Urethane cement
Four times the thickness, for rooms that are washed down hot
This is the one system on the site that is not built on the epoxy above. It is a trowelled screed of polyurethane resin, cement and graded aggregate, laid at 6 to 9 mm, thicker than the entire standard build-up by a factor of four, which is why it runs off the top of the drawing.
It exists for one reason: thermal shock. A commercial kitchen floor gets 90 °C water and caustic detergent, and every material expands when that happens. Urethane cement expands at nearly the same rate as the concrete under it, so the two move together instead of tearing apart.
What it is like to have
It is not a pretty floor and we do not sell it as one. It is trowelled, so it has a faint texture underfoot, the colour range is limited and industrial, and the surface reads as matt however it is finished.
In exchange it takes steam cleaning, forklift traffic, animal fat, lactic acid and dropped frozen product, in the same room, for years. Nothing else on this page does all of that.
It is laid differently and costs differently
The slab is prepared harder than for any other system: cut back to sound concrete, with anchor grooves chased in at every perimeter and every doorway so the screed is keyed into the slab and cannot creep. That preparation is most of the extra cost, not the material.
It is also mixed in small batches by hand and trowelled by people on their knees, so it takes longer on site per square metre than anything else we lay.
Where we have got this wrong before
We have specified urethane cement for a room that turned out to be a dry store with a mop bucket in it, and the client paid roughly twice what a flake floor would have cost for a resistance they never used. Heat and chemistry are what justify it. If the honest answer about a room is that it gets swept and occasionally mopped, this is the wrong floor and we will say so.
How to tellRun your hand across it. Urethane cement has a faint orange-peel texture you can feel, because it is trowelled rather than poured. A floor sold as urethane cement that is glass-flat and 2 mm thick is an epoxy floor with a different word on the invoice.
What to ask
Ask what temperature the floor is expected to see and how it will be cleaned, before anyone quotes a system. If a contractor offers 2 mm of epoxy for a room that gets hosed with hot water, they have answered a question you did not ask.