Static dissipative and conductive floor systems for Hamilton electronics manufacturers, PCB and assembly operations, data centres and battery facilities. Grounded, installed as a system and resistance tested on handover.
Free on-site assessment across Hamilton, Stoney Creek, Ancaster, Dundas and Mount Hope. Written scope, fixed price, no obligation.
This is the one category where the damage is usually invisible, which is exactly why it goes unfixed for years.
Electrostatic damage is frequently latent. The part passes test, fails in the field, and the warranty claim never gets connected to the floor it was assembled on.
If the floor was never tested to ANSI/ESD S7.1 and you hold no resistance results, your compliance verification plan has a hole in it that an auditor will find before you do.
A dissipative coating with no grounding grid and no earth points measures nothing useful. A lot of facilities are paying for an ESD floor they do not actually have.
Bare slab under a raised access floor sheds continuously into equipment that is spending energy filtering it back out.
In Hamilton the areas are bigger, so the mistakes cost more. Specifying a grounded system across a whole data hall or manufacturing floor when only part of it is an EPA is one of the largest avoidable numbers we see in this category.
The floor is a small number next to one field failure you cannot explain.
ICT and digital media are among the sectors Invest in Hamilton promotes, with the West Hamilton Innovation District and McMaster Innovation Park anchoring the research end, while the Red Hill business parks and Ancaster carry advanced manufacturing. In practice our Hamilton static-control work splits three ways: server rooms and data halls where the real win is sealing the slab under a raised access floor to kill dust, battery and energy storage operations where the grounding requirement is genuine, and manufacturing cells where dust or solvent vapour brings bonding into scope. Three different jobs that get lumped together under one acronym.
Most requested in Hamilton: sealed slabs under raised floors and grounded manufacturing cells.
Hamilton has the oldest industrial building stock of the three. Bayfront and East Hamilton slabs are frequently mid-century, poured without a vapour retarder, finished with a shake-on hardener and carrying decades of oil and coolant. That is a prep problem before it is a coating problem. Red Hill, Ancaster and the airport lands are newer and far more straightforward.
Hamilton also gives us the largest floor areas of the three cities for this kind of work, and area changes the economics. Over a big data hall or a large manufacturing cell, the difference between sealing the slab and installing a fully grounded system is a very large number, so getting the zoning right is worth real money. We map the areas that genuinely need a grounded system, seal the rest properly, and put both lines in the quote so the decision is yours to make with the numbers in front of you.
ANSI/ESD S20.20 does not care what the coating tin says. It asks for a flooring and footwear system measuring under 1.0 x 10⁹ ohms and a peak body voltage under 100 V. Both. A dissipative coating installed without a grounding grid meets neither, and that is the most common ESD floor failure we get called in to fix.
| System | Where it goes | Why it gets specified |
|---|---|---|
| Static dissipative epoxy | EPA workstations, assembly, PCB handling, test areas | Dissipative sits above 1.0 x 10⁶ and below 1.0 x 10⁹ ohms resistance to ground. Typically 2 to 3 mm, foot traffic at 24 hours, heavy traffic at 48, full cure at 7 days. |
| Conductive epoxy | Higher risk areas, explosives-adjacent, some battery work | Conductive is 1.0 x 10⁶ ohms and below. A lower resistance is not automatically better, it is a different design decision, and it has electrical safety implications. |
| Copper grounding grid and earth points | Underneath the whole system | Copper tape bridging joints, tied to earth points installed with redundancy. Manufacturer guidance calls for a minimum of two earth points per floor area so a single failure does not orphan the floor. |
| Standard high-build epoxy | Data centre halls, corridors, non-EPA areas | Not everything needs to be ESD. Sealing bare slab under and around a raised access floor kills dust without paying for a grounded system where you do not need one. |
| Handover resistance testing | Every ESD install | Point-to-point and point-to-groundable-point testing per ANSI/ESD S7.1, with results documented for your compliance verification plan. |
The floor is one element in a grounded path. We install a conductive primer, lay copper tape bridging the joints, tie into earth points placed with redundancy, and have the earth linkage cabling specified by a qualified electrical engineer rather than guessed at. A dissipative coating rolled over bare concrete with no grid is not an ESD floor, whatever the data sheet says.
Book a Site VisitANSI/ESD S7.1 characterises floor material resistance point-to-point and point-to-groundable-point, both under 1.0 x 10⁹ ohms for S20.20. We test at completion and hand you the results. S20.20 also requires a compliance verification plan with periodic retesting, and the interval is set by your facility rather than by the standard, so we will not invent one for you.
Read the GuidesWe do not sell ESD S20.20 certified floors, because S20.20 certifies a facility's ESD control programme, not a coating and not a contractor. What we install is a floor that can be qualified within your programme, tested and documented. We also avoid the word anti-static: it is not a standardised term, it usually just means reduced tribocharging, and it has no verified resistance range or ground path behind it.
See PricingOn older Hamilton slabs the preparation is the whole variable, so we test before we price. Book the assessment and you get a fixed number rather than an estimate that moves once the grinder starts.
Conductive is 1.0 x 10⁶ ohms and below. Dissipative is above 1.0 x 10⁶ and below 1.0 x 10⁹. Test method is ASTM F150 and ANSI/ESD S7.1.
S20.20 requires peak body voltage under 100 V per ANSI/ESD STM97.2, measured with the footwear in use. Resistance alone is not compliance.
In a data centre the coated slab often sits under a raised floor whose stringers and pedestals carry their own grounding. We coordinate rather than assume.
Sealing bare concrete beneath a raised access floor is one of the highest value, lowest cost jobs in a data hall.
Loaded server carts are harder on a floor than anything else in the building, so abrasion resistance drives the topcoat choice.
We work to the spec your programme sets. If you do not have one yet, we will tell you that the floor is only one element of it.
Hamilton jobs get more preparation time in the quote than anywhere else we work, and that is deliberate. The Bayfront and East Hamilton building stock is old, hard-used and frequently contaminated, and the honest way to price that is to test before quoting rather than discover it on day two. The Red Hill business parks, Ancaster and the Mount Hope airport lands are newer and much more predictable, and we price those accordingly rather than applying a Hamilton premium across the board.
Moisture testing, a bond test on contaminated slabs and a look for shake-on hardeners. On older Hamilton floors this is the difference between a real quote and a guess.
Degreasing, shot blasting and repair are itemised rather than buried, so you can see what you are paying for and why the cheap quote is cheap.
Bay by bay, line by line, on nights and weekends. Fast-cure systems return traffic to a finished section in as little as 4 hours.
Twenty-seven Google reviews, a 5.0 average, and Christopher replies to every one of them personally. On the kind of floors Hamilton has, an owner-operated crew that tests before it quotes is worth more than a bigger name.
"I had the pleasure of working with Surface Coating Experts, owned by Christopher, on a project in our condominium where one of the balconies and walkways required a complete repair."
What customers mention most: garage floor installation, epoxy quality, detailed work, and a smooth process from first quote to finished floor.
Every review gets a personal reply from the owner - the after-the-job care that keeps the rating a perfect 5.0.
This is not a sales call with a clipboard. Hamilton has the oldest industrial building stock we work in, and the honest way to quote a Bayfront or East Hamilton floor is to test it rather than look at it. That is why our Hamilton assessments take longer than most, and why our Hamilton prices tend to hold.
Free. No obligation. Usually within the week.
Prefer to talk it through? Call (905) 876-6957, Monday to Saturday, 6am to 6pm.
Tell us where the floor is and what runs on it. We will come out, test it and put a fixed price in writing.
Same service nearby: Electronics & ESD in Burlington · Electronics & ESD in Oakville
On older Hamilton slabs the preparation is the variable, and we would much rather find that at the assessment than halfway through your job. Second, plant, hangar and warehouse shutdown windows get booked early here. If you have a date in mind, the useful move is to get us in front of the floor well ahead of it.
Also see our industrial & commercial overview, epoxy flooring in Hamilton and published pricing.
Tell us the square footage, what runs on the floor and what has already been tried on it. On older Hamilton slabs we test before we price, so the number you get is the number.
Free, no obligation, and you keep the written scope whether you use us or not.