Soil as an innovative sustainable flooring material

The natural material, earth, has been used in the construction industry for thousands of years. There is a great deal of research worldwide, including in Sri Lanka, related to earth as a construction material. Therefore, earth used as a flooring material has been investigated and according to the results obtained in previous studies, it was identified that earth can be used for this purpose. However, there is a need to investigate the requirement of a wash coat and identify a suitable material to surface finish, matching with the service requirement of the floor finish. Hence, this study was focused to have a better understanding of the possibility to use synthetic resin as a surface coating for soil flooring. This paper presents the preliminary experimental results to introduce the top surface finishing layer for the soil floor. Soil floor samples were cast according to the mix design identified for soil flooring in previous research. Novolac resin and Hexamethylenetetramine (HMTA) hardener were used to prepare the surface coating. Samples were tested for several aspects. According to the primary experimental results, it can be concluded that there is a possibility to use this resin as the top surface coating for soil flooring material.