Waterhog Premier Entrance Mats

Waterhog Premier Entrance Mats are manufactured here in the United States from locally sourced raw materials to ensure a high-quality, long-lasting entrance mat that will provide years of cleaning and scraping ability.

Certainly! Should you only have these mats on the floor at certain times, you can easily roll them up and store them. Whether Waterhog Premier Mats are rolled up for a few hours or a few months, once you unroll them and put them back down on the floor they will lay flat (and stay flat), as that is their natural tendency.

Waterhog Premier Entrance Mats will hold up quite well in busy environments like a high school. The mats will provide years of useful life cleaning and scraping dirt and debris off of shoes. They are also easy to maintain. Shaking out or vacuuming the mats will get rid of most of the day-to-day dirt and debris. For mud and tougher spots, a little soap and a hose should do the trick. The mats can also be power washed and even commercially laundered every so often (though these methods are not at all necessary for daily use). Essentially, vacuuming will be the go-to cleaning method and only as needed.

Despite its rugged construction, you can easily cut these Waterhog mats to fit your space using a utility (razor) knife with a sharp blade and, for straight cuts, either a ruler or straight edge. Cutting the mat will not affect its performance nor cause it to deteriorate or unravel. (However, you will lose the sloped safety edge where the mat is cut. If the cut area is going up against a door frame, cabinet, etc. - basically in an area where people are not walking on and off the mat - then it's no problem at all).

The high / low surface pattern of the water hog premiere mat does an excellent job scraping away dirt, dust and debris but the grooves are not so deep or so wide that they would cause a high heel to get caught between them. The mats are also safe for individuals in wheelchairs as well as those using a walker. There are beveled/slopes safety edges around the entire perimeter of these formats that angle down from the full height of the mat to the floor to provide a gradual transition on and off the mat. The water hog product line is also certified safe by the national floor safety institute.

Although you could use the gripper backing on floor surfaces other than carpet, this backing type is specifically designed for use on a carpeted floor. The reason is that the grippers (aka cleats or nubs) help grab the textured, uneven carpet surface, and therefore the mat has greater surface contact with the carpet below. You would not want to use a Waterhog Premier Mat with smooth backing on carpet because it doesn't have the same surface-to-surface contact as it would with the gripper backing and could end up scooting or sliding around the floor slightly. The smooth backing is designed for use on hard floors so that it has maximum surface-to-surface contact to help keep the mat firmly in place.

Waterhog mats meet stringent fire and flammability tests. These particular mats pass flammability standard DOC-FF-1-70.  We're happy to send a spec sheet if needed.

The Waterhog Premier entrance mats have a diamond surface pattern with universal directionality, meaning foot and cart traffic can traverse the mats in any direction and be equally effective.  The mats can be placed horizontally or vertically and will work just as well regardless of how they're laid out.

Great question. You're right, the most striking visual difference between two products is the surface pattern, however, there are other meaningful differences as well. The Waterhog Premier Mats have a 50% thicker face weight - meaning that there is 50% more surface material, which allows these mats to wick more moisture from people's shoes as well as adds to the overall useful life of the product. The Waterhog Premier mats also come in 8 additional colors beyond those offered on the Waterhog Classic mats. Finally, whereas the Waterhog Classic can be customized in 1' increments the Waterhog Premier mats are manufactured only in certain sizes and, although there are longer/larger mats than those listed on this page, the level of customization is not the same.

All mats (regardless of the type, size, or even manufacturer) shrink during the manufacturing process when the surface material is bonded to the backing material.  Shrinkage varies depending on the type of materials used but, on average, these mats shrink from about 5% for larger mats and up to 10% for smaller ones (based on outside edge to outside edge dimensions (ie, including borders)).  Because this is an inexact science we can never precisely say what the final size will be (even two identical mats made of the same material, same size and heated for the same amount of time will have slightly different finished sizes).  Thus, all sizes listed on every product page under both Standard Sizes and Custom Sizes show approximate dimensions.  Regardless, if a mat comes out especially small, we are happy to re-make it but the dimensions will always be slightly smaller than the trade size (aka nominal size).  The only other option is to use a different "pre-shrunk" material, such as the Super Berber Mats, which is cut to size by hand AFTER the surface material is bonded to the backing and then the edging is added afterward. This production process, however, is much more labor-intensive and thus a more expensive option but would achieve any exact size needed