Grippy Floor mats win. A rental entrance mat needs to do many things: primarily, the mat keeps the floor clean. Of course, this should not be done at the expense of safety. So, if the mat curls up and forms lumps, we get a hazard which can cause a user to trip and fall. What if we say that you can get a mat where there’s no shifting sideways, no bunching up or curling or corners flipping over, could this be of interest?
Consider why carpeted rental floor mats do cause safety hazards. Let’s look at standard-weight interior entrance runners and floor mats. The first thing we take note of is the design. Most are constructed with a nylon /polyethene carpet top bonded to a moulded rubber back — making them durable, but potentially dangerous. Why? Simply put, rubber doesn’t adhere to the floor. Even with a high-traction back, carpeted floor mats don’t adhere to the floor surface and relies on weight to keep them flat and in place.
This makes them cumbersome and bulky, but at a little over eight ounces per square foot (2.4 kg per square metre), they’re light enough to shift underfoot and trolley traffic or kick out of position — creating the rippled edges and flipped-up corners that become tripping hazards!
New Pig Grippy Floor Mats
New Pig Grippy Floor Mats — manufactured by New Pig Corp. of the USA — are the world’s first adhesive-backed mat. These mats do away with the built-in deficiencies of rubber-backed, carpeted rental floor mats. Grippy Mat stays put, full stop. The proprietary adhesive backing on the New Pig Grippy Floor Mat keeps it perfectly flat and in place as long as it’s in service. Because it doesn’t shift, ripple or flip over, Grippy Floor Mats drastically reduce slips, trips and falls and eliminate the time wasted adjusting mats.
Grippy Floor Mats keep floors cleaner. Just like nylon or polyethene carpeting, the Grippy Mat effectively captures dirt and grime at the door. But unlike carpeting or rental mats, the Croc Grippy Mat is also a highly efficient absorbent mat that pulls moisture off shoes and spreads it throughout the mat with a powerful wicking action. It is this cycle of absorbing, wicking and spreading that helps Grippy Floor Mat dry out and keep water and dirt from being tracked onto the floor.
Plus, the Croc Grippy Floor Mat is easy to maintain. The Grippy Floor Mat stays in place to work with standard floor cleaning methods. Grippy Floor Mat can be swept, vacuumed, mopped or cleaned with a floor scrubber. This allows the cleaning staff to treat Croc Grippy Mat as a part of the floor and keep it clean without extra work or inconvenience.
As well, the Grippy Mat keeps looking good longer. The top layer material on Grippy Mat is virtually indestructible and won’t fray or crush in extreme foot, trolley’s and other wheeled traffic, so this looks good longer. It stays in place, doesn’t bunch up and looks neat and appealing as long as it’s on the floor.
Grippy Floor Mats keep floors safer. Grippy Mat’s high-traction surface has been certified by the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI) and can help reduce slip-and-fall claims by up to 90%. Croc Grippy Mat is the only floor mat that can be rolled out and cut to size to provide the necessary walk-off coverage in entrances.
The adhesive back sticks to the floor with a super tight grip and peels off easily at up to 12-week changeout intervals. The New Pig Grippy Floor mat will stick to most common commercial floor surfaces including tiles, vinyl floors and concrete.
Grippy Mat is ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990) compliant and will never create a tripping hazard. It stays securely in place to eliminate the rippling, shifting and flipping over that make rubber mats a danger. And because it’s super thin, Grippy Mat is nearly indistinguishable in height profile from the rest of the floor surface — eliminating the edges that curl and catch on shoes and cartwheels.
Grippy Mat sets a new standard. Adhesive-backed mats don’t just improve on the old standard of carpet on rubber, they’re a completely different category of floor mats. Facilities that have switched to PIG Grippy Floor Mat say it’s the first real alternative to rubber-backed and rental mats that actually helps them prevent slips, trips and falls.
Note the difference between a rental mat and the new Croc Grippy Floor Mat (right) which stays flat and doesn’t curl, bunch-up or flip over
Grippy floor mats wheeled traffic and wet areas
Consider carpets in grocery stores and similar shops. When you have shopping trolleys running across the mats, they will move up to 30 feet (9 m) in the course of the day. So one has to constantly keep moving them back into place. And, let’s face it nylon carpet doesn’t keep water off the floor.
Another drawback with carpeted rental floor mats is how quickly they become soaked in wet conditions. The material used to make these mats out of doesn’t absorb a great lot of water. This just beads up on the outside. The wetter the mat gets, the worse it gets. So, we would see dirt tracks coming off the end of the mat. Thus, in effect, the mat does nothing. Why does this happen? Most floor mats are topped with nylon carpet because it’s tough and abrasion-resistant. But if the carpet fibres have been treated for stain resistance, the mat is essentially water-repellent.
We note that this doesn’t mean the carpet won’t hold water — it will. However, grippy floor mats fibres can’t wick away the moisture and spread it out to generate an efficient drying cycle. When people walk across the mat in wet weather, water from their shoes stays where it was deposited until the carpet becomes waterlogged. Puddles form, water is tracked in, and the floor becomes slippery and dangerous.
Consider that Croc Grippy Mats are great at trapping dust, dirt, salt and moisture from coming into your office workplace. Great for putting in corridors separating workshops and offices.
And, just a side thought: removing water-logged mats. Replacing a water-saturated mat is no easy task, either. A 3′ x 5′ (1.4 sq m) carpeted floor mat weighs about 32 pounds (14.5 kg) soaking wet, and a 3′ x 10′ runner twice that amount, making the job of dragging them out and hanging them to dry a back injury waiting to happen.
What about rental mats?
These type of mats (entrance, runners, etc.) are in a majority of cases rented. On the surface, renting floor mats seems like a smart alternative to the hassles of owning and maintaining them. Most commercial laundry services promote their mats as the easiest way to increase floor safety, lower maintenance costs and enhance appearance. Maybe that’s why over half of the facilities using floor mats rent them.
But do launderable rental mats live up to what they promise? To be effective at removing dirt, grime and moisture, an entrance mat should fit the width of the entrance and provide about 8–10 feet (up to 3 metres) of walk-off — enough for people to take at least six steps. So if an entrance requires 60 square feet (5.5 m2) of coverage, the ideal is a single 6′ x 10′ floor mat that protects the entire area.
If a facility is renting, they may be limited to standard weight 3′ x 5′, 3′ x 10′, 4′ x 6′ or 5′ x 8′ mats. The laundry service knows that larger, heavier mats are safer, but they actively promote the sizes and weights that are most efficient for their washers and delivery trucks.
A large commercial washing machine holds 450 pounds of mats (204 kg) — or 27 3′ x 10′ runners weighing 16 pounds (7.25 kg) each, and a typical delivery truck holds 100 mats. If a facility wants larger or heavier mats they must be willing to pay a premium. Once a facility is locked into their mat sizes, they may be forced to employ a patchwork of mats to cover large areas like the entrance. This fragmented approach virtually guarantees that the mats will move out of position and create gaps that interrupt the continuous coverage necessary to keep the floor safe.
Limited mat sizes also make it difficult to provide adequate coverage in other areas, creating slip and trip zones in transition areas, walkways and other hard-to-fit spaces. Survey reports of mat users has shown that a primary reason why slips, trips and falls happen so frequently is that many dangerous areas are neglected.
Less than 31% of respondents reported placing floor mats in customer walkways, only 41% reported placing floor mats in employee walkways and aisles, only 35% said they place them around equipment or machines, 23% in frequent spill areas, and only 22% in the break room. The reality: Floor mats only increase floor safety when they provide continuous, one-piece coverage that fits the space lies flat and doesn’t shift out of position. Coverage must also extend beyond the entrance to other undeserved zones where slips and falls also occur.
Rental mats are lower costs than Croc Grippy floor mats
Or are they? Hardly! Depending on their schedule, a facility may have their rental mats changed weekly, every two weeks, or monthly. That means it’s up to the facility’s employees to keep the mats clean and in place between deliveries. Along with the need to be vacuumed and constantly straightened, dirty, bulky rental mats must also be picked up for nightly floor cleaning and replaced in the morning. Even if cleaning and straightening rental mats is considered part of an employee’s daily tasks, it’s still a maintenance expense for the business. Floor mat distributors often point out that renting costs up to three times more than buying the same mat outright. And if the facility signs on with a laundry service who tacks on extra fees or other charges not included in the contract itself, or raises rates for no apparent reason, those supposed lower maintenance costs quickly disappear.
Let’s face it, facilities are paying a premium for a service that still saddles them with day-to-day upkeep. If employees spend just an hour every day maintaining mats at a rate of say $30 per hour, it will add more than $10,000 per year to the cost. Contract increases and extra fees also undo any potential savings.
Commercial laundry services promise to maintain a facility’s appearance with clean, fresh mats that complement a facility’s décor. What ends up on the floor is another matter. If a facility rents six 3′ x 5′ grey mats per week, the laundry service will deliver six 3′ x 5′ grey mats. The catch is that the mats may look brand new or they may be stained, worn, and rough around the edges — the facility has to take what they get. If a mat is stained or heavily soiled while it’s on the floor, the facility must clean it or put up with it until their next delivery. The biggest problem — and the one that prompts the most customer complaints — is a direct result of the laundering process. Try Croc Grippy floor mats today.
We note that heat from the dryer causes the mats to ripple, producing what is commonly referred to as “bacon mat.” The rippling worsens when the mats are rolled or folded, and stacked for storage and delivery.
Over time, the mats buckle from being compressed by the weight of the stack. A buckled mat doesn’t just look bad — if it doesn’t lie flat, it will move out of position faster and create a greater tripping hazard. The reality: Facilities have no control over the quality of the mats they receive. They may look new or they may be old and stained and have torn edges. Either way, an enhanced appearance is no guarantee. And because the mats are rolled, they may be buckled and dangerous.
The bottom line: Laundering aggravates the structural flaws in rubber-backed, carpeted floor mats! Heat and compression buckle the rubber backing, causing permanent ripples that create even more tripping hazards. And while many facilities choose rentals because outsourcing seems to be more efficient than owning and maintaining their own mats, renting is actually an expensive, potentially dangerous option that can increase slips, trips and falls.
And, so you can see for yourself, we have a calculator sheet to help you work out the savings of sing New Pig Grippy Floor Mats compared to renting mats. Click here
If you need any more information, contact us now!
