Entrance matting isn’t just for aesthetic purposes – when used properly, it can help reduce the potential for client and staff injuries due to slip and fall accidents, and it can also help to reduce your overall cleaning expenses. Think of your entrance matting as a gatekeeper for your building’s doorways: the right type and amount of matting stops dirt from crossing into your building and spreading itself out, making itself more difficult and costly to remove.
The type of entrance matting you should use depends on a variety of factors. For example, the entryway into a college lecture hall adjacent to an athletic field will have different requirements than the entryway into an office building adjacent to a paved parking lot. The amount of matting deployed – and the type(s) of matting used – needs to match the needs of the environment for maximum benefit. If the mat used is too small, it requires too much maintenance to be cost-effective – mats can only hold so much dirt before they are “full”, so if your matting fills up to capacity before your maintenance staff can clean it, it stops being useful. The same applies for the type of matting; if your primary problem is dust and dry dirt, a wiper/scraper textile mat like Grizzly FX is a much more effective choice than a strictly-scraping vinyl mat.
Dirt and debris will enter your building no matter what, but dirt in a single spot is faster (and cheaper!) to clean than dirt spread out across the entire building. A complete entrance matting system does exactly that: by trapping most of the inbound dirt at the doors of your building, you can save cleaning time and reduce maintenance costs.
Wise building operators “do the math” and look at the big picture: compare the costs of a single slip-and-fall accident versus installing an entrance matting system that covers your need for due diligence and liability, and it’s easy to see why quality entrance matting is a good investment in the long term.
