BUILDINGS, MAINTENANCE & REFURBISHMENT
Making sure your school flooring lasts as long as possible M
ost schools will have areas of hardwood flooring somewhere in their premises. You may have a hardwood strip floor in your sports hall or gym, or a showpiece floor in your reception area. In older schools there are often large areas of beautiful herringbone or parquet flooring in the hall, corridor, and classroom areas. I have talked before about how these floors can serve you well for decades if they are properly looked after, and they are often more robust than people think. You rarely need to lay protection over a solid wood floor in your sports hall for example, if you want to use it for exams or social functions.
The key to getting 50, 60, 70 or more years life out of a good quality solid hardwood floor is maintenance. This doesn’t involve anything complicated or expensive but does require a plan. A good way to go about this is to plan for maintenance in combination with a trusted and competent contractor.
How many times can the floor be refurbished? A solid wood floor from Junckers can be sanded and sealed up to ten times and with 12-year intervals
October 2024
between sandings, a typical lifespan of 60 years will comfortably be exceeded, a claim that probably no other type of sports floor can match. Compared with a typical 15-year life of a synthetic or “engineered” floor there really is no comparison in terms of life cycle cost.
Is it easy to repair if the floor gets worn or damaged? Floors made from large elements, typically plywood or chipboard sheets on to which vinyl, polyurethane or linoleum is laid, can be difficult to repair because of the large sheet size, and repairs will often result in large amounts of waste. The sheets will be glued together and often glued down as well. Floors made from smaller elements that are not fixed together, such as solid hardwood boards are easier to repair on a localised basis with far less waste.
Can the floor be recycled? With the concept of the circular economy becoming more and more important, keeping raw materials in use for as long as possible reduces the impact on the environment. A Junckers solid wood floor can often be re- purposed – we often see decades old floors lifted from sports halls reused in commercial and even residential settings – a sand and seal make them good as new.
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At the end of its long life, a Junckers floor will degrade naturally, unlike flooring surfaces made from crude oil derived materials.
A trusted maintenance contractor Regular professional maintenance will keep your floor in optimum condition and extend its lifespan. Junckers is offering all schools and education facilities a free health check for their floors, to assess the condition and performance level. A Junckers’ Approved Contractor will inspect the floor and recommend a maintenance regime, no matter what flooring surface you have.
Junckers u 45-49 Leather Lane, London EC1N 7TJ u 01376 534 700 u
sales@junckers.co.uk u
www.junckers.co.uk u Twitter/Instagram @junckersfloors
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