Tile Floor Safety Tips: Winter Edition
In the past, we’ve helped our readers discover how to protect their floors from damage during the rigors of winter weather. After all, it is a time when you can track everything from sand and salt to snow, mud and dirt throughout the home. Not only is this a messy issue to live with and clean up, but those materials can also cause long-term damage by warping, scraping and gouging, and even penetrating flooring to cause mold, mildew and more. So, anyone who lives in an area of serious winter weather is well aware of the need to develop plans for maintaining their floors during the winter months.
And when it is tile flooring, the issues can be magnified by the materials and the way the flooring has been installed. Tiles can be slick if wet or icy, and their grout can make them a slightly uneven surface. So, how do you ensure that people walking across those floors do not run into problems, too? After all, if someone is tracking ice or debris into the home, it means floors can become wet, slippery and even dangerous, with twigs and other debris just waiting for bare feet or even pet feet to encounter them.
Some of the tips we offered, apart from making clean up an ongoing habit, was to use area rugs strategically in order to catch a lot of debris, creating a “no shoe” policy inside of the home, and even choose flooring options with great care. We also suggested choosing engineered hardwood floors if you cannot maintain a steady temperature or level of humidity in the home, as the engineered materials do not expand or contract. This is a great way to uphold safety because you don’t run the risk of any buckling that can easily lead to trips, slips and falls.
Methods to Keep the Home Safer and Warmer
Some of these tips can help to make your home or other spaces safer during the winter months, as well.
For instance, the area rug by the entry can serve as a catch all for water, ice, sand, and any other debris. You can also speak with your flooring professional or installer about slip resistance options and features, frost resistant options, and more fluid transitions from one type of flooring to another. For example, the shift from the stone floor of an entry to the tile, wood or vinyl flooring in a hall or foyer could be fraught with peril, but you can use well-made thresh holds, slip resistant mats, and other tactics to prevent slips, falls and tracking in materials.
Radiant heat installed beneath the flooring can be a useful approach to warmer floors, but it cannot prevent materials from being tracked inside. That is the work of durable mats and area rugs. If you fear that these will not be an attractive addition to a living space, you should reconsider that perspective. There are many beautifully made area rugs well-suited to double duty as decorative accents in addition to capturing and trapping everything that could be transferred from the outdoors to your interior flooring.
If you are eager to update your flooring to a safer style or option, or you want some help improving the safety of main entrances and floors throughout the home, contact Ottawa Diamond Flooring for a consultation and help in the selection process.
