An eventful and interesting installation at Castle Hill Hospital in Hull. Over a three-week period, S&D Flooring was tasked to supply and install over 1,500 square metres of a variety of luxury carpet tiles and luxury vinyl tiles and sheet vinyl across Wards 18 and 19 on behalf of Ark Interiors – part of the Strata Group.

Ark Interiors and S&D Flooring have a long standing and successful working relationship. It was an easy decision to engage the S&D team when we needed a forward thinking, flooring contractor who could bring our designs to life for the NHS Castle Hill project. Well done to all at S&D for completing our challenging flooring concept on schedule. – Gary Finch, Business Manager for Ark Interiors.

Recreating the freshness of spring

Part of the project brief was to install a design that would help create a clean, open, and fresh atmosphere that reflects a modern and motivating working environment. This is reflected with a neutral colour palette with hints of warms bright colours. One of the many bold features that S&D Flooring installed was a series of warm green carpet Desso Fusion Rock tiles that run through the informal and formal working areas. Adding to this, a contrasting neutral grey Expona Design Roman Limestone Vinyl creates an obvious and visually pleasing walkway that threads through the ward; informally separating other zones.

All we had to do was follow the pattern!

With its many straight lines, block zones and limited curved shapes, installing the products was a relatively straight-forward task, after all, all the S&D Flooring Boys in Blue had to do was follow the pattern. However, during the subfloor preparation, a few issues arose that required some creative thinking for our team of highly skilled floor layers.

When we first attended the site it was apparent that the ward was split up into several areas with different flooring, materials, sub-floor heights and levels. So the first task was to remove all previous flooring materials, screeds and renovation materials to reveal the base. We then used an external contractor to bring the sub-floor to its original state.

Once this was done a moisture test revealed a high reading which meant a DPM was needed to be installed.  We also needed to level the subfloor to receive our floor finishes. To achieve this we installed a sandwich of Ardex NA, Ardex DPM1C and another coat of Ardex NA. Not only did this bring the subfloor to a clean smooth working surface but also eliminated the potential for future problems such as rising moisture.

Products Used

• Polyflor Expona Design Roman Limestone
• Tarkett Safetred Contract Ion
• Ardex NA
• Ardex DPM
• Desso Fusion Rock
• Interface Pebble