To follow Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations and maintain your customers’ and employees’ health, trust, and safety, you must follow hygiene standards and best practices in your food production facility. You don’t want to be that manufacturer making headlines for a listeria outbreak.
As the exit port for water and debris, your industrial floor drains play a key role in maintaining these standards. Depending on your industry, your drains must be able to withstand:
- High-temperature washdowns
- Frequent sanitization
- Constant contact with liquids
- Forklift traffic
- High flow rates
- Acidity
A well-designed floor drain can make or break your facility’s efficiency and cleanliness. You also need drains made of the right material—stainless steel. Adding chromium to steel results in a corrosion-resistant, durable, and sanitary material perfect for industrial applications.
Below, you’ll find the top benefits of using stainless steel industrial floor drains in your manufacturing plant.
Corrosion Resistance
With your floor drain seeing lots of use day in and day out, it might go without saying that you want one that won’t rust easily. You want a workhorse that will function properly for years to come.
So, let’s dive into the science of stainless steel for a moment. The chromium in the steel reacts with oxygen in air or water, creating chromium oxide on the surface. This passive layer of chromium oxide protects the steel, allowing it to regenerate itself when scratched. This amazing property of stainless steel gives it its corrosion resistance.
AWI uses T-304 or T-316 stainless steel for all our commercial floor drains. These grades are types of austenitic stainless steel, meaning chromium is added for more corrosion resistance.
Durability
The T-304 and T-316 grades of stainless steel also have a high tensile strength, making them ideal for floor drains that see heavy forklift and foot traffic. In fact, a well-designed, high-quality drain can last more than 50 years!
At AWI, we design our industrial floor drains with durability and quality as top priorities. As a manufacturer with our own drainage needs, we know products like ours need to last! Our drains use thicker gauges of stainless steel where appropriate and are rated for heavy use. We’re also ISO 9001:2015 certified and take quality seriously.
Sanitary Properties
Stainless steel floor drains are durable and resist corrosion. They are also antibacterial and easy to clean. Because stainless steel is smooth and non-porous, it’s hard for bacteria to cling to its surface. (There’s that passive layer of chromium oxide at work again.)
Stainless steel floor drains are also easy to both clean and maintain. Common cleaning products are sufficient and don’t degrade the surface. At AWI, we use finishes on our stainless steel that are easy to maintain in high-traffic areas (aka, your floor).
Functionality
Finally, industrial floor drains improve the functionality of your facility. Without them, large-scale food production facilities would not function! They keep your production floor humming smoothly.
Different types of floor drains work in different industries and applications, including:
At AWI, we manufacture all these types of drain systems. Our experts are standing by to discuss your facility’s needs and which drains would work best. Contact us for a quote today!
