let me wager and say barry is not going to like it. let me know if I end up being right. ok here is the deal as I see. your only getting most of the stretch out of a 3-4 foot span between the feet and the head of the unit. yeah I hear the it pulls from the center and all that jazz IMO that would help. but even using a regular power stretcher the head is still stretching carpet on either side of the head up to 3 feet out on each side, so a span of nearly 6 feet. and from looking at the unit you can see where the feet wrinkle the carpet behind the unit. minimum stretch on a carpet is supposed to be something like 1% or a little over an inch for a 12 foot room. Barry IIRC said carpet can be stretched up to 17%. so with this unit your are counting on being able to put a temporary extra stretch on the carpet in the span and then the carpet relaxes and the stretch ends up relaxing across the entire span of the room. would it work yeah just like putting a dead man behind a power stretcher ie a tack stripped board that someone stands while the foot of the power stretcher is against, but in that case your normally putting the stretch over a much larger span of the carpet. I would also worry about an idiot ripping the carpet because your putting alot of pressure behind the feet. I have ripped too many carpets to count trying to get that last little bit of stretch with my knee kicker.
Your right Steve, stretcher heads can stretch up to 3 feet out on each side, but it is not an even strech. Imagine a row boat moving through the water and how the ripples move outward in a V pattern, it's the same idea on a stretch that far from the head. The maximum force is directly behind the head, in the center. If the stretcher was only stretching in the localized 3 feet in between the head and feet, there would be a solid ripple behind the feet. The wrinkles you see behind the feet are from the carpet stretching in front of the feet, but the stretch moving up through the center is much more substantial. Notice in the video how the kicker can't even get a ripple in the 12 X 16 test floor.
This works nothing like a dead man. A dead man works on the same 2 dimesional principles as the carpet poles, push from point A to point B. Knee kickers do rip carpets. There is a sudden impact to the carpet like a car wreck. Who hasn't ripped a carpet in the past with a kicker? In eight years of regular use the triFORCE as ripped ZERO carpets on installs or restretches and we have had ZERO recalls. It does not rip carpets due to the controlled forward motion of the power stretcher. One of the comments we hear most often is, "Why would I want to keep using a knee kicker when there is a better option? The results of eight years prove this to be a truly revolutionary tool, but the hardest part is setting aside what we know now about installation and learning something new. Thank you for your input Steve and I hope this helps explain the tool better. Contact me if you have any questions or would like to discuss it in greater detail.
