Anti-Slip Tape Maintenance

Anti-slip tape, easy to apply, and durable, but not invincible, some care must be taken before and during installation to ensure an efficient, and effective anti-slip surface, especially exterior applications. Exterior applications require a bit more preparation than internal, in most cases, as dirt and moisture are likely to be factors to consider before applying, moisture being the prominent problem outdoors compared to indoor. Ensuring the surface you are applying anti-slip tape to is dry and free from dirt are the two main boxes to tick off.

An area must be clean and free from grit and grease. While a brush will take care of the grit, be it dust, mud or anything similar, grease is a different area altogether, and powerful cleaners must be used to remove it from the surface. While many are available that will do the job, find a cleaner which is alcohol-based, such as our IPA cleaner, as this will create a clean, residue-free surface to give the adhesive the best bond.

Simply sweeping a dry area can be enough for most anti-slip tape applications, but if a surface was previously wet, even when dry, if a surface is porous, then moisture may return, causing the adhesive to fail. This can be prevented by using our surface primer, which when brushed on the surface and left to dry, will create a waterproof surface for the adhesive to bond to.

For areas which are a slip hazard and have heavy foot traffic, anti-slip tape is very effective. However, the heavy foot traffic over time could cause the edges of the material to lift, causing areas that are potential slip hazards, so action must be taken to prevent this. Edge fix, applied along the edges of the tape to seal it, will prevent edge lift on Heskins anti-slip tape, ensuring that heavy foot traffic areas, previously slippy, will stay slip-free for a long time. If the anti-slip tape has been down for a long time, it can wear and it’s performance be degraded. Replacing anti-slip tape ( Instructions found on our blog post ‘How to Remove Anti Skid Tape’ ) is a much more cost-effective, and more certain to be effective, than techniques such as epoxy flooring, which could be inconsistent, a record of poor anti-slip epoxy application is on the hse.gov.uk website.

We hope this guide will give you the confidence to not only apply anti-slip tape effectively for your situation but to maintain to ensure optimal performance too. You can visit our ancillaries page for more info on our IPA, edge fix and surface primer, and download datasheets.

We are in the process of creating several YouTube guides on how to maintain your ant-slip tape, including how to clean anti-slip tape, how to repair anti-slip tape and more! Keep an eye out for these videos getting uploaded, as they will be very beneficial to our customers.

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