And we're back in the studio. Why?
Because you loved our last video on problems
that you can find with SPC flooring.
Well, we're back today with Grant Neve from Wanabiwood looking at
LVT.
Always good to be back in Cape Town looking at problems once again.
But let's be assured that this is not an everyday occurrence.
But we're here to make sure it doesn't become one.
Yeah.
These are problems
we find across multiple suppliers, multiple retailers, installers.
These are just generic problems that we encounter.
And we just want to bring them to your attention.
These are simple mistakes that can be avoided.
I think we've
with the SPC video that we did earlier this year,
if you follow the rulebook we're not going to get problems.
But it's when you follow, when you decide to go off that that tract
and break the rulebook,
then we're back to square one and we get the problems
like you can see behind us now.
Well, this is absolutely just terrible.
I can imagine the installer, the retailer, the homeowner, everybody's crying
because this floor can't be saved.
And what's going on here?
Well, you know, obviously, they thought it was child's
play by the fact that this toys in the background.
But my first impression on
that would be moisture, which is the biggest enemy of any LVT.
And it's not the LVT that's got the problem with the moisture.
It's actually the adhesive that's below it that breaks down and causes the problem.
Yeah. Yeah.
So obviously, this is trying to vent or what is actually causing
those headers to peak?
Well, I think from my opinion, looking at this
before, we've actually pulled a board up, I would suggest that the moisture
in this particular installation was very high.
The adhesive is emulsified below the floor.
The floor wants to expand it and it just just pops up like that.
Yeah.
So the adhesive has lost its ability to hold the plank in place,
and it's just releasing and those there's planks.
So they're expanding it slightly or they just venting?
Well, in my opinion, they expand, but they can't expand over the full length.
So then they pop up.
Yeah, that's that's what I would call you call it venting.
I call it tomato, you call it tomato.
But whatever is exactly the same principle.
The glue can physically not hold the natural expansion
and contraction of the board and therefore we get these problems.
Yeah.
I've also seen a very similar result when people have been putting product down
and they haven't actually acclimated the product correctly
and it's actually been warming up in the environment.
You start in the morning and then during the day the venue gets warmer
and these planks are actually expanding while that glue is still wet.
Exactly.
And I've had planks that
I've actually shoved right past each other by up to two millimeters,
but it's two on each plank.
So four millimeters in total. Exactly.
It looks horrendous.
And because your expansion is greater
over the longer length of the plank, that's we always see the peeking on the end joints,
very seldom see it on the on the long joints.
But I have seen it as well. Yeah.
So I think like we've got quite a few photographs to go to review here today.
But I think one of the predominant issues is moisture.
Without a doubt.
And, you know, we we stress time and time and time again,
if you cannot rule that moisture in a ground floor slab,
then unfortunately you need to install a moisture barrier.
Absolutely.
But a lot of the time it's out of the costing.
So people are always very competitive.
A lot of installers don't even have a moisture barrier and they take chances.
Exactly.
And unfortunately,
90% of the time you will get away with it, but it won't be the bedroom
that if it fails, it'll always be that big, big job.
And that can actually break the companies.
It breaks the companies, it breaks installers.
And then unfortunately, they go and they close down
the name that they had yesterday and the new name tomorrow.
And who's the who?
Who loses the consumer? Exactly.
And it's just follow a simple step.
If you don't want to put the moisture barrier
on your full body of the quotes, put it, there is a recommendation
or as an approved guideline from the manufacturer
that we seriously, seriously recommend a moisture barrier on a ground floor slab.
Put it is a separate item.
But also put there
that disclaimer to say that if you do not fit this moisture barrier,
there could be a potential problem going forward
that is not covered by the warranty.
That's a really cool idea.
And, you know, just while we're talking about moisture, when the guys are
checking for a moisture barrier for moisture in the slab
with noninvasive moisture meters, that is giving you
an indicative reading of the slab for the top 20, 25 millimeters.
It's not giving you an idea of what is actually down at like 80 mm, 100 mm.
And we need to be careful because a lot of the time,
especially in South Africa, we have our open, lovely, hot sunny venues
and the surface because of the temperature and the air flow, the surface is dry
and might be within spec, but there's a lot more moisture further down so.
Ultimately my number one recommendation is that you actually drill two holes
and you get the moisture meter with the two isolated probes and you check
at least 80 mil down because I know that when you encapsulate
or you put a moisture barrier on top of that slab,
if there is any moisture
below it's actually going to equalize across the entire volume
and that moisture is going to come up and impact your adhesive.
I think yeah I couldn't agree with you more and that is the problem is have
you got your moisture meter?
It's it's the most basic of tools to go and test the flow with that said,
sometimes some even the Romus meters, the Tramex are not that accurate
on the surfaces.
As Barry was saying if you've got an open slab, sometimes you can't detect moisture.
If that slab has been open for six months, a year or newbuild,
you won't detect the moisture because it's evaporating into the atmosphere.
It's only when you seal that moisture in with the vinyl that you get a problem.
And that's why I like to put a moisture barrier down as a standard.
Is your safeguard.
It safeguards the client's investment.
It safeguards your reputation.
100%.
You know, for the sake of I don't know offhand what the moisture barriers are.
R50, R60 a square meter plus minus.
Yeah, plus labour.
You know, it's a good it's a good safeguard
and it can cost you far more when the job goes wrong than that
R50-R60 in the first instance.
I know, but the guys struggle when it's a price, you know,
a slippery slope to the bottom when it comes to price in these projects.
But every man or installer to their own, just understand
your installs are at risk.
Let's get into the next photograph. Yeah, let's go
So we're looking at our next image where you can see there's
a moisture reading a 5.1% on the Romus.
And what is actually what are the symptoms on this site?
Again we had peaking of the joints? Yeah.
So I did do a moisture test on top.
And normally I can see if it's at three, 3.5 on top of the vinyl,
I know I'm going to find something lying underneath.
Yeah.
I just want to add,
just like put a proviso in, and obviously it's not giving you a moisture reading.
It's giving you a moisture indication and that you use
as your indicator to explore further.
Exactly.
So we pulled the floor up and as you can see,
in this particular instance, there was also a lack of adhesive use,
which didn't really contributed to the problem much.
But yeah, we can see actually no, it did contribute a hell of a lot to the problem.
Totally.
So we put the moisture, we
put the boot up, which obviously came away very, very easily.
There was no transfer from the floor to the back of the board.
And when I put the moisture meter down, you can see at 5.1 is just way,
way out of specification.
There is no way an adhesive is going to work in that situation
because we have to understand that most adhesives are acrylic water
based products, they are not waterproof adhesives, although the LVT itself
shouldn't be affected by the moisture.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think the number one rule that you would use here is that, you know,
if you're doing 100 square meters and using the right notch trowel,
there will be a specific volume of glue that you should be using for that area.
And if your installers are coming back with excess glue left over,
you know that you haven't used the right volume, manage your trowels,
make sure that not worn out and make sure that you depositing
the correct volumes of drew per square meter over one contract into the next.
This is a key issue that we find all too often.
Yeah.
I think the biggest thing is a trowel is going to cost you R120, R150 at a time.
Yeah.
But if you let it wear out then it's going to cost you a lot more.
So rather probably every thousand square meters plus minus,
I would replace the trowel without a doubt, or check the notches at the very least,
and don't go there with the hacksaw and recut them.
That's not the correct way. Doesn't work. It doesn't work.
I understand we're trying to save bucks, but that's going to cost you pretty penny.
And we know we can see farther notches, on all the trowel marks left on the floor.
As a typical example here, we can see that the notch rate was correct.
We can see that there was a good spread.
But unfortunately, once again, moisture had a causes installation to fail.
So we can see from this picture, although the notches are correct,
that there's issues there
where moisture is eaten into the adhesive that's called emulsification.
And then we've had a problem with the bond to the back of the product.
Yeah, totally.
Well,
here's an image where there is actually like, I don't know,
what's that 5%, 3% adhesive on the back of the plank.
I think they have a trowel perhaps. Perhaps they didn't have a trowel.
Maybe it was a piece of Berber point
or they were pushing the plank into dry adhesive.
They weren't managing the flash off time.
So when we go out and look at the installation
and we fail it due to the installer, we can see here clearly that
there has been no transfer.
And no transfer means either the notch was too small.
As Barry's just pointed out the adhesive.
It flashed over to too much
or it wasn't even rollered and just pounding with the rubber mallet.
You can see a nice splodge on the right side there where maybe
they hit it with the rubber mallet rather than the roller.
So, yeah, there was definitely no transfer on this particular product.
I think what we need to pay attention to a lot more often
is that when we are installing these LVTs, we need to make sure that the glue
is at the right flash off point when we're actually bedding it in.
All too often I visit job sites for various reasons, and I see that
these guys are applying or spreading out way too much adhesive for the timeline
on when they're actually going to get to that stage of the installation.
And they're not rollering the floor very soon thereafter.
Sometimes they they don't even have a roller on site.
They say, No, I will come back tomorrow That's way too late.
You got to be rolling that floor while that adhesive is still receptive.
And that's within that very narrow window.
So you are installing an area, you rollering an area,
you install another area, roller another area.
I couldn't agree with you more.
And we see it more and more often.
It's that need to get the job done quickly.
So they think, oh, let's bring it
spread a bigger area, then we better more floor more quickly.
But it doesn't work like that.
Every adhesive manufacturer has got an open time.
Some basically laying straight away on the wet sets.
Yeah.
And then you've got other products that you need an open time of maybe ten,
15, 20 minutes, depending on the atmospheric conditions.
It could be too hot, it could be too cold, it could be very humid.
They will all affect the flash off period of all the adhesives.
We did that other video with Pekay.
We had the Tumi Touch Test and that's when she was
demonstrating that she actually touches the adhesive.
And when it gets the right tackiness, she knows it's receptive
for the LVT, it's a very narrow window that the
the adhesive will receive that plank appropriately.
And that's the bond that holds everything together.
So please pay attention, guys.
I think the touch test is easily described as looking for legs, basically.
So when you put your finger into the adhesive,
if you pull it up
and you've got stringy parts of the adhesive left, as we call it, legs,
then that's probably the right time to lay in,
if it's a flash off product.
So here's our next image
where, wow, the plank that you pulled up actually pulled up the screed with it.
Exactly.
And there's several reasons for being able to pull the screed away.
Obviously, the obvious one is primer or bonding liquid or whatever
they choose to use. Which is absolutely essential in ensuring that your screed is
has the strongest mechanical lock to whatever your original substrate is.
And if you're not prepping that substrate appropriately,
in clearing off contaminants or grinding back
debris or old adhesive, this is exactly what happens.
Exactly.
It's a little bit off the subject that you're bonding liquid or primer,
not only creates a bond between the screed in the floor,
allows the screed to flow better as well.
Your flow rate will be extended if you do have a primer
it stops the water from your screed soaking into the subfloor as well,
which we can see by little tiny air bubbles.
We know if it's not if they use primer or bonding liquid,
but in this case as well, that could have been
a case of over wetting of the screed.
So your solids have sunk
because if you look at the picture, that is very, very fine on the top.
And I suspect that the solids had sunk also given a very, very fine
powdery mixture on the top?
So obviously from the photograph, we can see so much.
But what we've also encountered is where people are using
too much liquid in their self levelling compound mixture.
And this is where you actually have
splitting of the various compounds and then this can occur as well.
Obviously, every site is different and this is where we really dive
deep on a physical job site or physical inspection
to see the actual grains of products and how they are potentially separated.
Look, I think we've obviously gone off a little bit
the subject of how LVTs are working and how they're not
and what they're failing, but it's a whole contributing factor.
So just because the it's failed, it doesn't mean to say is a product failure.
It's could be the screed.
It could be the adhesive, it could be the bonding liquid, it could be moisture.
It's everything that goes below the floor.
So when we try and do an inspection,
we try and insist that we've got the adhesive guy there,
we got the screed guy there
because the responsibility
for these things shouldn't just fall on the importer of the vinyl,
because there's several key elements that go into the whole installation process.
Absolutely.
I find it's quite often that a lot of the product
that's been brought into the South African market or any market, it's
quite well established and it has a reputation as such.
And generally the products are really good.
And what we find is that the installers don't necessarily understand
the layered process of the substrate assessment,
preparation, and then the application of the products
leading up to the final LVT and that's where we find the majority of failures.
It's very it's not very often that I actually find that
we've got a product problem with LVT. Exactly and I think most of the importers,
reputable importers in the country will back us up on this statement
that it is probably 99% of the time is not product failure,
it's what's gone before it.
And in many, many, many cases.
All right.
Here's another photograph where we're seeing
a lot of gapping happening on the headers where the planks are pulling apart.
So basically because we have vinyl,
which as we mentioned earlier, is thermo responsive.
If you don't control that job site when you are busy installing the stuff
that the planks are going to be moving in the wet
adhesive and that compromises that glue bond.
So what happens is that we need to control, acclimate and control
the job site during the time that we're installing it
and for the time that adhesive needs to get to 100% full strength.
So the full curing time So if we've got sun or a heat source
bearing down on the floor like a north facing home and now the sun is
pouring in through a window or whatever,
that is going to have a little hot spot
and that hot spot is going to cause the planks to grow because it causing it
to impede the adhesive strength which will display at a later date.
It could display as slightly pushing headers
or it can also display as little contracting where the head is pull apart.
What we need to do here is we need to brown
paper up or block that sunlight from hitting the floor.
The entire floor must be as even a temperature as possible
and hopefully you're acclimating your product on site for 48 hours beforehand
because otherwise it's also moving just because it's
trying to acclimate to the new venue site.
It's and you can just see it running out as you do in the installation.
As the floor gets hotter and hotter, if it hasn't been acclimatized,
you end up with massive problems.
Not only that if you spread glue and you've got direct
sunlight on it, that glue is going to flash in an instant.
So you've also got problems.
Site control is like
it's an opportunity to show that you're an absolute professional. Go and
get some brown paper like branded up with your your business logo or something.
Really take it as an opportunity take it as an opportunity to upsell
when you are presenting your product
and when you are mentioning this to your client.
Again, the other installer didn't mention this.
Ohhhhhh.
You're a professional, aren't you?
I think we need to cut to the chase and let's just back up the basics.
Rule number one is a moisture barrier.
Rule number two is a good quality screed. Rule number three, correct
notch on the trowel.
Rule number four sites acclimation and making sure
that you are preventing any hot spots hitting the floor while you install.
This is absolutely mission critical.
And if you have any doubt about whether the substrate
is 100% dry and within spec
put a probe moisture meter
down like really just double check your all your site conditions
because moisture is a real LVT killer. And probably the most important thing is
roller roller roller. Roller at the right time
and period. And finally subscribe!
Hit the bell, you know what you need to do.
Thank you Grant.
Thank you.
So that's my pleasure, buddy.
Always a pleasure. Thank you. Definitely.