Page 1 - 2018-08-CFR Volume 119 - How Can You See What You Can’t See - The Luxury Vinyl Tile And Plank Dilemma

The onslaught of luxury vinyl plank (LVP) and tile (LVT) entering the
commercial market is overwhelming. The products are being in-
stalled in hospitals, hotels, offices, apartment complexes and any-
where commercial flooring is used. These products have literally
turned the industry upside down and there’s no slowdown in sight.
However with them has come an epidemic in the flooring industry
and its costing flooring contractors, dealers and end users millions of
dollars in losses due to the replacement of luxury vinyl planks and
tiles failing to perform as expected and distorting on the floor. We
are being inundated with this dilemma on a daily basis. The crisis,
and it is a crisis, is being blamed on everything from installation, ad-
hesives, the sun, unlevel substrates, improper fitting into a space,
moisture, HVAC operation, old adhesive residue, installation over
existing flooring and anything else you can think of to throw into the
pot when almost none of this is the cause of the failures. The prod-
ucts themselves are the problem and in many cases the types of un-
derlayment being used exacerbates the failures. I’m going to point out and define all of this so you’ll
understand that the excuses you hear when this type of flooring fails are just that, excuses.
Complicating matters is that very few people know anything about these products, the problems occur-
ring and what’s going on even though they may profess to. I have worked with vinyl flooring since 1971
when luxury vinyl flooring tiles from Amtico, Nafco and a few others were a high quality product that you
could virtually shoot bullets at. Many of the products flooding the market today are cheap, low quality
materials loaded with recycled content. Much of the problem is the market itself. LVP and LVT in vari-
ous forms are the hottest products in the flooring market. Everyone wants them and everyone wants a
piece of the action. And that being the case the battle to eke out a piece of the business is driven by
price. As so often happens in the flooring industry a good product is introduced, becomes popular,
sales take off and a race to the bottom of the price pyramid takes place. Along with that comes cheaper
products of lower quality and thus problems. When it comes to problems with today’s vinyl flooring
products it’s the Pogo cartoon saying, “we have met the enemy and he is us.” I’m going to boldly say
that no one knows more about these issues and this product than us. I know because the number of
cases we’ve gotten involved in where a local guy has done an inspection and misses the facts because
they aren’t even aware of what they’re seeing. I’m going to help you all with that in this issue.

1 Commercial Flooring Report August 2018