NonSlip Floor Treatments Essential for Home Safety

Slip and fall injuries are one of the most common accidents in the home. Improper and unsafe selections of floor surfaces endanger family members and guests to our homes.

When choosing floor tiles, it is essential to ensure that they have the necessary non – slip properties to provide a safe pedestrian surface. Too often, home builders choose tiles or other floor surfaces that have the appearance they desire without considering the slip resistance of the surface.

And, when buying an existing home, we don’t have the opportunity to choose the floor surfaces and often find that slippery floors pose an immediate danger to their family.

It is especially important to be aware of areas that may become wet such as bathrooms, laundries, kitchen, and foyers as the slip resistance of floor surfaces is drastically reduced when they are wet. Tiles that are non-slip when dry can become a nightmare when water is tracked or spilled onto floor surfaces.

And, it isn’t just inside the home that these risks exist. Areas that may become slippery when wet outside the home include driveways, footpaths, swimming pool surrounds, patios, and verandahs and these pedestrian surfaces also need to be treated to ensure that they are safe and non-slip.

The young and the elderly are at particular risk of slip and fall injuries. Young children rarely walk for ‘A’ to ‘B’ and, although videos of slip and fall accidents are the source of great amusement for TV viewers, the results of a fall can be disastrous.

When an elderly person slips and falls, it is very common for them to suffer from a broken hip. Worse still, statistics show that over 50% of the elderly will die within one year after breaking their hip. These statistics are alarmingly high.

Unfortunately, once an elderly person breaks a hip, their mobility is drastically affected. This causes them to lose fitness leaving them vulnerable to a range of other health problems.

Grip Guard Floor Safety has been helping Australian’s for over ten years to reduce the inherent risks of floor surfaces. Grip Activator, designed especially for stone based surfaces such as ceramic and porcelain tiles, marble, granite, concrete, aggregate, terrazzo and other hard surfaces.

Grip Guard operators provide complimentary slip resistance testing of home floor surfaces using an ATSM slip meter. This allows homeowners to ensure that the floor surfaces have the required slip resistance to keep their families, friends and visitor to reduce the risk of slip and fall injuries on their property.

With litigation on the rise, it is essential that all homeowners protect themselves from the risks posed by unsafe floor surfaces.