Integral Cove Base – Seamless Sanitary Floor

Integral Cove Base Vs. Classic Cove Base

An integral cove base is critical to making a seamless sanitary floor. That is very important.

Traditional coves are moldings around the floor of a room to create a transition between the floor and wall. The integrated concave base seamlessly transitions from the vertical wall to the horizontal floor. This transition is also waterproof.

The traditional cove base has a seam or gap that allows water to seep behind and encourage bacterial growth.

An integrated cove base has a rounded transition to the floor. It allows using a squeegee to correctly clean and remove the water. This prevents the growth of bacteria or other bad actors.

Industries Using Coving

The integral cove base is usually a great option in all industries that need a hygienic floor, such as pharmaceutical or medical facilities, veterinary offices, supermarkets, laboratories, clean rooms, etc.

Usually, all areas need to be disinfected and have a lot of water on the ground. The integrated cove base creates a bathtub effect, so everything does not get into the wall and is easy to clean.

Radial Cove Purpose

The radius is the transition curve between the wall and the floor and directly impacts the surface’s cleanability. Well known fact that a 3/4 or one-inch radius is a radius commonly specified in the United States.

Traditionally, baseboards are good to install first, follow by floors. However, some base radius is loose in this process, and there is a tendency to increase the radius to compensate for this loss to improve cleanability.

In fact, a three-quarter inch radius can quickly turn into a ninety-degree radius with a thicker floor system. Moreover, the move to a larger radius explains that the resinous flooring industry is seeing a shift towards a two-inch radius in the pharmaceutical and healthcare environments to address the issues that arise.

The standing water and mud problem is not an issue anymore as the squeegee is much easier to get in and has a larger radius to drain the water.

Important to explain that the larger radius exceeds the need for initial cleaning capacity. In pharmaceutical facilities, floor coating is going down over existing floors. As you build floors above floors in these facilities, radius becomes less and less important. Starting with a large radius allows you to build and maintain that cleaning capacity for the future.

Identify Cant Cove

Cant is a cove base with a 45-degree angle instead of a circular radius. The wall-to-floor transition looks like a small ramp, and it is usually indicated in areas where trolleys are used.

The cove functions as a border to prevent a cart from damaging the walls. For this reason, it’s the best option for food and beverage processing plants and used in metal-walled freezers.

Well known fact that the metal and concrete walls move in different places, and the angled cove helps prevent movement or deflection of the base of the bay away from this metal wall.

If there’s enough movement, the cove will split at the top of the cove, which is an angle from our traditional cove, which will crack in the face of the bay. So that makes maintenance easy. It’s a bit easier and needs fixing, it’s much easier to do.

Determine the quality of the base of the cove

The quality of the formwork is only visually determined by the uniformity of height and radius over the entire formwork and the construction quality of the inside and outside corners.

Professionals share that the smoothness of the cove’s surface is a must because that’s what affects cleanability. Any bump, pore, or lip can trap dirt, harbor bacteria, and create customer problems.

A good way to ensure that the base of the baseboard is smooth is to test the glove. If the glove feels anything, it needs extra sanding. Use backlighting to troubleshoot when the cove is wet. When the bay is healed, it is often too late to correct visible faults.

Finally, when you walk into a room and look across the flat ground, a good base may look great, but a bad base looks really bad. This is what light reflects.

Therefore, cove base installation is essential. We advise contractors to have their best and most talented people install it. Note that the quality of the cove base is often what will cause problems for the homeowner or architect rather than the installation of the floor.