A volunteer fire brigade is an indispensable and sometimes vital part of a small town. Murg in Baden-Wuerttemberg, a municipality right on the Swiss border, is one such town. And here too, the fire brigade’s ability to answer a call depends more on its members’ commitment than on bountiful financial resources. The 100 or so comrades on the emergency crew not only carry out about 40 to 50 missions a year, but also lend a hand when the buildings need to be kept in working order.

The volunteers’ commitment is particularly important when it comes to unexpected tasks that by their very nature are not included in budget planning. A typical case was the purchase of a fire-fighting vehicle that, to enter the fire hall, needed a new door system with greater clearance height. The first step was to remove the station floor in the entrance area. To avoid creating a patchwork floor that could cause damage later, such as moisture penetration or tripping hazards, it was decided that the entire 100 m² station floor would be renewed.

Low-cost solutions such as bare concrete are not permitted in such cases, in part because of the required slip-resistance classes. The relevant accident prevention regulations and legal requirements are quite strict. In an emergency everything must happen very quickly, so a slippery floor could be fatal. But how to finance such a high-quality surface? Fortunately, people in Murg are well connected and the locality soon found out that it had residents with personal contacts with CONICA in Schaffhausen, just 60 km away. To make a long story short: the Swiss company stepped across the border with some neighbourly assistance, donating the material for 100 m² of CONIPROOF PES to a good cause.

A new floor for the fire brigade

CONIPROOF PES is a class OS 8 car-park deck coating – a so-called rigid epoxy resin system with an anti-slip surface for medium to heavy mechanical loads according to EN 1504-2 and DIN V 18026. It was primarily developed for ramps, turning circles and underground garages with pedestrian and vehicle traffic. The flooring is seamless, impermeable, anti-slip, easy to clean, and mechanically resilient. It also has good abrasion resistance and chemical resistance. These properties also make it ideal for heavy fire-fighting vehicles and their crews, who need to shift heavy equipment across a sometimes wet floor quickly and safely.

All that now remained was to install the flooring. Fortunately firefighters are also good with their hands and were happy to give up a few days of their Christmas holidays. Technical support from Conica helped the volunteers do a perfect job of covering their station floor within those few days. After a short training session, they were able to handle epoxy resin, quartz sand and the polyurea top seal without problems. The prepared raw concrete floor was first impregnated with the epoxy resin. It was then given a second coating, which was sprinkled with quartz sand. After the excess sand was dried and vacuumed up, the polyurea top seal was applied, stripped, and smoothed down in one direction. The seal protects the sand surface from abrasion without impairing its grip.

And so the firefighters, who had never laid a floor coating before, succeeded in doing a professional job with the help of CONICA, and their new fire engine now has a properly floored station.