If you can’t stand the heat…
Interior surfaces in school kitchens must be able to cope with extreme temperatures. Cooking equipment produces high levels of ambient heat, and foods such as hot cooking oils will sometimes come into contact with floor and wall coverings. Chilled storage areas are often below freezing and maintaining materials performance in such harsh conditions is vital.
Surfaces must be carefully chosen to avoid posing a health risk. Performance qualities, such as slip and spillage resistance, must be maintained. Joints in some materials are a point of weakness, for example the grouting between ceramic tiles. Fortunately, tiles have now been superseded by a range of new materials, such as semi-rigid PVC hygienic wall cladding like Altro Whiterock, offering advanced hygiene, durability and ease of cleaning.
Avoid slip-ups
With pupils and staff handling a wide variety of food and drink substances it’s no wonder that accidents often occur in school kitchens and refectories. People working in kitchens are more likely to be injured through slips and trips than anything else. In fact, 53% of injuries in the education sector last year involved slipping on a wet surface, often because of a spillage of food debris or another contaminant.
Safety floors or resin flooring is an ideal choice, offering surface roughness to provide grip while being easy to clean to meet hygiene requirements. Genuine safety flooring offers slip resistance when wet, lasting for the product’s lifespan. Beware of products with slip resistant surface finishes or coatings, which often wear off after only months or even weeks. There is a wide variety of safety floors on the market, including decorative products which are suitable for reception areas and corridors, where mud and water may be trodden in from outside, or any other areas such as toilets kitchens and laboratories where liquids may be spilled.
Clean up your act
Don’t overlook the cleaning and maintenance requirements of new materials, particularly as cleaning can typically amount to 50% of the life cycle cost of flooring.
Detergent, dosage, equipment and timings are just a few considerations – and that is before hygiene is taken into account. It is vital in a catering environment that all parts of the surface material are thoroughly cleaned. Again, joints can be a problem area – while ceramic tiles may themselves be easy to clean, the grouted joints are not. Choose a seamless surface with no joints to harbour germs or bacteria.
Serve up a solution
The selection of the most appropriate materials for the job in the first place will of course save time, effort and money in the long run.
Manufacturers such as Altro supply clear information on their materials, including slip resistance, cleaning and hygiene and ability to cope with extreme temperatures and spillages. Helping schools to make properly informed purchasing decisions is my recommended recipe for success for catering environments in schools.
For further information on Altro’s vast product range of interior surfaces, which includes floors, walls, ceilings and doors, log on to www.altro.com
