This situation highlights how you can get yourself into trouble without even realizing it. In this case, over 450 yards of vinyl flooring was installed over a gypcrete floor before the heat was turned on in the building. The building was located in a region of the country which gets very cold weather in the winter.

The first and most obvious mistake was installing vinyl in an unheated building. Installing any flooring in an unheated facility in the winter, be it a building or a home, is like playing Russian roulette with all the gun chambers loaded—you don’t stand a chance. In this situation nothing is going to work correctly. The flooring material will not be acclimated therefore, after the heat comes on and it relaxes, the flooring will work to find its way where it wants to go or remembers being when in its original state. This will cause wrinkles, buckles, bubbles, separations, distortions or other physical alterations which will appear sometime after installation.

Prone To Failure

When there is no heat, the adhesive used, when it is glued directly to the substrate, will not cure properly and will be prone to failure. This will cause the floor covering to lift, wrinkle, bubble, buckle, become loose, distort, curl and otherwise react to a compromise in the ability of the adhesive to hold the flooring secure to the substrate.

The substrate itself, in this case gypcrete (but it could be concrete or wood), will “hide” reactions being held up due to the cold. Once things begin to warm and the molecules wake up, the concrete will allow moisture movement out in the form of vapor. Moisture will move in and out of the substrate as equilibrium is trying to be reached. In concrete this can take place as moisture vapor emission; in wood type substrates, as expansion and contraction and moisture migration as the wood releases moisture.

Mold Causes Problems

In this particular case, mold formed beneath the vinyl and discolored it making it necessary to remove it all. Once the vinyl was removed the substrate had to be treated for mold, tested for moisture vapor emission and then treated with a sealer so new flooring material could be re-installed. Needless to say, this preventable situation became very expensive.

The contractor insisted the vinyl be installed before the building was heated. This should immediately cause any dealer or contractor to panic because, inevitably, you are going to lose this roulette game. No flooring manufacturer, and no governing body setting installation standards for any known flooring material, condones the installation of any flooring material without the environmental conditions being as they would when the facility is in use. This means heated and/or air conditioned. The floor covering must be acclimated to the environmentally controlled installation site.

Compromising Conditions

If the facility is not heated and/or air conditioned you should refuse to install the material. You must test the substrate even if the facility is controlled to ensure nothing exists to compromise your installation. If you see a problem bring it to the responsible parties’ attention, put it in writing and refuse to install. If they insist, get a release or put it in writing, signed and dated, that you expect problems because of compromising conditions and they insisted on proceedings against your protests. This is duress. Cover yourself in the event of an installation failure, it works, we’ve had several cases that have proven this.

Know the substrate you are installing over and how it may react with your installation and the material you are installing. If you feel in your gut you may have a problem down the road, chances are you will. Again, say something and put it in writing. If you don’t you are responsible for the failure, whatever it is, because your commencement of the installation is acceptance of the conditions.

Today, you have to be a bit of a scientist to work with the many and varied floor covering materials that exist, the changes in them, where in the world they come from, new advances in technology especially in backings and anything else that may throw you a curve. Pleading ignorance is no excuse for the law or for not knowing and understanding the products for which you are supposed to be the expert. After all, if this is your business and you pass yourself off as an expert simply because you sell the stuff, that’s what the law will recognize you being, and you had better know what you are doing or suffer the consequences.

Don’t get trapped into a situation such as this. If you have questions, ask them up front, voice your concerns or call us. We can definitely help, no matter what the flooring material is. Don’t wait until you have a problem because by that time it will be too late to get out of it without getting hurt.