June is National Safety Month, and a large part of that involves conversations around workplace safety. Creating (and maintaining!) a safe working environment is essential whether you’re in an office full of cubicles, moving freight in a large warehouse, or working on a construction site. While many businesses know to focus on certain aspects of safety, such as equipping employees with the necessary gear (i.e. hardhats and high-visibility vests), there are some key workplace safety concerns that are overlooked across industries. And the ground on which your employees and customers walk is important to workplace safety.
How Uneven Concrete Impacts Workplace Safety
Most business owners or managers have a safety mindset in the workplace, and have taken care to eliminate danger within their locations. As the saying goes, “see something, say something!” But simply tripping on uneven surfaces can present a significant workplace hazard in any working environment. If an employee or customer is carrying heavy or dangerous equipment in or out of your office, trip hazards become a much greater concern. But even something as simple as a pen can become dangerous if an employee falls unexpectedly.
Trip hazards in the workplace can lead to any number of physical injuries, many of which may result in an employee requiring paid medical leave as they recover before they can perform their duties again. If it’s a customer tripping, it’s a significant liability and your company could unfortunately be on the receiving end of legal action. If you don’t want to put your people—and your insurance premiums—at risk, addressing trip hazards with workplace safety solutions as quickly as possible is important.
Many trip hazards in the workplace are the result of sinking, cracking, crumbling, or otherwise unstable concrete, both visible and not visible. While this is most commonly seen in sidewalks, driveways, and other concrete slabs outdoors and exposed to the elements, it can also happen with foundations and concrete beneath the flooring of your building. Fortunately, these workplace safety concerns have an easy workplace safety solution: polyjacking!
How Polyjacking Increases Workplace Safety
Polyjacking is a concrete leveling solution that injects expanding polyurethane foam beneath concrete slabs to raise and level them, returning your floors and walkways to their original, even state. Polyurethane is designed specifically as a strong, weight-bearing foam capable of supporting very heavy building materials such as concrete, so you don’t have to worry about it breaking down over time. For these reasons and more, polyjacking is an ideal workplace safety solution.
Will Polyjacking Damage My Flooring?
Polyjacking is as noninvasive as concrete leveling gets. Once the problem area is assessed, we drill a hole no larger than a dime through which the polyurethane foam can be injected to fill the space beneath the uneven surface.
While a small amount of drilling is required to create an injection site, it is a small invasion for the sake of a larger-scale repair, restoring your concrete to quality workplace safety standards. After the polyjacking process is complete, we will patch the injection site hole so you won’t even notice it!
What About Mudjacking?
If you’ve ever researched concrete leveling before, you’ve probably heard of mudjacking. Before the invention of polyjacking, leveling was usually done by injecting mud or a mud compound mixture beneath the concrete slab. While polyjacking has rapidly expanded (pun intended) to replace mudjacking as a much safer and more reliable method, there are still many companies promoting mudjacking methods.
The most significant difference between polyjacking and mudjacking is the quality of the concrete leveling materials. While polyurethane is extremely sturdy and built to last a lifetime, many mudjacking materials are limited and weak, prone to breaking down over time and allowing your concrete to sink or crack once more.
Mudjacking businesses like to claim their materials are more natural than polyurethane, but “natural” doesn’t mean safe, and isn’t even accurate in most cases. Mudjacking tends to use cement mixtures that can include known dangerous chemicals such as silica dust, putting employees and customers at risk. In contrast, polyjacking is non-toxic and very safe to use, and although it’s manufactured, this does not make it innately bad for the environment.
Polyurethane and Environmental Impact
Most commercial businesses have some green initiatives in place to reduce their carbon footprint and give back to the environment. If sustainability is important to your business, you care about finding solutions that align with your mission.
If this sounds like you, then you will be thrilled to hear that polyurethane is a very environmentally-friendly material! Not only is polyurethane constructed from recycled materials, but it also is very energy-efficient to manufacture. Again, “manufactured” doesn’t innately mean bad for the environment!
A Permanent Solution to a Common Problem
Polyjacking is no temporary fix—it will support your concrete for its entire lifetime. Once you’ve made the investment, you can look forward to no further polyjacking cost, because our work is a long-term solution. If you’re looking for a commercial concrete leveling solution, polyjacking is the way to go! Our team at Pro Polyjacking has been serving residential and commercial customers in the Kansas City metro for over 30 years, and we’d love for you to be our next customer!
Don’t let workplace safety be an afterthought, especially during National Safety Month! Walk in trip-free confidence when you invite your friends at Pro Polyjacking to inspect your foundation and walkways. Contact us to set up an appointment and learn more!