ASTM Committee F06 on Resilient Floor Coverings member, Dean Craft, a principal with ISE Logik, announces the passage of a new standard guide to evaluate the potential impact of soluble alkali salts in the near surface region of a concrete slab. Craft and the entire F06 team worked for over six years to gain passage of this new standard.

According to the new guide, “there is typically a higher concentration of soluble alkali salts in the surface region of a concrete slab due to the initial bleeding process of a freshly placed concrete slab. If after a resilient floor covering material is installed there is sufficient moisture to place these salts into solution, a potentially damaging, high pH situation can develop beneath the installed material.” 

“For over 22 years, pH testing was a requirement embedded within ASTM F710. However, and still unknown to many, that requirement was removed from F710 in the summer of 2021 and along with it, the procedure of how to conduct pH evaluation before installing resilient flooring,” observed Craft. “This created an information gap between existing project specifications and some product literature whereby projects were requiring pH evaluation, and yet no recognized procedure for how to conduct pH evaluation existed.”  

According to Craft “The popularity of resilient flooring has been growing at a rapid pace, especially on the commercial side, as various sectors are bouncing back after the pandemic: multifamily, hospitality, office space and others. Because of high foot traffic and rolling loads in commercial installations, so much of resilient is glued down to concrete subfloors. We saw it as imperative given the preference for resilient and the demands in these environments (combined with the removal of pH from F710) to provide a document focused on the evaluation of pH that manufacturers and project teams can utilize should they choose to do so as part of the process for the installation of resilient flooring.”

The final vote on this new guide was taken on November 2, and the document should be available for download through astm.org before the end of the year.