Damage to floor covering material can come from any number of sources. The kind of damage we’re talking about here would generally not be manufacturing related, although there can be damage created during manufacture. Most damage related to manufacturing however, whether it be handling or from a major malfunction of part of the manufacturing process, is either not going to get shipped or if it does, the damage would be noticed when the product was unwrapped before it gets installed – hopefully. Blatantly obvious damage is not normally going to get out the door of the manufacturing facility. This is not to say it hasn’t happened. We can take a look at what some of that might be shortly. Damaged flooring material is most often from some type of use, abuse, accident or other incident that occurs at the installation site. The damage could be from an Act of God, such as a major storm or pipes freezing or man made from leaking plumbing, tracked in contamination, installation damage, construction damage or anything that happens after the flooring material is installed even from materials employed to protect the flooring.
All floor covering, soft or hard, can be affected by damage and determining what the cause was, who is to blame and whether or not the damage can be repaired is the crux of our conversation. Much of the damage one will see is going to be related to construction, whether in a new building or a renovation. But, certainly there are other causes. As far as manufacturing damage, it too could be with handling. A hyster pole going through the inside of a roll of carpet would not be uncommon or simply moving the material around and banging it up, will occasionally happen. Remember, we’re talking about damage here not defects.
The first area to look at is handling. Wrestling floor covering products around from a delivery truck to the warehouse to another truck and then to the jobsite can exert a lot of stress on materials not designed to be roughly treated. Carpet can rip, weaken, indent, distort and come apart if not handled properly. Wood, ceramic and laminate can creak, break, indent and chip if thrown around. Every bit of this material is valuable and none of it should subject to “forced attrition” because it was damaged in transit. That being said, if the material is damaged during this stage of a project it can be culled from the job – that’s common sense. Manufacturers will take pains to insure none of the product they just sold and produced, especially if it’s a custom order, is damaged by them. So the damage, initially, and for the most part in this stage of a project, is going to be from their dock door to that of the clients. The more hands the material passes through the greater the chances for damage.
The next stage is during the construction process. In a Utopian world floor covering would be the last product installed. There would be no other trades working on it and virtually no chance for it to be compromised as a result. We know that Utopia is mostly the things that make up dreams and new construction and renovation projects are more nightmarish than dream like. Deadlines have to be met that are often unrealistic, projects get behind, penalties are threatened and every trade is working on top of each other. It gets to be like choreographing and ant colony with everyone on top of each other vying for position while trying to get their part of the project done on time. The things punch lists are made of.
So, the flooring material makes it into the space, hopefully gets installed on substrates in the proper condition to accept it and as soon as it goes down everyone else moves back in. Often it’s going in and other trades are moving in on it. This can cause material to slide in the adhesive, adhesive to get tracked onto the surfaces of the flooring and dirt deposited on it. To protect the material a covering is placed on top of it, hopefully. This can be Kraft paper, Masonite, pressure sensitive clear plastic runners or other materials. If the covering is in less than in perfect shape it can scratch or mar the surface of the flooring. Dirt can get caught and stuck between the edges of hard surface materials. Carpet that is glued to the floor and has plastic non-permeable covering put on it before the glue dries can be discolored. The clear plastic pressure sensitive adhesive runner can transfer adhesive to the surface of carpet that won’t come off. This type of damage necessitates the carpet being replaced because nothing will fix it. Discoloration from color running cannot be reversed and the pressure sensitive adhesive from plastic runners left on too long can’t be removed with anything safe for anyone to be working with in a closed space. The only fix is to replace the carpet in a situation like this. If the carpet happens to be wool and there is uncured adhesive under it when the carpet is covered it can trap the water carrier in the adhesive, which will be absorbed by the wool causing mold and mildew that will rot the carpet. If the woven carpet has a jute back it will be damaged or destroyed. All these things cited have actually happened to clients of ours and the only fix was to replace the flooring material.
Next might be putting up materials or building systems furniture on unprotected flooring material. Again the floor covering, if not protected properly, will be subjected to dragging, placing and positioning these things on top of it. As a result there will be cuts, pulls, scrapes, scratches and cracks that would require replacing the damaged section of flooring material affected. There can also be damage from heavy carts loaded with fixtures and furnishing that cause damage. Let’s not forget other trades working on the flooring material such as a plumber cutting threads in a pipe over unprotected carpet or vinyl resulting in cutting oil stains at the least. Someone may try to blame the material but since it never lies and it will always tell you what happened if you know how to interpret it, the cause can always be found. This is one of the biggest areas of damage to new commercial flooring material, particularly in offices where there is a lot of furniture, walls, fixtures and what not in what we’ll call confined spaces. In wide open areas there may be less damage simply because there is less actual vertically oriented construction activity taking place.
Damage can also result from clean up after the construction process. In one situation a cleaning crew came in to wipe down walls, woodwork, door frames, bathroom floors and stainless steel elevator entry framework. In the process the carpet adjacent to these areas was affected by the cleaning agents. Oxidizers (bleaching agents) actually stripped color out of the carpet. The damage was heaviest outside the entries to the rest rooms when the solution used to mop the floors was transferred to the carpet, bleaching out the color so badly the carpet had to be replaced. Damage to the carpet along walls was caused when the cloth with the cleaning agent came in contact with the carpet surface affecting the color on the yarn tips. In other areas an aerosol cleaner affected the color in the carpet. All of this damage was related to clean up and this was the responsibility of the cleaning firm. Obviously the cleaning agents used were too harsh for the carpet and actually too harsh for the woodwork as well.
Damage from water pipe breaks or severe weather which has damaged a roof or blown through a window opening from inclement weather affecting flooring material when it is installed prior to the windows being installed. Water damage can weaken a carpet or cause a glued down installation to come up off the substrate. This can occur with any type of flooring material. The most forgiving of any flooded flooring material is carpet. It can actually get flooded and be saved by extracting the water and allowing the material to dry out. And actually it may not be affected adversely at all. In several cases of flooding, from a pipe break or a storm, the carpet that got wet was not damaged at all nor was the installation of it compromised. If the carpet is installed with a pad and tackless installation it can be pulled up, dried out, the pad dried out or replaced, the tackless checked for damaged and either salvaged or replaced, the carpet and pad deodorized and disinfected if necessary, depending on the source of the water and then reinstalled. If the water is clean the carpet can usually be saved and very often it is not adversely affected at all. If the water is contaminated the entire installation may have to be scrapped, the affected area decontaminated and all new product installed. Contamination issues when clean water is not involved would have to be determined by an expert in restoration services.
Water damage to vinyl would have to be evaluated on a case by case basis. Water will not damage the vinyl but it can weaken the adhesive causing the vinyl to lift and possibly curl. If that happens everything has to be replaced. Wood and laminate would unquestionably require replacement and it would exhibit the most severe affects from water as it would be distorted, warped or otherwise dimensionally and physically changed and damaged.
Unprotected edges of hard surface flooring can be chipped, gouged, cracked or broken if heavy foot or rolling traffic is allowed over it. This can happen on a construction site when other trades wheel heavy loads of materials over the flooring. It can also happen, for example, in a busy airport being renovated. If the work is done at night and then subject to heavy passenger volume during the day, edges not properly protected can be damaged.
There are all manner of ways floor covering can be damaged before it is even put into use. All parties involved in the construction process need to be made aware of this and necessary precautions taken. These are only some of the things we’ve seen lately that should make you aware of the importance of protecting the floor covering and the installation so it does not become a costly repair item on a punch list. It is much cheaper and easier to protect the installation than to have to replace it later. As for water damage after the fact it can cause heavy damage or none at all other than the material getting wet. This would have to be evaluated by someone who knows what they’re doing. A lot of so called water damaged floor covering has been paid for or replaced by insurance companies that really only needed to be cleaned.
There’s nothing discussed here that LGM can’t help you with. If you have a question or need professional assistance all you have to do is call.
Author – Lewis G. Migliore – The Commercial Flooring Report
LGM and Associates – The Floorcovering Experts