Category: Commercial Flooring Report

 Volume: 41 |  Issue: 1 |  Download

Our guest contributor this month is Mr. Timothy Vander Heiden J.D. He is currently CEO of SafePath Products and Van Duerr Industries with over 16 years experience in the industry of marketing and manufacturing products for the ADA compliance and specializes in green technology for the architectural market place. The information shared in his article is likely not common knowledge to most of you. We appreciate the opportunity to bring this information to light for you.

 Volume: 40 |  Issue: 1 |  Download

In light of past fire related tragedies nationwide, we believe flammability characteristics are extremely important and pertinent issues of discussion for floor covering materials. The lab we work with has seen or overseen about 100,000 flammability tests conducted over the last 22 years and makes us recognize and realize more every day, the importance of burn rates, smoke generation, and flame propagation of floor covering products. Flammability research identified two possible ways in which carpet might become involved in a fire situation.

 Volume: 39 |  Issue: 1 |  Download

Successfully installing any type of floor covering material or floor preparation treatments such as leveling and smoothing compounds is challenging enough without impeding their effectiveness with bond inhibiting compounds applied to the surface of the slab.

 Volume: 38 |  Issue: 1 |  Download

When ceramic tile or stone tile fails, it doesn't matter whose fault it is, everyone ends up paying — either in money, time or reputation. Typically, ceramic tile and stone failures are a result of not one deficiency, but multiple issues. As an expert consultant I investigate ceramic tile and stone installation failures all over the country, and have for many years.

 Volume: 37 |  Issue: 1 |  Download

This article is by Lee Phillips who is the lab manager for Professional Testing Laboratories, the largest and most technologically advanced independent flooring testing lab in the flooring industry. PTL not only tests every type of flooring material and ancillary products but also does the testing for vacuum cleaners, cleaning agents and cleaning systems as well as other products. Lee works with manufacturers and a variety of clients and deals with all types of issues from testing new technologies to addressing product performance concerns from the field.

 Volume: 36 |  Issue: 1 |  Download

Essentially every manufacturer that participates in the commercial carpet market has at least one modular carpet — also known as carpet tile – product in their offering. Each of these manufacturers has discovered (sometimes painfully) that modular carpet — if it is to be successful – is not simply broadloom carpet cut into pieces but rather must be engineered literally from the floor up to be a modular product.

 Volume: 35 |  Issue: 1 |  Download

Not to belabor the point but there's more information I want to share with you regarding substrate issues particularly the condition of concrete and especially cracking. Cracking in concrete is inevitable. It's been said that with every truck load of concrete four cracks arrive with it. Unless there is control joints that allow for concrete slab movement the cracks will occur in a random fashion.

 Volume: 34 |  Issue: 1 |  Download

We've had several calls and emails over the last two months regarding the use of solvents to remove old adhesive, particularly the black asphaltic cut back type, used for old vinyl asbestos tiles. These tiles are present in many older buildings, many of them schools. When asbestos abatement initiatives are undertaken in these buildings, one of the materials removed and abated are the vinyl asbestos tiles and the cut back adhesive used to install them.

 Volume: 33 |  Issue: 1 |  Download

Color is arguably the most important part of a carpet. It certainly is the most important factor a designer looks at when trying to assemble the interior furnishings of a commercial space. It's also the first part of the carpet anyone sees when entering a space reflecting the first impression. So when something's wrong that affects the color it will generate an immediate response.

 Volume: 32 |  Issue: 1 |  Download

Each year approximately 5 billion pounds of old carpet is removed from residential and commercial buildings and sent to landfills across the United States. This disposal of carpet contributes to the loss of landfill space, as well as the loss of valuable natural resources for ours and future generations.

 Volume: 31 |  Issue: 1 |  Download

This subject may seem absurd to some people, it certainly has garnered responses of "you're nuts" when being brought up as a cause for flooring material and installation failures, but rest assured, it is a legitimate issue. It becomes a bigger issue when you consider the green movement and it's implications on start up of HVAC systems in new buildings. We've only seen the tip of the iceberg, in my opinion, on this issue.

 Volume: 30 |  Issue: 1 |  Download

For this issue we've asked Dean Thompson, President of the Resilient Floor Covering Institute, to share with you the new Sustainability Standard for Resilient Flooring. The relevance of this issue to the "greening" of flooring products is something anyone involved in resilient flooring needs to know. Resilient flooring is one of the bright spots in the flooring industry. It is used extensively in hospitals, health care and schools which is still a lively market. We'll also share with you the EnviroStix installation system developed for resilient flooring and hard backed carpet tile products. The significance of this installation system is that it can eliminate the concerns for installing hard backed products on moisture sensitive floors that are failing at an epidemic rate.