Edmonton Green Shopping Centre in North London houses shops, a block of flats, and dozens of independent market stalls across a 200m² ground floor area. Anglia Decor was appointed as a subcontractor by Ash Construction to install a new resin floor across the worst-affected sections. The existing floor had worn significantly and several defective sections needed removing and replacing at depths of up to 60mm. The catch: the centre could not close. Every square metre of the works had to happen on night shifts.
The phased night-shift programme
We started in February 2020 and worked exclusively on night shifts to avoid disruption to daily trading. The programme ran over 5 weeks in a strict sequence:
- Week 1 — chasing out defective joints and filling surface imperfections with epoxy repair mortar and 2-pac filler.
- Week 2 — the deeper defective areas, around 70m² that needed mechanical removal by scabbler and breakers, then replacement using an Eposcreed levelling compound.
- Week 3 — full floor preparation by Vacublast and diamond grinding. The team prepared and applied 2 coats to each section within the same shift, finishing by 3am to give the coating cure time before the centre opened the next morning.
- Weeks 4 and 5 — the same Vacublast / grind / 2-coat pattern repeated across the remaining sections until the full floor was complete.
Why Polyaspartic was the only sensible chemistry
The whole programme depended on one product specification. We applied a Polyaspartic resin coating system across the full 200m² floor area. Polyaspartic was the only chemistry that made the night-shift programme realistic, for one reason: cure time.
Standard epoxy systems take 12–24 hours to reach foot-traffic hardness. That is fine for a closed warehouse. It is impossible at a shopping centre that opens at 8am. Polyaspartic cures in hours, not days, which let us prepare, prime, and apply 2 full coats inside a single night shift and have the floor ready to take pedestrian traffic before the doors opened.
The system also gives excellent abrasion resistance, which matters in a busy retail environment with constant footfall and trolley wheels.
The result
Anglia Decor completed the project on time and on budget across the 5-week programme. On handover we provided Ash Construction and the centre management with a full maintenance schedule and an 18-month warranty. The shopping centre floor was fully restored, every defective area was repaired, and not a single trading day was lost.
Phased, occupied-site flooring projects sit or fall on chemistry selection and shift planning. The same scope on the wrong product would have closed the centre. Read the Edmonton Green case study or speak to our resin flooring team about projects that have to be delivered around live operations.