Page 4 - 2018-10-CFR Volume 121 - It's Not Always Moisture - October 2018

Flat and Level: We hear about the slab having to October 2018
be flat and level and it should be but the more im-
portant of the two is that the slab be flat. With so
much hard surface flooring being installed it’s more
important that the slab be flat which will be more
accommodating for this type of flooring material.
The flooring material must conform to the slab and
it will if the slab is flat. This prevents issues with
the flooring material itself being flat and any un-flat
areas telegraphing through the face. Level then
becomes less of an issue. A slab being flat is far
better than a slab running off level and it won’t pre-
sent problems with the flooring installation or the
materials performance.

Clean: This may sound odd, but the substrate
must be clean of any compromising conditions.
This includes dry wall dust, dirt, construction de-
bris, old adhesive, paint, oil, grease and anything
you can see that will interfere with the flooring
sticking to the substrate.

So, if you see something on the concrete you have
to remove it so it won’t interfere with your installa-
tion. This may require grinding it off or going fur-
ther with reprofiling the substrate like bead blasting
it. One thing you don’t want to do is use chemicals
to remove anything as this will add an element to
the equation that most certainly will create havoc
with the new flooring. But you may not always be
able to see what’s been absorbed by the concrete,
be it a new or old slab, that can migrate up to the
surface at a future time and ruin the installation or
the material. When this happens, guess what?
Yup; the installer gets blamed for the phantom
agent that caused part or all of the installation to
fail.

4 Commercial Flooring Report