The Autumn and Winter season brings rain, wind, snow and other tough weather conditions. With this weather comes mud, grit, leaves, sand and ice; all of which you want to keep out of your building where it belongs. However, you'll be well aware that dirty entrance areas and higher cleaning bills mean it has managed to make its way inside, most likely on the footwear of your oblivious visitors.
Outdoor entrance mats should be your first line of defence to protect your floors and carpets from mud, grit, leaves and any other nasty's that the season brings with it. Matting placed outdoors helps you prevent dirt from entering your building on the footwear of visitors, by effectively putting a barrier up at the door.
However, don’t simply place any old mat outside and think your work is done! You must make sure it is up to the task by considering the following things:
Just how dirty are we talking?
Think about the area outside your entrance where your visitors are stepping in from.
If they are stepping in from a particularly muddy area, a games field or a park for example, it will be best to have matting with drainage holes. Matting with holes will allow any excess mud from footwear to fall below the mat surface as person walks over it, to ensure that it is not tracked into your building.
Mats with holes are also particularly useful in an area where lots of leaves fall. The holes in the mat will trap the leaves to prevent them from being blown or walked into your premises.
If the area is not overly muddy, with visitors simply entering your building from a car park or paved walkway, drainage holes are not as important. Here it is best to ensure the mat has effective scraping properties to remove any dirt, grit or sand from footwear.
Can the mat perform in all weather conditions?
An outdoor entrance mat is obviously going to be placed outside. For this reason, it needs to be able to withstand all sorts of weather conditions.
To ensure that your mat does not crack, split and curl in extreme temperatures, you must ensure that the mat is made of a weather resistant material, such as rubber. Ideally you should purchase matting constructed of nitrile rubber, which is built to cope with everything the weather may throw at it. It is also a weighty material, to ensure that the mat does not move in strong winds. In cold weather conditions, mats made from PVC or vinyl are liable to crack and split, creating a possible trip hazard.
Is your mat going to be exposed to all of the elements? I.e. it has no canopy or shelter above it to protect it from rain, sleet and snow fall. If this is the case, you need to ensure that you use an all-rubber mat and not one with a fabric top. This is due to the fact that the fabric material on top of the mat will become sodden in wet weather, which will not do an effective job of removing dirt from footwear and may also become quite slippery.
If you have some kind of canopy or cover over your entrance, you will be able to get away with having a mat with a quick drying fabric top as it will be somewhat protected from any rain fall.
See our 'Are your mats weather resistant?' blog here.
Is the mat easy to clean?
As the first line of defence, an outdoor entrance mat is quickly going to become filled with dirt. You will therefore need it to be as easy to clean as possible, to ensure it will remain effective.
With this in mind, aim to buy a mat that is easy to lift to be hosed or pressure washed down.
See our blog here on how to clean your entrance mats.
Don't forget the 3 mat entrance system
Although outdoor entrance mats are designed to stop dirt from entering your building in the first place, they should still only be treated as the first line of defence.
An outdoor entrance mat will take any heavy dirt, mud, sand and grit from footwear; however it should always be combined with an indoor entrance mat and if possible a final third ‘finishing’ mat. The indoor entrance matting will do a better job at removing water from footwear, which will help prevent slips. as well as being more effective at removing any finer dirt and dust which the outdoor mat left behind.
Need more help?
We understand that choosing the right combination of entrance matting can sometimes be a little daunting. That's why we're here to help you. Give us a call during normal office hours on 0121 313 6748 for some advice from our friendly advisors.
