Page 1 - 2018-06-CFR Volume 117 - You Can't Be Serious - June 2018

It shouldn’t, but more often lately it amazes me at how ridiculous and downright stu-
pid the comments are regarding issues with flooring and installation failures or con-
cerns when the obvious is staring one in the face. When looking at major commer-
cial flooring failures and issues you have to determine what went wrong and why,
who or what is at fault, the decisions made by people leading up to the concern to
do or not do something and how to fix or resolve the issue. Is the installation faulty
for some reason, is the product defective and why, is there an environmental issue
or was a decision made to use a product that wouldn’t work. This last comment may have been influ-
enced by someone selling a product they touted as being the best product on the market for a particular
application when in fact it turned out to be the cause of the failure. I’ll add that everything you read in
this newsletter is an actual case we’ve worked on.
So let’s look at some of the issues being alluded to above.
The installation of an imported flat weave carpet tile was being complained about by the end user be-
cause every tile of one color was lifting on two sides. The installation firm came back to address the
issue as the manufacturer told them by using a more aggressive adhesive and alternating the direction
of the carpet tiles. That suggested corrective measure was undertaken to no avail. The carpet tiles still
lifted despite the process employed to fix them. Another color of the same carpet tile product, installed
by the same flooring contractor in the same way on the same job as a design element, was flat to the
floor. No lifting of any kind and they looked perfect. Let’s add also that there were other carpet tiles
from another manufacturer installed on the same substrates by the same firm with an adhesive that
when checked was less tenacious than the adhesive used for the flat weave tile and those tiles were
also flat as could be. This tells us a few things. This particular flat weave tile product is capable of be-
ing installed and staying flat because one of them on the job is doing so. That is proven by the fact that
a different color of the exact same product and style shows no lifting at all. The carpet tile of another
manufacturer installed by the same firm and installers at the same location, on the same substrate, ad-
jacent to the lifting tiles is also flat. The adhesive used for the flat weave is more aggressive pressure
sensitive adhesive and the one for the other manufacturer’s carpet tile not as much yet that carpet tile is
flat. The areas of the flat weave carpet tile that were fixed used a more aggressive pressure sensitive
adhesive that did nothing to correct the lifting of the carpet tile so we know it’s not the adhesives fault.
And by the way, adhesive will not correct a lift in a carpet tile or any flooring material for that matter – a
topic for another newsletter.

1 Commercial Flooring Report June 2018