the number one question I receive is why is my gym floor slippery today we're gonna talk about why that is and how you as a school can be set up to succeed versus being set up to fail as you seek the best processes in procedure to keep your gym floor in best shape there are two attributes that you need to be really aware of number one is gloss retention similar to that will illustrate with a few different shoes that we have in front of us when you have a brand new gym floor finish applied it's very high gloss that's very similar to a brand new basketball shoe that soul is intended for good foot to floor contact you can see I can't really get it to slide that's because the coefficient of friction of that gym floor finish isn't allowing it to slide like a typical shoe that we don't wear for sport purposes conversely if I take a brand new shoe made for running it's similar to your floor finish as it starts to wear down over the year or a couple of years if it starts to get more like a semi-gloss and Sheen it might actually play like you're using a running shoe if I push this shoe across the floor it'll actually slide and you can see that here it has very little resistance third and last would be similar to a dress you if I accidentally over clean my floor if it's been way too many years past when you typically should refinish or you just don't have gloss for a number of multiple reasons it would be very similar to wear in a dress shoe to play basketball in other sports it has no coefficient of friction or ability to have foot to floor contact which we seek therefore a gloss retention is of utmost importance other than gloss retention the second attribute is dust removal we've all done this in sports we've all wiped our shoe we've all checked in and stepped on the tack mat we've all gone into a gym and felt the gym floor is not tacky to the level we want it to be our goal today is to show you some different things they help you be conducive in dust removal as we pursue high gloss and lack of dust and the methods on creating that we take a little bit of a look at the different types of finish that you may have on your gym if I'm standing down half court and half this gym has an oil-based finish on it and half this gym has a water-based finish on it there are some slight nuances between the two but in basic terms oil-based finish tends to yellow or amber overtime it's synonymous with why white paints tend to look yellow over time it's also synonymous with a mineral spirit smell whereas water-based tends to make the paint pop or contrast tends to make your white paints look nice tends to make the gymnasium look bigger because of the contrast in lines however what's not usually talked about is if we have the same dust on the oil-based side as we do on the water-based side under normal circumstances a water-based finish will actually change the coefficient of friction or foot to floor contact as compared to an oil-based so you really need to be cognizant of what we have how much cleaning we're putting into each and what our expectations are there's not necessarily a one-size-fits-all but you need to be aware of the attributes of each so that you can make a win situation for your school so we've learned about gloss retention we learned about dust and removal we're gonna give you a sort of good better best scenario from a cleaning standpoint some different products you can use and what to look for we're standing next to a typical walk line scrubber typical white pad typical red pad most schools have them already you do need to be careful though weight restrictions agitation how much water is being put down based on the type of finish you have based on the variables that you have time of year how many coats are already on the floor all can play a role in the success of your gym floor finish over a short and long period you really want to look into the manufacturer's warranty of your floor system itself some of those warranties will void if you use a scrubber at all our recommended better option is the broom and towel or the microfiber method unlike the scrubber they're not going to agitate your floor which means they're not going to deglaze your floor both of them also are going to induce very little moisture which eliminates the variable of too much moisture however both might be cumbersome at times and both might leave a trail of moisture that takes three to four minutes to flash off unlike the scrubber that picks it up immediately this is what we consider the best option for your floor it's called the new flex it does not agitate the floor so you're not going to be gloss it it does allow you to clean it similar to the microfiber or the tactile method however it does have a vacuum system so you can vacuum up the excess of moisture and play on it immediately there's one last component we really need to talk about and that's how do we Segway traffic we need athletic department we need the fayed Department we need the teaching staff we need the community youth involvement we need the weekend group we need everybody involved to understand what kind of traffic goes through here through your specific space on a daily basis the more dust we dragged in the less gloss we have because we ground it in the ultimate goal is to work together to have rugs that accidentally clean our feet to have tension rope set Segway traffic to have an open conversation so that we're set up to succeed or we're gonna be set up to fail we can't just say it's facilities we can't point fingers we can't blame we're all a part of the solution or all a part of the problem if you need more information you can contact me at two six two five four seven eight seven six three or you can look us up online at athletic Flores comm or here to help you find some more solutions for your gym floor