Statguard Flooring - Questions And Answers

Much of our manufacturing floor is covered with dissipative tiles, but a small area is not covered. The floor of the plant is concrete and I was wondering if this is sufficiently dissipative? Would it help to have a conductive coating such as a conductive wax applied to it? - Anonymous, Scientific Atlanta Canada, Burnaby, Canada

Concrete alone does not constitute a sufficient ESD floor. Even on the ground floor, where ground water may seep up through the pours and make the concrete conductive, you will always have inconsistent dry or dead spots. A conductive wax would definitely help. We prefer to refer to wax as floor finish, since there is no wax in the finish and wax is insulative. Before coating the concrete, you will want to seal the concrete (only if you are on the ground floor) to avoid water from causing adhesion problems and to increase the coverage of the floor finish (by decreasing the porosity of the floor). Other solutions include, coating the bare concrete with conductive paint, using conductive tiles or matting, installing conductive carpet or just marking off the area as non-ESD safe.

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