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Industrial Structure Information Blog

Category Archives: stairs

Posts regarding stair fabrications, installations, codes, laws and maintenance.

Fiberglass Step Covers

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By Reese @ Floormatstore.com

Fiberglass Tread Covers

We have some very exciting news from the Floor-Mat Store to share with you! We’ve just added a new member to our stair tread selection: fiberglass. Some jobs just require a little bit more, don’t they? Maybe more color options, more grit, or more versatility. These are designed to help with all of those extra needs.

Fiberglass tread cover color chart

Floor-Mat Store fiberglass step covers can come in both a standard 90 lip, or bullnose, with lengths up to 10’ so that you no longer have to deal with butting two treads up to each other. Our fiberglass treads have thirty-four color options, which gives you over sixty different possible combinations to choose from. Looking for a school system and want to breathe a little school spirit into your design? We can do that. Just decided on a new company color? Perhaps even a bright or neon one that you can’t seem to find anywhere? We can do that.

Super Coarse Grade

Super Fine Coarse

Our fiberglass stair treads are manufactured in six different grit coarsenesses, from Super Coarse, which is great in areas prone to slippery conditions, to Super Fine, used for locations needing both slip protection and a gentle touch for bare feet.

Attachment details

Installation is quick and easy for use on every base material. We have fastener kits for applications onto wood, concrete, diamond plating, and open grating, along with our moisture cured urethane adhesive for the simplest tight hold install. Whatever your need, our fiberglass treads are designed to take away the stress and supply you with the solutions for your obstacles.

The #900 Stair Tread with Riser

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We’ve got an announcement! New things are coming to the Floor-Mat Store! We are currently in the process of replacing our Uno-Tread 901 stair tread and riser combo, and bringing production of them back into the states! You will still be able to get the same beautiful, seamless design you have come to expect, but now with our new replacement tread #900 the colors will match with all of our other treads and landing tiles. That means you will be able to coordinate the color pallet across all of your staircases with the new colors, whether they are closed or open risers. Ultimately leaving you with a far more professional and cohesive look.

Our replacement #900 Tread will come in color series 1 and 3. These are made to order with a usual lead time of around four weeks.

For those of you who already have the Uno-Tread 901 series tread, you may want to consider ordering a few extras while we still have some on the shelves. Whatever we still have in stock is all that is left, and a preemptive order of a couple could save you having to redo your entire stair system should one of your steps start to show wear. For quoting on the #900 tread call in or email at (330)650-5561 X: 401 – sales@floormatstore.com

Custom Crossover Bridge

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This past year we were called out to a company who had some sprawling equipment. Because of the space required, their employees would be working on the second floor of the left hand mezzanine, and would have to climb down two flights of stairs, cross the forklift aisle, and climb up two more flights of stairs to access the left mezzanine to continue their work. As you can imagine, that was a huge inefficiency.

A-Mezz Crossover Platform loaded for delivery to install location

A-Mezz Crossover Bridge loaded for delivery to install location

We designed, fabricated, and installed a crossover bridge to allow them to quickly go from one machine to the next without requiring four flights of stairs to be climbed each time, and it also kept them out of the aisleway between the structures. Due to the elevation change between the two structures, we incorporated a stair at the left hand side of the bridge and fabricated the bridge stringers as one piece to allow it to safely reach each side without requiring any additional supports.

The left side was designed to mount on top of that mezzanine’s edge framing members and at the right we had to add additional steel to allow the crossover bridge to safely and securely attach to the side of the right hand mezzanine.

Installed A-Mezz Custom Crossover Platform

Installed A-Mezz Custom Crossover Bridge

Everything was painted to match their existing equipment. Ultimately, the customer liked the setup so much that they called us back a few months later to do another crossover just like the one we had completed for another location in their factory. For more information on our custom fabrications please visit our website, email or call.

Use Nose Caulk To Get The Most Life Out Of Your Stair Treads

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Improperly installed stair tread

The most common reason for replacing rubber or vinyl stair treads is that the nosing is cracking or falling off. This type of damage is almost always due to the installer missing one very important step, drastically shortening the lifespan of a tread – not to mention also voiding your tread warranty due to an improper installation.

When installing rubber and vinyl stair covering, one of the most often overlooked but essential steps is putting in the nose caulking. Modern square nose stair treads have a channel on the inside corner of the nose which gives the nosing piece flexibility enough to fit any angle riser from 60° to 90°. Without filling that channel with nose caulking, you’re allowing the stair tread to flex in the most vulnerable spot. The more often that area flexes, the more vulnerable it becomes, and sooner than later, you’ll get a crack which spreads across the nose.

Epoxy Nose Caulk

There are two options for installing nose caulking; you can find both options on our FloorMat Store website. The easiest option is to use a dual cartridge unit and a dual cartridge caulking gun, that covers 50 linear feet per unit. Just pop the cartridge in and squeeze a small bead along the inside of the nose bend. If you are taking your time with the installation, or breaking up a large job, make sure to order extra nozzles too, so you can cap the unit between uses.

Nose Caulk Gun – Dual Cartridge

The other method is a two part quart unit, which is a bit more difficult, but a lot more budget friendly. You mix the two parts as directed on the side of the cans, and using a trowel or putty knife, slip some in place along the nosing. A single quart unit will cover 75 linear feet if properly mixed, used before dried and applied correctly. Remember, once mixed, you’re fighting the clock; try not to take a break from installing, or you may come back to find your mixture has already set.

Can of Nose Caulk – covers ups to 75 LF

If you are installing stair treads over steps that have worn edges, make sure that you use a heavy hand when applying the nose caulking, so it can properly fill out the area to give a solid backing to the tread.

–Floormatstore.com

Catwalk Bridges Can Save Space and Improve Efficiency

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Recently we’ve been out to a local shop for a lot of projects. This time we were called to supply some catwalk bridges. This helps them better utilize their existing space by gaining extra storage and workstation space from the areas they already had. They have several buildings in their facility that were capable of housing light storage on top of them. Ordinarily, the easiest way to access these spaces is through a pre-engineered steel staircase. The problem you run into when you have many buildings in relatively close vicinity to each other is that floor space is a premium; you can’t afford to block off aisle ways with stairs, and even if you have the space to accommodate multiple stairs to access multiple buildings, it is not very efficient having to run up and down stairs from one structure to go to another.

One stair was put in place to access a central building and then a couple of catwalk bridges were fabricated and installed to access the ancillary modular buildings. The catwalk bridges were fabricated so they could be lifted into place with a forklift truck. This allowed for quick, easy installation. This also allowed the customer to remove them relatively quickly should they need the additional vertical clearance to bring larger machinery through their aisles.

Catwalk bridges between block wall and modular building

Attachment to their existing cinder block structure was easy, but mounting to their modular buildings required some extra consideration. Modular buildings are weakest at the panel locations. We supplied angle so the customer could span the angle from multiple posts on the building and then fasten the bridge to the angle. This distributed the load of the bridges across two sturdy posts per side instead of hitting a potentially crushable panel. The catwalk bridges were not going to be centered directly over their panels so the angle was sent extra-long to allow flexibility in their bridge locations.

The customer now has access to multiple interior building tops for additional workspace and storage, and hasn’t sacrificed much room on their floor now that they utilized crossover bridges to open up their previously unusable spaces.

Replacing old dock stairs

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We were recently called out to a site with a dock access stair that had seen better days. It got a lot of use, but by the looks of it, had been neglected from a maintenance standpoint. Enamel paint is a great finish if it is maintained, but when left outside around the salt and high traffic to be found on a dock stair it won’t take long to rust without maintenance.

This stair had the painted stair tread nosings all rusted away to a brittle, porous edge. The stringers and support columns all had given way to rust beyond what was fixable with a repair job.

Dock stairs in need of replacement

The most economical solution for our customer was to have a replacement set of stairs fabricated and hot dipped galvanized. The cost of repair – cutting the current stairs apart, brush/blasting the existing rust out, cutting steel to weld into deteriorated sections, grinding and painting the product – all in the field would have taken much more time than having replacement stairs fabricated in the shop and brought out to the site. Furthermore we didn’t want to put a “Band-Aid” on the existing stairs by repairing them, knowing the customer wanted to have something in place to forget about. Fabricating a new stair with a hot dipped galvanized would greatly increase the lifespan of the stairs. There is no touch-up painting required and galvanized products can last 5x as long as painted steel.

A-Mezz did a site visit to verify conditions and get the existing stair’s measurements. During the visit it was determined that the floor wasn’t completely level. We made the support columns slotted to allow for minor adjustment in the field. This will be more user friendly than making the stair flat and requiring shimming. We didn’t want to fabricate each leg a different length should they one day move it to a new location or have the floor surface refinished in the future.

A-Mezz fabricated and pre-assembled as much of the stair and landing as possible in the shop to minimize the time on site with door access out of service as this was a busy dock entrance door. The existing stairs were demo’d and the new stairs were installed in all one morning.

A-Mezz galvanized steel replacement dock stairs

The customer’s new dock stairs will have a long service life due to the hot dipped galvanized finish. The stairs will be able to tackle snow and ice easily with the bar grating treads, and look attractive for years to come – all at a price that was less than repair.

Installation of the Mezzanine’s IBC Stairs

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Installed external IBC staircase

Previously, I had written a blog post briefly discussing how to put one of our mezzanines together. It had a lot of good photos taken during the installation, so I was able to go through section by section what was done. There was one particular area I didn’t get to to over in much detail though; the stairs. While with the previous system that I wrote about, the customer designed and fabricated their own staircase, I recently received a fantastic series of photos from the installation of another system; this time with partially installed stairs included.

Setting up the stairs

The IBC stairs for or mezzanine systems ship in knock down form and need to be installed in the field. When installing them, you’ll want to lay the stringers on the floor about 3’ apart with the closed face of the stringers inward. The diamond tread stair treads consist of a closed back riser and stair tread weldment. Starting with the top tread and riser, you’ll need to bolt the the tread to the stringer fastening it on the inside of the tread. Only hand tighten the bolts at this time, then work your way down positioning the riser of the next tread behind the flat weldment of the nose on the tread above. After all the treads have been attached to the stringers (hand snug) you’ll need to install the bottom riser using self tapping screws. You’ll then need to hoist the stairs up to the mezzanine deck. Making sure that the dimension from the top of the deck to the top tread is equal to the dimension between the other treads, you’ll need to field drill the the attachment holes using a 9/16” drill and attach it to the mezzanine system. You’ll also need to install the top tread plate on top of the mezzanine deck closing off the riser from your first tread. From the underside, you’ll need to tighten up all the bolts and attach the risers to the back of the above tread’s nose via a couple self tapping screws. Afterwards you’ll need to anchor the stairs to the ground.

Now all that’s left is to finish off the handrail. The hoops that form the 21” and 36” handrails and handrail extensions come already welded to the stringers. On each of the uprights, you’ll need to attach an elbow assembly via self tapping screws. This will provide you with the saddles to support the outer 42” handrail. You’ll need to take a piece of guardrail pipe for each side, and lay them flush against the saddles, fixing them in place with self tapping screws once again. As the top line of rail will be longer than the stair run, you’ll want to drop a plumb line from the bottom edge of the rail to the edge of the mezzanine deck and again to the front edge of the bottom stair tread, cutting the pipe square. Finally, you’ll need to install a plastic plug cap in the openings of the top rail to finish it off.

Replace stairs in tight fit locations and meet code

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Many locations have old stairs that need to fixed or replaced due to age, damage etc. Generally speaking regardless of the code in place when the original stair was made, you will need to update your stair to the current building code (IBC) when you replace stairs.

Stair meeting OSHA standards

3404.1 General. Except as provided by Section 3401.4 or this section, alterations to any building or structure shall comply with the requirements of the code for new construction. Alterations shall be such that the existing building or structure is no less complying with the provisions of this code than the existing building or structure was prior to the alteration.

This becomes an issue when stairs are installed in tight locations under codes that vary greatly from today’s current International Building Code (IBC) variants.

Imagine having a 12’ high stair in place with a riser height of 9” and a tread depth of 9”. This stair would have (16) treads, 9”deep for a total run of 11’3”.

If the replacement stairs would be required to meet IBC code (adopted by all of the states) they would now need to have (20) treads, 11” deep for a total run of 18’4”. The IBC stairs would extend 7’1” further than the originally installed stairs.

The increased run and decreased slope can wreak havoc on your facilities if the original stairs stopped right before a hallway (new stairs would extend well into the hallway) or if the stairs are enclosed (new slope would cause head clearance issues with existing structure).

If the above situation applies to you don’t sweat it. The above referenced IBC code section does have an exception that may help

Exceptions:

An existing stairway shall not be required to comply with the requirements of Section 1009 where the existing space and construction does not allow a reduction in pitch or slope.
Handrails otherwise required to comply with Section 1009.12 shall not be required to comply with the requirements of Section 1012.6 regarding full extension of the handrails where such extensions would be hazardous due to plan configuration.

Why the exemption for stairs (and possibly ramps, though not specifically called out)? The thinking behind the exemption is that without it, stairs that need to be replaced and are not safe will be neglected and not maintained due to the inability to bring them up to current codes. It is better to have a well maintained stair meeting an earlier code than have a poorly maintained stair that doesn’t meet current codes.

Stair tread adhesives

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By Jared @ Floormatstore.com

Winter is coming… and it’s time to shift from tackling outdoor projects to indoor ones. At the floormat-store.com division, that tends to mean a spike in stair tread inquiries. Installing indoor rubber and vinyl stair treads is a great cold weather project. What most customers forget to consider when attempting a stair tread project when it gets cold though, is the adhesive.

Rubber and vinyl flooring adhesives have minimum temperatures usually around 65°F. If the temperature of the room you’re installing in isn’t at or above the minimum, you’ll be waiting a long time for the adhesive to set. Every year, we get a few customers calling with the complaint that the adhesive they received was a bad batch. So far, every time, it wasn’t the adhesive’s fault. The installer failed to read the instructions thoroughly enough to catch that temperature warning. Usually, it’s an unfinished basement or the few steps that lead from the garage to the house, but with the kids out of school over Thanksgiving and winter break, cold stair wells in schools are a common application, too. Most adhesives also need around 24 hours to set in ideal situations, so leave that heat on for a day (or two) after you finish.

Musson #300 water based contact adhesive with 0 VOCs. Great for indoor stair tread installations

While keeping the temperature in mind, you’ll also want to consider that a lot of adhesive options require a well ventilated area. In summer that’s easy – just open some windows and doors and wear a mask. As it gets cold outside though, leaving those open isn’t an option. So make sure to get a low VOC adhesive that will work for the application. The last thing you want is to pass out from the fumes while installing stair treads – ouch! A water-based contact adhesive, like Musson’s #300, works for both rubber and vinyl treads, risers and tiles, going over concrete, wood, terrazzo, metal and marble – and typically have 0 VOCs. That safely covers just about any application.

Best of luck and stay safe with your projects.

-Jared @ www.floormatstore.com

Replacement Stair Rails

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We recently were called out to a site with a corrosive environment that was in need of replacement stair rails as all of the original handrails were rusting and in disrepair. The paint was almost all chipped up, and some areas of the handrails were so corroded you had to choose between risking a fall by not grabbing the stair handrails, and grabbing the handrails but risking the need for a tetanus shot.

Existing railings corroded from damp environment

The above picture shows the lowest section with a bollard and chain assembly “protecting” the pit ladder that is bent, corroded and weakened at the base. It also doesn’t meet OSHA standards for rail heights or strength at top rail. You can also see the rusted handrail and stair rail. Anytime you have a damp environment it’s best to use a material besides carbon steel – Galvanized steel, aluminum or stainless steel all perform much better over time. Remember that corrosion doesn’t just make the metals look bad, but it also weakens them, substantially lessening their lifetime usability. Sure, the other metal options cost more than plain carbon steel, but when you have to replace the material before its time you have to pay for demo of the inferior material, fabrication of the new material, installation of the new material and have the lost time from the job being out of service during that process.

New hot dipped galvanized replacement stair rails and safety gate

New replacement hot dipped galvanized railings and safety gate

Here is the same view after we finished. We removed the bollard and replaced it with one with a more sturdy post and baseplate. The chains were removed and replaced with our MLG Ladder Safety Gate with a hot dipped galvanized finish. The new set-up is going to stand up to the moist, caustic environment much better and easily meets OSHA standards for guarding at a ladderway opening.

29 CFR 1910.23 Guarding of floor and wall openings and holes. “(a)(2) Every ladderway floor opening or platform shall be guarded by a standard railing with standard toe board on all exposed sides (except at entrance to opening), with passage through the railing either provided with a swing gate or so offset that a person cannot walk directly into the opening.”

New rails with OSHA required toe guard to prevent items from falling over the edge

All of the new handrails were done to OSHA standards with a 4” toe kick at the bottom, a 21” mid rail and a 42” top rail. Along the stairs, the stair rails were 34” high from the edge of the nosing. There was no wall mounted rail as the stair width is less than 44” wide and there is only one open side.

29 CFR 1910.23 (d) Stairway railings and guards. “(1)(ii) On stairways less than 44 inches wide having one side open, at least one stair railing on open side.”

Smooth, continuous handrail to maintain contact with rail throughout the climb

The replacement stair rails are designed for a seamless transition between flights, allowing someone to slide their hand from the top rail to the bottom of the stairs without letting go of the rail. This gives a nice, clean look and also allows for safer access and increased strength of rails. Added strength also comes from the baseplate design with a four bolt pattern to maximize rail strength and minimize movement regardless of where pressure is applied front, back, top etc.

There were some unique challenges to this project with the winding rails, but with proper site dimensions and knowing the details about the installation environment, it was quite easy to supply this customer with replacement rails that fit and will last them a lot longer than their previous set.