Vinyl plank flooring material has become very popular of late, and with this popularity comes an increased use in both residential and commercial applications.
Back in October, the Starnet Worldwide Commercial Flooring Partnership held its annual fall membership meeting at the Barton Creek Resort & Spa in Austin, Texas. Starnet is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and the fun continued for three full days at Barton Creek.
I was recently asked what my greatest disappointment in the resilient installation field has been in the past 45 years. That’s easy: fast-track construction. I was always trained to spend the time necessary to do what it takes to make a satisfactory job for all parties involved from the manufacturer to the end-user; “fast” shouldn’t trump all other aspects of the equation.
I recently attended a meeting with a number of leaders in LVT manufacturing. One attendee referred to his product as “a luxury flooring system featuring vinyl chemistry technology.”That’s ingenious, and a pretty accurate definition of pure LVT.
The heat-welding process arrived in North America in the late 1980s, a technique developed to ensure seam integrity, produce an aseptic-free seam and ride the move from felt-backed to vinyl-backed materials. In my travels looking at commercial resilient concerns, I am constantly encountering failures with the heat-weld process. After looking at many of these failures I have developed, in no particular order, a list of THE MOST COMMON.