During the cold winter months, ice and snow can start to become a problem at your building entrances, by making the surrounding floors slippery and dangerous.
Many businesses use sand and grit outside of their premises, to prevent slip and fall accidents on their pathways, car parks and any other outdoor areas. However, this can become a problem all of its own, with your visitors and staff traipsing the sand and grit through your building, causing damage to your floors and carpets.
Mats for Ice & Snow can help you solve both of these problems and here's how:
Using a 3-mat entrance system, will help you to prevent everything from ice, snow, slush, dirt, sand and grit from entering your building.
Outdoor Entrance Mat
Matting placed outside during the cold winter months, needs to be resistant to all kinds of weather. Some types of matting, such as Vinyl or PVC, are liable to split or crack in cold temperatures, which can lead to the deterioration of the mat and possibly create a trip hazard. When choosing outdoor entrance mats for ice and snow, ensure that it is made of a material that can cope in extreme, cold weather conditions, like Nitrile Rubber for example.
Read more about weather resistant mats here.
Secondly, you should choose an outdoor mat that has drainage holes. This will mean that snow and slush will fall through the holes in the mat, away from the standing surface. Otherwise, you will run the risk of the snow settling and freezing on the mat, making the surface slippery underfoot.
Indoor Entrance Mat
Your indoor entrance mat will need to perform a number of tasks when dealing with snow, ice and everything else that it brings with it.
Indoor entrance mats for ice and snow will need to do the following:
- Scrape any dirt, sand and grit from footwear and hold onto it until it is cleaned
- Wipe any moisture, snow and slush from footwear and hold onto it (preferably using a mat with a water dam to contain excess water)
- Minimise tracking of dirt and moisture off the mat
- Ensure a safe, slip free walking surface
For your entrance mat to perform all of the above, you must ensure that it is bi-level. Bi-level mats will scrape and wipe footwear on the upper level and store it into the lower level to avoid tracking.
You should also ensure that your entrance mat has a water dam, as once snow and slush starts to melt; you don’t want it seeping out of the sides of the mat. A water dam will help the mat hold onto a large amount of water until it is absorbed or cleaner away.
Read more about what your entrance mat should do here.
Interior Finishing Mat
When the snow has been particularly heavy, you may need an additional line of defence. An interior finishing mat will finish off the drying process, as well as remove any finer particles of sand or salt that may still be on the footwear of your visitors.
Using one mat in isolation will help you to minimise some of the effects of ice and snow, however if you want to tackle the problem head on, we thouroughly recommend investing in the 3-mat entrance system. This will help make your building a much safer place during the winter months and also help to reduce your cleaning costs.
What shall you do now?
If you think you have all the information that you need about mats for ice and snow, you can browse our range of heavy duty entrance matting here. Alternatively, if you have any further questions , please do not hesitate to contact us. You can call us on 0121 313 6748, or use our Live Chat facility, during normal UK office hours.
