Selecting the correct castor for your application and floor type ensures that your products moves with ease, gliding effortlessly across the surface with minimal noise pollution, providing a cushioned ride and extending the longevity of your castors. Select the wrong castor for the job and one, if not all, of these benefits could be compromised, and you could face a bigger issue than just new castors!
Concrete flooring is one of the most common floor materials in use these days, especially in warehouses and factories, probably due to their many benefits. Concrete floors are extremely durable providing resilience and extreme toughness, they are incredibly easy to maintain, they are affordable, and they offer design flexibility. Whilst concrete floors seem like an ideal solution, they do of course need to be maintained and preserved to some extent. Knowing the best castor to use for a concrete floor means you won’t be faced with having to repair broken surfaces where the incorrect wheel tread has created groves, causing the concrete to break up. Read on to better understand what castors are best for your concrete floor and which ones you should avoid.
Selecting the right castors for your floor
As with any floor type, before you begin to select the right castor, you need to always consider the following principles:
1) Weight of the product – whether it’s a roll cage, bread dolly or a mobile workstation, you need to know how much the object weighs on its own, as well as how much it’ll weigh when it is in use. This will enable you to accurately select a castor with the right tread to protect your floor type.
2) Determine the resilience of the floor type – how resilient a floor is depends on the quality of the flooring and the coating.
3) Budget – consider investing in the best castor for the job rather than the cheapest to achieve the best protection for your flooring and avoid having to replace it sooner than needed.
What type of castor is best for concrete floors?
When it comes to selecting the best castor for a hard surface like concrete, the basic principal is for hard floors use a soft tread castor.
Soft tread castors are the perfect partner for hard concrete surfaces because the floor is already hard so you require a softer tread to create some traction on the wheel of the castor. This enables it to roll smoothly across the surface. If you didn’t have a soft tread, the castors wouldn’t move as easily. For this reason, we, at TENTE, would always recommend a rubber or elastic tread tyre for any application being used on a concrete surface.
High-quality elastic tyres and rubber tyres are often used in the institutional and industrial segment thanks to their many properties. Such treads provide noise-free movement when rolling across the surface, have the highest push and pull forces and lowest ground pressure keeping you in control, provide a cushioned ride, especially for more sensitive equipment and most importantly are the perfect pairing for a concrete floor, protecting it for many years to come.
What type of castor to avoid for concrete floors?
Despite the robustness and durability of concrete flooring, there are still some castors that can indeed damage the concrete, gradually eroding it away and causing it to break up or even drive you mad with every roll they take because of the noise pollution.
We strongly advise against any type of metal wheel, such as cast iron or forged steel. Such wheels will gradually erode the concrete and cause it to break up requiring both new castors and new flooring, or a repair at the very least.
Hard plastic treads, such as nylon or polypropylene, are often purchased as a budget option, but saving money doesn’t mean saving your sanity. When using such treads on concrete flooring, you will generally find that they are extremely noisy when moving around and can wear incredibly quickly in comparison to a more-suited tread. They may not save you money in the long run!
Castors and wheels always need to be matched precisely to your particular situation and all of the relevant influencing factors need to be considered. If you are still unsure which tread type matches your concrete floor, TENTE is here to support you and offer the right solution for you. With many years of experience and knowledgeable staff to hand, please don’t hesitate to give us call – 01733 578111.
