Projects / 8/7/2024

Installation of wood and resilient flooring in the name of sustainability in the Atlantic Hotel

An extensive range of solutions for installing wood, textile and vinyl flooring in various areas in a hotel in Münster, Germany.

The Atlantic Hotel in Münster, Germany, showcases elegant herringbone parquet, textile and vinyl floorings, all installed with Mapei innovative sustainable materials. This project, recognized for its excellence, reflects the owner's commitment to sustainability, comfort, design and safety.

The city of Münster in the Western part of Germany is famous for its old city centre with ancient palazzos, gothic style churches and stone-paved piazzas and streets, and also for its Promenade, a 4.5 km stretch of road for those who enjoy walking, jogging, skating or going for a bike-ride. And it is near the old city centre and the Promenade where the Atlantic Hotel is located, a new, 5-star hotel which offers its guests comfort, functionality and style of the highest standard while blending in harmoniously with its surroundings. The structure has a particularly striking exterior, thanks to the curved form of the façade featuring windows with large white cornices that, together, create a beehive-type effect.

The hotel has both German and international clientele and offers 244 rooms and suites, two restaurants, a conference and events hall, a Sky-Bar on the sixth floor, a spa and fitness centre and a large lobby with a café-lounge.

The wooden floors in the rooms and the conference room were laid with ULTRABOND ECO S940 1K adhesive after treating the substrates with ECO PRIM VG.

A fabulous protagonist: wood flooring

The interior of the hotel stands out for its refined style and the comfortable atmosphere it creates, thanks also to the use of materials of the highest quality and subtle and delicate colours, starting with wood, textile materials and vinyl being chosen for the floor coverings. Installation of these floor coverings proved to be a challenge due to the sheer size of the surfaces to be covered, the amount of time available for the installation work and the need to guarantee results of the highest quality, up to the standards of this magnificent hotel. It was necessary, therefore, to use only the most reliable, rapid installation materials with a low impact on the environment.

In the rooms, conference hall and Sky-Bar, herringbone wood flooring played an important role. To bond this type of flooring over a total area of 10,800 m², a system was proposed by Mapei GmbH, the Group’s German subsidiary, which would guarantee not only rapid installation and high final performance characteristics for the surfaces, but also low impact on the environment. The complete system, in fact, consists of materials certified EMICODE EC1^Plus by GEV, the Association for Emission-controlled Installation Materials.

After sealing various cracks in the screeds with EPORIP SCR two component, quick-hardening, urethane-silicate resin, work commenced by treating the substrates with ECO PRIM VG, a ready-to-use acrylic primer in water dispersion which improves the adhesion of the adhesive applied afterwards. The adhesive chosen was ULTRABOND ECO S940 1K, a silylated polymer-based product ideal for installing large format wood flooring elements: this is a one-component product, which is easy to apply and has excellent ridge holding. Besides, it has very low emission of volatile organic compounds (certified EMICODE EC1^Plus).

ULTRABOND ECO S940 1K adhesive was used to bond wood foors in the conference hall of the Atlantic Hotel after treating the subtrates with ECO PRIM VG.

Different adhesives for different materials

For some of the communal areas of the hotel (lobby, dining areas, caffè-bar and service areas) vinyl or textile flooring were chosen. For both types of flooring the first step was to prepare the substrates with a skim coat of PLANIPATCH XTRA ultra-fast drying patching compound, followed by a layer of ULTRAPLAN BASIC XTRA, a self-levelling smoothing compound manufactured and distributed on the German market by Mapei GmbH. These products were used to eliminate the difference in thickness of the substrates and to level them off, making them ideal to receive the flooring material very quickly. These materials are particularly suitable for substrates in areas, such as those typically found in hotels, where high resistance to loads and traffic is required and where work needs to be completed quickly.

The vinyl flooring was bonded with ULTRABOND ECO VS90 PLUS universal adhesive for resilient floor coverings. This adhesive hardens to form a rigid and cohesive film with high shear strength and is particularly recommended for those cases where, such as in the Atlantic Hotel, floors are subjected to static and dynamic loads, including loads of high intensity.

To bond the textile flooring over a total area of 3,000 m² in the corridors, on the other hand, ULTRABOND ECO TX1 was chosen, an adhesive with a tough final strength and ideal for bonding internal textile flooring with any kind of backing and needle-punch flooring on all normal types of substrates used in the building sector that are absorbent and stable in the presence of moisture. This product guarantees excellent wetting of the back of the flooring. Both adhesives are certified EMICODE EC1^Plusby GEV because they have very low emission of volatile organic compounds. In addition, they also carries the Blauer Engel DE-UZ 113 label, an environmental label very much valued in the German market.

The end result met with the satisfaction of the client, as can be seen in the words by the Hotel Manager, Sascha von Zabern, who declared: “The way the installation work was carried out and the quality of the finished surfaces were perfectly in line with our expectations”.

The quality of the finished work was also confirmed by the awards received for the project, such as the "People’s Choice Award" and an Honourable Mention in the “Hotels & Hospitality” category of the LOOP Design Awards 2022, recognitions of excellence in the field of architecture, design and art.

“The way the installation work was carried out and the quality of the finished surfaces were perfectly in line with our expectations”, claimed Hotel Director Sascha von Zabern.

Wooden floors installed with ULTRABOND ECO S940 1K were also chosen for some of the dining areas, while vinyl flooring laid with ULTRABOND ECO TX1 was chosen for the floors in many of the corridors.