Total Cost of Ownership

Glossary Term

The real cost of a product, encompassing the cost of the material, along with installation, maintenance, anticipated repairs and necessary monitoring. These hidden costs are often overlooked or ignored in the initial cost analysis, but they add up and over time can outpace the expense of owning a floor with a higher material cost.

For instance, a floor with static-protective properties reliant on periodic buffing with conductive wax must be tested and monitored after each maintenance interval to ensure electrical compliance. If routine maintenance requires shutting down an operational space for some period of time, loss of use should also be factored into the flooring decision.

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Walking Body Voltage

The static charge, in volts, generated by a person walking across the floor. Static charges that accumulate on the body discharge to the first object the person touches, potentially damaging or disrupting sensitive electronics. Learn about how ESD flooring works

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Voltage Suppression

Voltage suppression occurs when an ESD-protective material, such as a static-dissipative table covering, suppresses static charges rather than dissipating charges to ground. For instance, an ESD laminate with a buried conductive layer will suppress the electrostatic field from a charged object, but is incapable of discharging static even when the charged object touches its surface.

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Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)

Gases emitted from certain solids or liquids, including a variety of chemicals, which may have short- and long-term adverse health effects. Concentrations are consistently higher indoors than outdoors: often up to ten times higher. Flooring should always be tested for VOC content by independent certification organizations like FloorScore and GreenGuard.

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Triboelectric Series

A list of common materials, such as leather, nylon, wool, and paper, showing whether a material tends to give up or take on electrons when in frictional contact with other materials on the list. Those that give up electrons become positively charged, and materials that accept electrons become negatively charged. In the ESD industry, the

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Triboelectric Charging

Whenever two objects with different electrical characteristics make contact and separate, the molecules in the two materials interact, forming an electrical bond. Separating the materials creates friction. This frictional force draws electrons away from one material and deposits an excess of electrons on the other, leaving a positive or negative electrical charge on both materials.

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Topical Antistat

An antistat that is applied to the surface of a material for the purpose of making the surface static dissipative or reducing triboelectric charging. Topical antistats are temporary. Without constant monitoring, there’s no way to tell when the static-control properties have worn off. For this reason, applying topical antistats is not a reliable form of

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Total Cost of Ownership

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Walking Body Voltage

Voltage Suppression

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)

Triboelectric Series

Triboelectric Charging

Topical Antistat

Ready to Eliminate Static Risk?