The City of Grapevine, Texas is home to an aquatics program carefully curated to engage the community throughout the hot summer season. Between the waterpark, indoor recreation center, outdoor family pool, and splash pads, the award-winning facilities keep 54,000 citizens cool and active. The city’s morning and evening swim lessons, lap pool, and obstacle course are especially well known and loved by community members. However, with the Texas sun heating up the concrete deck to dangerous temperatures, the city knew it had to resurface the entryway.
“In our entryway, we had no shade protection, so by 4 pm that concrete was 130-140 degrees at least.”
Grapevine chose Life Floor because of the tile’s unique ability to dissipate heat underfoot. Unlike concrete, Life Floor tiles do not absorb heat, which is why the tiles feel comfortable to walk on in the summer sun.
Choosing a modern design in rectangles, the entryway now simulates a river flowing into the pool entrance, without the added cost of cutting curves into the tiles. With this affordable design solution, the floor is now a feature instead of a hot problem.
“We have really enjoyed Life Floor. It has definitely made our deck that used to be so hot much better to walk on. It’s great.”
Parr Park Sprayground has experienced similar heat issues on its concrete splash pad. Using Cool Deck, the City of Grapevine tried to mitigate the hot surface, which ultimately lead to a slippery surface. The city approached Life Floor to solve the slippery, hot surfacing problems in combination with creating a completely new and unique design. It was the perfect timing. The Life Floor Studio had just finalized our newest Hexagon shape.
“We’ve been really excited about adding hexagon tiles to our product line-up because they offer a completely different visual effect than what we’ve been getting from our square, rectangle, and triangle patterns. The hexagon can be seen as more modern or even more visually interesting to a lot of people. It also interlocks in a more radial way than our other shapes have. When arranged with enough variety of color, hexagons can create a really interesting mottled effect across a surface. For this reason, we think this shape has the potential to really enhance municipal splash pads without adding additional cost for custom-cut designs. Parr Park had a pre-existing splash pad with a swooping shape so I thought it would be fun to create a design that followed those curves. I really liked that the mix of cool tones could create a vibrant, futuristic feel that departs from so many of our other designs that often have nature-based or beach themes.”
A big thank you to the City of Grapevine for being our Hexagon pioneer!
Installation by Preferred Installation Partner, Inside Edge.