Children's Hospital & Medical Center Car Seat Fitting Station Gets New Floor Coating

Driving is one of the most dangerous things we do every day. And motor vehicle crashes consistently remain one of the top three causes of unintentional injury deaths of children, according to the CDC. Still, four out of five children’s car seats are installed incorrectly.

Yes, you read that right.

Helping Keep Kids Safe

Children's Hospital & Medical Center helps families keep their little ones safe with properly installed car seats.

So, it’s easy to see why driving home from the hospital with a newborn — especially if it’s your first — can be a nerve-wracking experience. And why having a car seat you know is correctly installed and adjusted is such a hugely important detail — one the experts at Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, take very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they’ve established Children’s Car Seat Fitting Station, a dedicated drive-in bay on their campus to fit car seats to the vehicles of new and expecting parents.

How important is it to have a place for fitting car seats? According to Child Passenger Safety Specialist Amy Borg, “It’s great having a dedicated spot for families to come. It’s air-conditioned for the summer and heated for the winter, so we can concentrate on the task at hand.” She adds, “We even have a little spot to entertain the children, so caregivers can concentrate on how to properly buckle up a child in his or her seat and then properly install it in the vehicle.”

A Much-Needed Garage Renovation

However, because it was established in Children’s parking garage, which has an uncoated concrete floor that is a magnet for dust and grime, the station wasn’t exactly the best place for young families. In fact, Amy says that kids were regularly crawling around on the floor while their parents were getting their car seats installed and they were getting dirty in the process.

So, when it came time to make the Fitting Station’s concrete floor more welcoming for young families and easier to clean for the staff, Children’s called on Hello Garage and its proven polyaspartic floor coating system.

Why Children’s Chose Polyaspartic Over Epoxy Floor Coatings

Children’s needed a floor coating solution that was not only beautiful and easy to clean but also tough and long-lasting. After some research, the choice came down to epoxy versus polyaspartic technology.

Often lumped together under the generic term epoxy; epoxy and polyurethane coatings offer decent durability and abrasion resistance. Epoxies, however, can be difficult to install due to their narrow operating temperature and short pot life and can yellow over time due to their not being UV resistant. Polyurethane coatings are UV-stable, but they can take two days to install and up to six days to cure, so you need to plan to be without the use of your garage for a while — something that Children’s was not keen on doing.

In use for more than three decades, polyaspartic coatings offer an ideal combination of beauty, toughness and speed. Polyaspartic technology offers a granite-like look and durability and can be installed in just a day. And as it takes only 24 hours to cure, you can resume normal use of your garage much faster than with epoxy coatings. However, because they require special surface preparation — including scarification from a walk-behind industrial grinder — to adhere properly, polyaspartic coatings require professional installation for optimum results. 

In the end, it wasn’t even close; Hello Garage’s polyaspartic garage floor coating solution won the day. 

A Complete Garage Makeover In One Day

For many people, the Car Seat Fitting Station is their first impression of Children’s, so it was really important to give it an impressive transformation — and that’s exactly what Hello Garage did. Once dark, dingy and dusty, the space is now bright and beautiful. Plus, thanks to the new floor coating, it’s super easy to keep clean. Snow, slush and rain squeegees away effortlessly instead of accumulating and staining.

The installation went off without a hitch, impressing the Children’s car seat experts. Amy said, “I am so impressed with Hello Garage! They came out to find out exactly what our needs were and to see what we had envisioned for the room. They listened and provided great feedback. Tanner did a great job of checking in and making sure we had all we needed to begin the project.”

As for the results, Amy’s over the moon: “It looks absolutely amazing and I’ve gotten many compliments from caregivers who have been here both before and after the transformation.” She adds, “It’s also less slick on those icky Nebraska winter days.”

Children’s Car Seat Fitting Station is busy, typically fitting more than 400 seats a year. That’s a lot of traffic, but their new polyaspartic floor coating is more than up to the challenge. Hello Garage is proud to have helped Children’s in its mission to provide safety for all children and peace of mind for their parents.

To schedule a car-seat fitting with Children’s, visit www.childrensomaha.org/car-seat/ or call 1-402-955-8090.

For your very own garage-floor makeover from Hello Garage, visit HelloGarage.com or call 1-888-59-GARAGE to schedule a free, not-obligation estimate.