Painted hangar floors

[pilotdreams]

Ive been working in a hangar with unpainted floors for awhile now. People are thinking we should get the floors painted. Is it a good idea? These radial engines like to drip oil. Im sure they make oil resistant paint but Im sure if we found a better way to wash the floor it could look almost as clean as grey shiny paint

[cdnpilot77]

Not sure if you have a budget for it, but epoxy floors are fantastic and easy to keep clean even with oil or hydraulic fluid. Downfall is that when they get wet, it's like a skating rink.

[cgzro]

If you do have an epoxy paint put down make sure the preparation is peftect otherwise it will flake off pretty quickly. Our hanger has epoxy and the weight of the planes will lift the paint, especially if the plane is parked and not moved for a while. Vintage Wings on the other hand seems to have survived a few years without much flaking so you could ask them what they put down.

A nice light blue or something works very well because you can spot oil/hydraulic leaks instantly and epoxy is impervious to staining.

[Colonel Sanders]

Epoxy is the way to go. As Peter says, preparation is critical. You must also vacuum up all the dust!

PS If you're going to park a plane for a while - esp a heavy one - put a patch of carpet under the mains, and the paint won't lift.

[Gos]

A painted floor certainly looks really good but make sure someone clean it with a zamboni or something like that each day
because oil or water make it slippery as hell. I've already been stuck with a skyjack because the floor was too slippery and the wheel was just spinning around.

[GyvAir]

Not sure what the process is called, but the hangar floors I've seen where the epoxy paint stood up well were prepped with a machine that basically wet-milled a layer off the surface of the concrete and dried it just prior to applying the epoxy. The price I heard 10 or so years ago was $5.00 per square foot. Sure looks good and works well though! Those floors don’t lift, but if you park for a couple weeks or months with no mats, there is a more or less permanent tire mark left behind.

I’m a fan of the painted floor (read: far more likely to be clean) from a quality of aircraft maintenance perspective. Nobody likes to spend time on or near a dusty, oily floor while working under a plane. If the floor is clean, one is going to be in a better frame of mind while on a task and not rush it or skip it just to get out of the dirt.

[MZUNGO]

painted floors are only good if you have shiny new jet that never flies. if you are operating an airline or just doing lots of maintenance stay away from painted floors.
water becoms completely invisible on a painted floor, and people will slip and fall.
oil and hydraulic fluid will stain all but the most expensive floors.
tell the bosses to save thier money and buy something usefull...like a huge barbecue for the hangar.
and then give the rest to the maintenance crew as a bonus

my $.02
M

[GyvAir]

Yeah, they can be slippery, although the newest one I've been working on isn't insanely slippery when wet. It's more matte than all out showroom shiny.
Other reason I'm a big fan of painted floors is lighting. Putting white or near white paint on the hangar floor has as much effect as doubling the overhead lighting. More, if you're working under the wing.

[Colonel Sanders]

Painted hangar floors rock: http://i.imgur.com/sr0JQ.jpg

[Greg87]

I'm a fan of painted floors, worked at places that have had both, and aside from looking a lot nicer, from a maintenance perspective I found it helps a lot. As someone said earlier it makes the whole hangar seem brighter, and I found it a lot easier to find dropped parts on the painted floor. I suppose not dropping the parts would be the better way to go, but what fun is that! Where I work now doesn't have painted floors, and it makes for a pretty gloomy environment for night shift.

One place I worked for a very short time decided to paint the floors in their old WW2 era hangar, I'm not sure what paint they used, but it seemed to be just your every day latex wall paint... as soon as the humidity hit (Southern Ontario) the floors became so slick all the time that it was a hazard just to walk across the hangar floor!

[Colonel Sanders]

the floors became so slick

That's a problem in the spring, regardless of the floor surface. The concrete is below the dewpoint of the warm, humid airmass and it just sucks the moisture out of the air, and it condenses on the cold floor. Anyone here have a still?

I deal with that by keeping the hangar (floor) warm, and running a de-humidifier inside the hangar to keep the humidity low. I don't like everything in the hangar sopping wet.

Hey, yesterday my father was cleaning his glasses, and a lens popped out. The tiny screw holding the frame together popped out. Because our floor is epoxy paint, it was easy to find the tiny screw on the clean hangar floor. Not sure how fast that would have been if the floor was Northern Manly Filthy (tm).

[GyvAir]

If you happen to be running overhead radiant heat, the floor tends to stay warm enough that condensation doesn't become a problem.

[sidestick stirrer]

Okay Hedley, you have finally made me feel like a complete waste of skin considering how my life turned out compared to yours!
And that picture doesn't even show the tubby-little biplanes on the other side...