Author Archives: francescruz

Some of my friends and customers in our business segment ask me about the raw materials disruptions status and my forecast about it. There are still a lot of supply chain disruptions in all industrial segments and also in our rubber flooring and associated chemical segment. The kind of disruptions include: COVID-19-related factory shutdowns inContinue reading “Again on suppy chain disruptions and their consequences”

When the COVID pandemic began, my work life changed considerably. From spending most of my time on airplanes or airports, I had to stop travels and started working from home, holding a lot of virtual meetings in Zoom or Teams or organizing webinars for my colleagues at CONICA or for our clients, installers or landscapeContinue reading “Some insights on my daily CONICA activities”

About diisocyanates and polyurethanes Together with polyols, diisocyanates are the essential building blocks of polyurethanes, a plastic material used in a multitude of everyday objects and applications. EU-REACH EU Regulation on Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) aims at improving the protection of human health and the environment from potential risks from chemicalContinue reading “What is going on regarding the EU Restriction regarding Diisocyanates”

Sections 6.1.4 and 3.28 of the European Playground standard EN 1176-1:2018 and section 6.1 of EN 1176-7:2020, refer to the need of an annual main inspection to check the level of safety of the foundations on playing equipment. The aim is to ensure there is no corrosion or rotting on the equipment posts that couldContinue reading “Annual main inspection and wetpour surfacing”

When I was a teenager, I had a real passion for aerospace topics, that still today remains and when I had to decide what I would do for living, I was clear that I wanted to go to the Polithecnic University far from my home city to learn Electronics Engineering. It was also clear for meContinue reading “Rubber flooring is not rocket science, but …”

As my regular readers have noticed, my concern for environmental issues does not stop growing and I wrote already several articles in this blog referring to environmental issues and circular economy. I was recently reading a LinkedIn post from Alexis Issaharoff, the CEO of Antah Solar and a Sustainability & Environment Advocate. He explained thatContinue reading “Back to microplastics”

A lot of industry segments are experiencing significant supply chain disruptions all this first part of the year. As a result near everybody had to face higher raw material costs, longer lead times, production breaks or needed to redesign some of their products or process to avoid a full stop of operations. While demand wasContinue reading “More on current raw materials disruption and circular economy”

I’m back from my summer holiday and as I promised in my latest post, this time I will write about Emission Level of volatiles in our indoor projects using wepour rubber. For wetpour rubber flooring on indoor projects the flammability explained on my previous post and the emission level of volatile organic compounds are theContinue reading “Emission level of volatiles in wetpour rubber flooring indoor projects”

Many building materials are noncombustible. Examples of noncombustible building materials include brick masonry, concrete blocks, cement, metal and sheet glass. Our wetpour rubber flooring solutions as other common materials used in construction as, for example, wood are considered flammable and when used on indoor building projects they need to be compliant with construction rules and standards regarding safety andContinue reading “Flammability Class on indoor wetpour rubber flooring projects”

The world population does not stop growing despite the COVID disruption and this is seriously affecting the environment. Ensuring sufficient food, clean water and prosperity for the next decades requires impactful actions worldwide.One of the ongoing international public initiatives to achieve this is to move from a linear to a circular economy. Until only aContinue reading “The circular economy challenge for rubber flooring installers”

Vulcanization is a process that converts the plastic characteristic of an EPDM compound from deforming under a certain force to becoming an elastic thermoplastic that returns to its initial position after deformation by said force. Thus, vulcanization creates a permanently elastic and thermally stable product that we call a rubber or elastomer. Through this vulcanizationContinue reading “Sulphur or peroxide vulcanized EPDM?”

Binder is the component with the highest impact on the cost of a wetpour (poured-in-place) rubber flooring but also on the end quality achieved.With the enormous price competition of our business segment, specially at some countries, I have seen installers trying to save costs in multiple ways and one of them has been, in someContinue reading “Saving on the rubber flooring by reducing the percentage of binder used?”

Playgrounds have been in lockdown in near all Countries in Europe and probably Worldwide. At those countries at which they remained open they probably had time restrictions or some accommodation limits due to COVID pandemic. Now that things are improving with vaccination over a wider range of ages, public authorities are starting to open theseContinue reading “Playgrounds after COVID lockdown times”

When testing the absorption capability of a safety surfacing at playgrounds we need to manage two concepts that are used to calculate the Critical Fall Height (CFH) of the surface. Even if you, as installer, are usually subcontracting this kind of test to a lab or inspector, is good you have a basic understanding ofContinue reading “What is HIC and gmax?”

If you are a Safety Surfacing installer, you want to get more customers in a wide territory and you are still not using social media, the answer is yes, at least you must be on LinkedIn, and I will develop why a bit later in this post. As majority of LinkedIn members I started myContinue reading “Should you be on LinkedIn and other social media?”

One of the great advantages of wetpour rubber flooring is the possibility of making very creative designs with basic colours, blends of different colours, graphics or logos and 3D shapes that serve as play elements, thereby increasing the playful value of the safety flooring. For years the only option rubber flooring installers had was toContinue reading “Installing colour blends, 2D graphics, and 3D shapes on wetpour rubber surfacing”