘Shot-blasting meant that the dense concrete was well prepared for optimum adhesion of the barrier primer,’ explains Armin Metz, Uzin application engineer. The epoxy resin primer UZIN PE 460 is particularly suitable for damp, porous and unstable substrates. It was applied twice, sand blinded with quartz sand, and edge insulation strips installed. Then the levelling compound UZIN NC 170 Levelstar was applied with a machine pump in a layer thickness of 3 to 5mm. With its extremely good flow, the cementitious levelling compound ensures very smooth, even surfaces and thus optimum results during installation.

Wood floor installation by professionals for professionals
For gluing the 10mm thick on-edge slat wood floor, the experts chose Pallmann P9, a solvent-free, very low-emission two-component PUR adhesive with particularly good adhesion. The universal wood floor adhesive sets quickly, is shear-resistant according to DIN EN 14293 and water-free. ‘Since the adhesive dries quickly, we were able to sand the wood floor the very next day,’ explains Gaier. The Pallmann Gecko Flex is ideal for sanding the edges, while the Pallmann Cobra belt sander and the multi-talented Pallmann Spider were used for the surface.

Fibre-reinforced joint filling for the surface and hard-wearing varnish
In the next work step, the team closed the existing joints of the upright slats with the fibre-reinforced joint filler Pall-X Filler. The patented water-based joint filler has good stability, penetrates easily into the joints and, due to the fibres, closes even large gaps up to 3mm wide in one application. After the very short drying time, the surface could be sanded a second time with different grit sizes.

The next step was the application of the water-based one-component primer Pall-X 325, which is suitable for highly absorbent wood floor types and for sanded wood floors. As a final triple coat, the wood floor professionals used Pall-X 98, a water-based, two-component wood floor lacquer for very heavily used wood floors in residential, commercial and industrial areas.

Orange World passes test with flying colours
‘The new training centre and the break area are very well received by employees and customers,’ confirms Gaier. Already on 24 June, 150 wood floor installers and other guests from all over Germany and Austria met at Pallmann’s Würzburg Wood Days in the Orange World. Separate rooms are available for theoretical and for practical courses, with 80sq m of space for experimenting with the wood flooring.
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