Several million Americans are suffering from dementia for which there is as yet no known prevention or cure. For people living with dementia, a slip, trip or fall can seriously impede their physical health as well as their confidence and mobility. Flooring has an important role in creating a safe environment. The Dementia Services Development … Continue reading “Flooring for Dementia-Friendly Environments”
Tag: slip resistance test
How to Get Reliable and Useful Floor Slip Resistance Test Results
Slip and fall injuries can carry total liabilities that are often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or even more. Investment in flooring is long-term and often involves appreciable capital, whether you are an individual homeowner or have a string of large office buildings and shopping centers. Though the charges for floor slip resistance … Continue reading “How to Get Reliable and Useful Floor Slip Resistance Test Results”
What Should the Slip Resistance of a Bathtub Be?
Bathtubs, in hotels or homes, are in areas where slip accidents can be very serious or fatal because there are hard objects in close proximity that can be easily struck by the head after a slip — the side of the tub, the faucet, toilets and sinks. Bare feet are soft and essentially treadless, and … Continue reading “What Should the Slip Resistance of a Bathtub Be?”
Slip Resistance Safety for Industrial and Commercial Areas
Minimum wet slip resistance values (as wet Pendulum Test Values) for safety in many publicly accessible areas are listed elsewhere on this blog. But what about industrial areas used for very slippery operations like meat or fish processing, making mayonnaise or refining cooking oils, and for aircraft repair hangars? Guidance for these, recommended since 1999, … Continue reading “Slip Resistance Safety for Industrial and Commercial Areas”
New Study Shows Sotter Engineering to be one of World’s Most Accurate Pendulum Floor Slip Test Labs
A recent global interlaboratory program “Slip Resistance Proficiency Testing — Pendulum Friction Tester,” showed Sotter Engineering Corporation’s Safety Direct America (SDA) floor slip resistance testing laboratory to be one of the world’s most accurate in use of the pendulum skid tester. The pendulum is a national standard for pedestrian floor and tile slip resistance testing … Continue reading “New Study Shows Sotter Engineering to be one of World’s Most Accurate Pendulum Floor Slip Test Labs”
ANSI A326.3 Acutest Does Not Predict Likelihood of Slip
A widely used floor friction test, American National Standards Institute A326.3, states in its introduction that “it can provide a useful comparison of surfaces, but it does not predict the likelihood a person will or will not slip on a hard surface flooring material.” The test assesses wet dynamic coefficient of friction (DCOF) using the … Continue reading “ANSI A326.3 Acutest Does Not Predict Likelihood of Slip”
Tools Essential to Slip Resistance Testing
At Safety Direct America, not only do we specialize in expert floor and tile slip resistance testing both in the lab and in the field, we also offer the finest collection of slip test instruments to help you determine and monitor your slip risk effectively. National standards-setting organizations including ASTM, ANSI, BSI, ISO, and others … Continue reading “Tools Essential to Slip Resistance Testing”
ASTM F2508 and the pendulum slip resistance tester
ASTM F2508 is based on a rigorous scientific study of 11 tribometers (or floor slip resistance test devices) that was held at the University of Southern California Medical Center. The peer-reviewed results were published in 2010 in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Four tiles were tested with the 11 slip test devices, and later a … Continue reading “ASTM F2508 and the pendulum slip resistance tester”
Test Your New Pool Deck’s Slip Resistance BEFORE Opening the Pool!
It is amazing how often both large and small swimming pool decks are installed with no thought to wet slip resistance until falls, sometimes catastrophic, begin to happen. By the time the first serious slip injury happens, the flooring vendor has usually cashed his check and is unconcerned about the problem. Wet bare feet have … Continue reading “Test Your New Pool Deck’s Slip Resistance BEFORE Opening the Pool!”
DCOF Rating for Floors
The latest American slip test for floors is the DCOF rating test method specified in ANSI A326.3. Although this test is a much better test than the now-withdrawn ASTM C1028 that was previously included in the International Building Code, the new test method comes with a great deal of “disclaimers”, including the warning that a … Continue reading “DCOF Rating for Floors”