Do You Need Static Control Flooring?

Does your business have a substantial investment in electronics or computers?

Have you ever experienced an unexplained failure? Perhaps one of your critical systems went down with no warning at a critical time (there’s never really a convenient time for that, is there?), or perhaps a component was working beautifully one minute and performing erratically the next.

One of the most nefarious—and hardest to detect— culprits behind failures of this kind is electrostatic discharge. By some estimates, it could be responsible for more than fifty percent of hardware failures, costing upwards of $5 billion each year.

So, if you have devices, people, and floors, then you face risks from the devastating effects of static electricity—specifically electrostatic discharge (ESD).

How Can Floors Protect Equipment from ESD Damage?

Since static control flooring provides an attractive “escape route” for static electricity that builds up in the most common of circumstances, it can be a relatively simple and inexpensive way to protect your valuable data & devices from getting zapped.

Aren’t specialized static control floors ugly?

If the thought of specialized protective flooring conjures up images of server rooms, data centers, or ugly hospital wards, then we’ve got good news!

Today, ESD floors come in an amazing array of materials, styles, and colors. Sure… we install rubber floors. We epoxy concrete.

But we also have attractive broadloom carpet that provides decent ESD protection for your sensitive electronics in beautiful designs—so beautiful, in fact, that no one would ever suspect that the carpet is actually serving a valuable purpose beyond that of ordinary carpet!

In addition to broadloom carpet, we also carry carpet tiles and vinyl tiles and sheet flooring. Each is suitable for different situations, and they are available in configurations that provide varying degrees of protection depending upon your specific situation.

Which Static Control Floor is Right for You?

Whether you run a manufacturing facility or a cubicle farm, a call center or a clean room, the fantastic assortment of options available today means that you can find a flooring solution that meets your needs. Obviously, there are a number of factors involved in making the right decision.

Some of the considerations you’ll need to include in your decision-making process include:

• Durability: Will the floor be in a high-traffic area? The volume of foot traffic will certainly affect how long your floor will last, and therefore should be considered as part of the overall cost of ownership.
• Maintenance: Since your floor contains components—from conductive carpet fibers to embedded veins of specialized materials—to give static electricity a place to go, you’ll want to weigh out the maintenance needs of the flooring.
• Static Control Performance: ESD flooring comes in various levels of effectiveness (measured by its “conductivity”). How conductive or dissipative your floor needs to be depends upon the nature of your equipment, the installation environment, and the nature of the usage.
• Other Factors: Does the floor need to help absorb sound to help control the noise in the environment? Do you need slip protection? What chemicals might be spilled on your floor?

As you can see, the flooring choices available to you can be a bit of a dizzying maze. But there’s good news: we’re here to help you navigate! Reach out today, and let our team of experts help you find the most effective solution at the right budget to match your situation perfectly!