To tile or not to tile

[highhopgod]

I have been reading a lot of post on this site about flooring, we are having a mind fart on which way to go with our floor. The landlord wants to tile the floor over the concrete, I am not totally on board with this. I have not seen nor have a I heard of a lot of brewery's tiling there floors. Not only am i dealing with cleaning and all that, we are in upstate NY where it can go from 90 to negative 10. Looking for some pros and cons.

Cheers!
Dan
Cortland Beer Co.
"Remember folks foam is 30% beer"

[Scott M]

Tile will chip and break, that leaves a void where bad brewery bugs can live. Some of the epoxy (polymer) floor systems are good, long lasting, easy to clean, non-slip and they seal the concrete.

[canyon]

Tile can be nice

Quarry tile with epoxy grout can be quite nice. There are many breweries with such a floor. Before modern epoxy floor systems it was as good as one could have. They're still good.

[beertje46]

Use 4" octagonal quarry tile set in an epoxy mud bed with epoxy grout with 1/8" max. grout line. The octo-tile will follow slope better than square tile. The mud bed will actually allow slope as opposed to direct adhesion to concrete. Concrete will require a minimum 30 cure time if new. Quarry base is a bonus.

[Gabe]

3 part epoxy floor with 3rd stage being antimicrobial. If done right, last longer than tile. Grout = crevices for bacteria!

[beertje46]

3 part epoxy floor with 3rd stage being antimicrobial. If done right, last longer than tile. Grout = crevices for bacteria!

I had Epo-Flex in a previous brewery. It was seven layers and you couldn't chip it with a big hammer. Of course it cost $7800+- to do a 680 sq. ft. brewery.

[beermkr]

We have 8" square quarry tile. It was here before I got here and after a year is holding up nicely. I scrub with high concentrations of bleach to keep the grout clean and it seems to work fine.

The biggest thing is that ALL of you brewery floor slopes to a drain....

Mike

[Hophead78]

We have 4" Quarry tile floor in a couple of our newer breweries and its great! Tiles do chip/crack, but are very easy and cost effective to replace. Epoxy floors are nice, but repais when they're needed and they will be needed are very expensive and require the brewery to shut down operations during the curing process. But it is really all about slope!

[Alex T]

Hi,

You are doing a good thing by asking for advice - getting the correct flooring will make a real difference in terms of long-term suffering.

Tiles - don't know much about them, but been to plenty of large breweries where the floors are tiled and all is tidy and clean. But the tiling system must be one for industrial flooring applications and will not be cheap at all - need to be impact resistant, etc.

Coating - the only thing I have had success with is "Ucrete" which is like a 6-8mm coating in which you specificy what sort of impact resistance you require, chemicals, temperature, etc. They put non-slip compound into the final coat at whatever sort of roughness you require. Have put down a simple epoxy flooring before and it chipped straight away.

But man, make sure what ever you do you are really happy with it - ask suppliers and get guarantees. Nothing is worse than having to go back and fix flooring after the fact - floors in breweries (busy ones anyway) are never dry, and having to fix floors is a right pain in the arse.

Alex

[liammckenna]

Tiles are definitely the way to go.

They are much cheaper than a decent epoxy/resin floor. I've never met a failsafe epoxy floor by the way. And when they do fail, whoa! It really can be an expensive disaster that is difficult to address in mainstream production. I've personally peeled huge sheets of very expensive flooring up in a couple of different breweries.

Easy to repair when they do crack and chip. And they will.

Also, you can get some pretty funky high tech thinset mortars and grouts nowadays.

That's my buck fifty.

Pax.

Liam