Sand Lake Vista: Office Common Areas and Restrooms

Springer Construction brought Blackburn's in for the tile package at Sand Lake Vista, a new office building on Sand Lake Vista Drive in Orlando. The scope covered the common areas and the restrooms on all three floors.

The design runs one idea through the whole building: marble, in porcelain. Common area floors are Daltile Perpetuo in Brilliant White, a matte 12x24 from Daltile's marble-look line. The restroom walls are Happy Floors Macael in Blanco, also 12x24. Two manufacturers, one look, and porcelain doing the work that real marble could not in a building this busy.

You can see the prep in the install photos. The red across the slab is a rolled-on membrane, and it went down before a single tile did. Concrete moves, and large-format tile does not forgive much, so a membrane between the two is the difference between a floor that lasts and a floor that cracks along a line nobody can explain later.

The restroom floors are where the specification gets interesting. They are Daltile Scripter in Mentor, and Scripter carries Daltile's StepWise technology, which is infused into the porcelain rather than coated on top so it cannot wear away. Daltile rates it at a dynamic coefficient of friction of at least 0.60, against the 0.42 minimum the tile industry sets for level interior floors walked on when wet. In the one room of an office building guaranteed to get wet, that is the number worth paying for.

Orlando is outside our home county, and that is normal for the commercial side of the business. Residential work stays close to the Winter Haven showroom. Trade work travels to the job, whether that is a courthouse in DeSoto County or an office building off Sand Lake.