by Mike Lesko | reporter Published Gateway News: November 1, 2015 12:00AM

The floor inside the Streetsboro Fire Department had become slippery and parts had worn off.

“Every time we washed the fire trucks, we were slipping on the floor,” Fire Chief Robert Reinholz said.

The solution was not far away.

Streetsboro’s Dudick Inc. — a world leader in high performance coatings, floorings and tank linings, according to its website — donated a new floor.

The flooring and the installation guidance was worth about $50,000, according to Fire Lt. Kevin Grimm, and was completed Oct. 25. The non-skid surface covers about 8,000 square feet in the fire department’s bays and a small room near the bays.

Reinholz said the agreement occurred after firefighter Bill Young contacted Tom Dudick, president Dudick Inc.

“Without hesitation, he said they’d donate a new floor,” Reinholz said.

Tom Dudick II, a field technician for the company, said the decision to donate came from his father and brother, David, who is the general manager.

“We’ve been in Streetsboro for about 29 years,” Dudick II said. “Anything we can do to give back to community, especially for the firefighters who put their lives on the line, we want to do. It was an easy decision on our part.”

Dudick Inc. is located at 1818 Miller Parkway, Streetsboro.

Reinholz said Oct. 26, the day after they finished the flooring, they planned to let it set for a couple days, then bring the fire trucks, which were parked outside, back into the building Oct. 28.

“It’s wonderful,” Reinholz beamed Oct. 26 as he admired the shiny gray flooring with several yellow stripes. “It’s a beautiful floor.”

Grimm said he believes the original floor coating was about 22 years old.

Reinholz talked about what made him the most proud about the whole project.

“Dudick is an international company that is a part of our community,” he said. “And our guys showed a lot of pride. We took ownership of this project because this is our home.”

The entire installation process took two weeks.

Dudick Inc. Foreman Jim Wheeler provided supervision for the firefighters, who did the work. They blasted off the old surface and, on their hands and knees, used hand grinders to make the concrete rough so the flooring surface would adhere better, said Reinholz, singling out Fire Inspector Rick Owens, who worked every day on the floor with plenty of help from his co-workers.

Dudick Inc. provided the Steri-Quartz B floor system, which consists of a moisture tolerant primer, broadcast color quartz bodycoat and a UV stable topcoat, Dudick II said.

“This total system provides a strongly bonded monolithic floor with excellent physical and mechanical properties,” he said. “It is also anti-slip, adding traction to the floor. We then sealed the floor with Sealer 50, a two-component, nano-enhanced hybrid, fluoropolymer coating. Sealer 50 provides toughness and is resistant to impact, staining and UV degradation.”

Reinholz said they also added 120 40-pound bags of sand to the mixture that made the flooring material “more gritty.”

Dudick II and his co-workers were pleased with the outcome.

“The floor looks great,” he said. “It turned out really well.”

In addition to Streetsboro, Dudick Inc. manufactures in Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Seoul, Korea; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. See more about the company at www.dudick.com.