Acclimation
The foundation of a beautiful installation
It is just past five years since I began my regular column here in Coverings, so I would like to say what a pleasure it has been working with the team that puts this great magazine together. I have occasionally seen our readers at trade shows or other industry events and your positive comments have been much appreciated. Thanks very much!
Here in the north, the change of seasons is one of the things that many people enjoy as they marvel at the change in nature, in fashion and in our day-to-day lives. As winter approaches, farmers and gardeners put their fields to rest, we winterize our vehicles and we prepare our homes. For floor coverers, the way we work in very cold or very warm weather is a detail that is often forgotten and, if not handled correctly, can lead to problems.
For work done in occupied space, it’s a matter of getting the material into the space ahead of time so it can acclimate to the site conditions. This is most important when the weather is very cold or very warm. However, on new construction, the heating/ventilation/air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are often not activated at the time finishes are being installed, so the conditions on site can be an issue as well.
A carpet installer I used to know coined the phrase: “Acclimation is the foundation of a beautiful installation.” The shop where we worked kept a lot of the carpet in storage in an unheated garage, so in the winter it was tough to work with if it was installed the same day he picked it up. If you’ve ever handled cold carpet, you know it can be stiff as a board. He appreciated the fact that if he got the material onto the job a day or two ahead of time, it was a lot easier to install.
Acclimation helps flooring products adjust to the temperature and humidity on the job, which can prevent problems with expansion and contraction of materials as they are exposed to changing temperatures. Acclimation is a common practice in the wood and laminate industry, but is often ignored on the resilient or carpet side. He found that carpet that was acclimated to warm conditions in winter months was easier to stretch. Plus, due to the fact that cold carpet tends to “grow” after it gets installed, we found that we had far fewer callbacks for buckling carpet that needed a re-stretch on the work he did. He was willing to take the extra time needed to deliver carpet in advance, because he saw how it made his job easier, improved the quality of the finished product and reduced call-backs.
Getting it right
When working with resilient floors, materials are no less difficult to work with when cold, but they also can react after installation if they are not installed at proper temperature conditions. For example, installing resilient floors that are warm can lead to shrinkage problems later on, and cold materials are harder to work with and may tend to expand when the space goes from cold to warm after installation.
There can also be issues with adhesives and underlayments used for resilient floors. Wood underlayments may tend to expand slightly when they go from cold to warm, or shrink when they go from warm to cool. In either case, this could cause joint telegraphing or worse if flooring material is installed over it using an adhesive. Adhesives don’t react the same way in the cold weather, either. Because of the low humidity, they tend to set up very quickly, so the open times will be much shorter. This could cause the adhesive to skin over if too much is spread at one time.
Two-part reactive adhesives like epoxy and polyurethane take much longer to cure when they are cold, which means more chances of bubbling and a longer time before a floor can be walked on and put into use. On the other hand, these adhesives set up much faster when warm, so care needs to be taken not to spread too much adhesive at one time.
The good news is that a lot of construction people understand that temperature is important for many interior finishes, so temporary HVAC systems are coming into common use on construction sites. The best example I have seen was several years ago on a snowy day in Sault St. Marie, Ont. I was visiting a sheet vinyl floor installation in progress at a hospital and the conditions were nearly perfect for installation, and came from a temporary heating system. So, it can be done.
Hot or cold
As I am writing this, the temperature where I live has started to dip below freezing, so winter acclimation is on my mind. However, if this was early summer (I wish!), I’d be warning you just as strongly about acclimation. I’ve had a lot of experience seeing floors fail when installed in overly warm conditions. In warm temperatures, care needs to be taken because it’s not that the material actually shrinks after installation, but that it stretches during handling if it is warm, or may grow slightly.
Products of particular concern are rectangular products such as wall base, edgings or vinyl plank. These products are easy to stretch during handling by carrying cartons over your shoulder and allowing the box to bend, pulling warm material out of the end of the carton, or stretching the material end-to-end as you are setting it into the adhesive. These actions can stretch the material ever so slightly. Whether the installer stretches it or it has expanded slightly, material installed in this state will look good with nice tight seams until the temperature cools and the material returns to its original size. The gaps that show up when this happens are thought of as shrinkage, but the material is in fact returning to its original size. If you ever notice an installation of vinyl flooring where the floor tile, the reducers or the wall base are gapped, it’s a good bet the job was done in the summer time and the material was not acclimated.
All flooring materials have acclimation recommendations as part of the installation instructions, but these recommendations are often ignored. Following them avoids some of the problems we’ve discussed here, reduces callbacks and eliminates complaints.
Christopher Capobianco is a flooring expert currently working with Forest Hill, Md.-based Spartan Surfaces, a distributor of commercial hard-surface flooring. Chris’s family lineage in floorcovering goes back for generations. His career includes time as a retailer, architectural sales rep, technical support manager, consultant, instructor, columnist and active volunteer in several organizations.