Ferrari designers speaking about hotel flooring
Feb/090
Pininfarina is the Italian firm that designs the Ferrari sports car. They are also pulling the carpet off the floors in the hotel rooms of the Keating Hotel they designed recently in San Fransisco.
In an email, Francesco Fiordelisi, of Pininfarina explained, that without the carpet, the hotel room floors have the “edge of industrial design”. And from a more practical point of view, he says, “What takes the most time in terms of cleaning a room? If the room has carpeting, it is the floor. And, carpet often looks dirty.”
Industrial Distribution Group discusses flooring
Feb/090
Industrial Distribution Group’s Mark Garmon, discussing his flooring installation.
“We have a 82,000 ft.² distribution center. We built this building 10 years ago. We had a Rustoleum epoxy floor coating. And it was delaminating. We had a housekeeping, safety, and appearance issue with that floor.”
“Then, this facility was hit with a tornado in May.”
“We spent a lot of time investigating different floor systems. We toured facilities around North Carolina and looked at different applications. We thought that polished concrete best fit our environment. From an appearance, and safety, and operational issue”
“The system was finished in October, 2008.”
“Before we had an epoxy sand grout system. The maintenance on that… we scrubbed it weekly. The problem we had was de-lamination came up. So we had an issue with safety. At that level, you have to shut your operation down, prep of floor. It’s a huge cost.”
“The cost difference between the old maintenance and the new maintenance, I would say that it is somewhere about 75% less cost.”
“We actually had four different competitors come in and do a test patch. We had them each remove epoxy on a 10 x 10 square. We got to evaluate their process and compared products.”
“We choose QuestMark over the others. First, I would say the cost. And the finished product. They did great job. And, I think their knowledge of the process. QuestMark did exactly what they outlined in their quote; and it was to the tee. Good job.”
Enlighter.com posts photos
Jan/090
Hadco has offer up some nice photos, just published in Enlighter.org of the recent installation at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.
American City and County magazine article
Dec/080
Another nice photo of Swan Lake Park in a piece published in American City and County Magazine
Cleaning and Maintenance Magazine polished concrete maintenance
Nov/080
A polished concrete floor surface will take to “green cleaning” more easily than others and, of course, requires significantly less maintenance to stay shiny. It’s one reason why retailers are replacing vinyl composition tile with polished concrete floors. Cleaning & Maintenance Magazine published my article about the care of PC.
“You can actually walk up to the showroom and see the blue sky shining in the floor, that’s how shiny it is,” says Richard Smith, Ag-Pro’s general service manager in Arkansas, who installed the environmentally friendly floor in two of their John Deere showrooms.
Concrete floors can cost half as much to maintain as vinyl composition tile (VCT) because VCT requires the laborious process of stripping the old wax off and then hours of buffing and shining the new wax.
“Over half of the floors we install are going from tile to polished concrete,” says Joseph Urbanic, president of QuestMark Flooring.
Here’s the link to the full article in CMMonline.
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Lawn & Landscape Mag covers solar-powered street lighting
Oct/080
Swan Lake Park is one of the first public parks in the United States to specify solar-powered streetlights for a landscape application. The economic benefits were obvious to Swan Lake, but according to Lawn & Landscape magazine landscape contractors shouldn’t overlook solar-power lighting as a business opportunity either.
Contained in one of four hamlets in Liberty Township, N.Y., Swan Lake Park is one of the first of its kind in the country to use solar-powered LED lighting technology for commercial outdoor applications. The new lighting was part of a beautification project promoted by the Liberty Community Development Corp., which is funded by the local government, as well as the locally based Gerry Foundation. The effort also was part of a solar street light demonstration project co-funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
Six 14-foot-tall, solar-powered LED streetlights installed along a pathway at Swan Lake Park were supplied by Framingham, Mass.-based SolarOne Solutions. The fixtures use round strings of small LEDs powered by photovoltaic cells. A computer regulates the system to ensure that the lights are always on.
Energy Management Canada about Maritime Academy
Oct/080
The Canadian magazine, Energy Management just published the story about Massachusetts Maritime Academy’s installation of solar-powered pathway lights.
Capt. Allen Hansen championed the alternative energy project and is vice-president of operations at the school.
We now have a beautifully lit walkway students are using extensively, day and night.
We searched for a solution that was visible to visitors and didn’t add to the footprint of the Academy. And it is visible enough, that people who visit point out to us that, ‘hey you’ve got photovoltaic lights, don’t you’.
So we can share that story with them.The SolarOne lighting really has met all of our requirements. They’re attractive, they provide a good light for our students in the areas we wanted, and they haven’t added to the expense of operations on the campus.
Con-way Freight shop floor
Oct/080
Successful Dealer magazine published a short piece about Con-Way Freight using polished concrete flooring. Before the new flooring went in, the truck repair shop was replacing the floors about every three years just from normal wear and tear, and so Con-Way was looking for a more long-term solution.
Ed Arciniaga, construction manager for Con-Way, worked with QuestMark Flooring to create it’s polished concrete floor.
According to Arciniaga, “The floor looks great and is easy to maintain. And all we are doing is using the floor scrubber to keep it clean.”
The floor is in the 5,000-sq.-ft. maintenance facility and was completed in few days.
The story is in Successful Dealer magazine at bottom of the website page.
New England Real Estate Journal explains new technology
Jun/080
Lighting parking lots and pathways with an Shoebox-designed fixture can now be replaced with an affordable solar-powered of the same Shoebox fixture design. Affordable, because with the new technology, fewer light fixtures can achieve even better lighting results; fewer fixtures are needed to light the same area, so project costs are reduced dramatically.
Published in the New England Journal is a pretty good article that describes a new fixture design by SolarOne Solutions of Framingham, MA.
Many Shoebox design light fixtures that are now installed on campuses, institutions and commercial properties.
Benefits of landscaping with high-powered solar-powered LEDs
May/080
Take a look at how Architectural Stone and Landscape Design Magazine explains the key benefits of landscaping with high-powered solar-powered LED lights.