Carpet buckling.....

[Jim Martin]

5 year old up graded nylon.....been cleaning this house for about 4 years..at least 2 times a year...not one of my favorite clients but he pays my bills..so what ever.....he tells me today that he has had to have the carpet restricted twice now...because of humps that show up now and then....It never buckles when I clean it....always have to RX it because it is usually pretty crushed down and traffic lanes are normally pretty pronounced....carpet always come out looking good when I am done and there is never a single ripple in it....the guy that restricted it says it is because I am over wetting it...in almost 8.5 years I have never over wet a carpet..( except for that 150 gallon fish tank episode...but thats different ).......personally I think it is a bad install....he showed me how much they had to cut off after restricting it and it was about an inch and a half....every time I have use the RX on this the carpet has never walk with me..it has always seemed to stay in place...do you think it is a bad install or am I missing something else...

 

[sweendogg]

Jim, with todays action back carpets, the stability of the stretch is going to be dependent on the quality of the latex in the carpet and mostly the number of picks in the backing. In other words how dense is the backing. A high pick carpet backing 8 or more will hold a stretch for a good long time under moderate traffic.

A low pick back say 5 pick which is standard builder grade is not going to hold a stretch for long at all. We have a room like you decribed that has a cheaper piece stretched in at a lounge area in the local university. We have restretched it three times. Each time getting between 2 and 3 inches out of it. And we stretched it very tight the first time. But pushing furniture across it all the time coupled with foot traffic simply stretched out the carpet.

Here a few other things to consider.. how hot does the customer keep his/her home. How often do they move furniture around and are the just pushing it across the carpet.. Does the customer use a walker or wheel chair. We have more restretches because of the these three things than cleaning could ever come close to. 9/10 times cleaning will expose a loose carpet... but almost never the actuel cause. Its either installation, poor reinstallation, or what I stated in the questions above. or combo.. but no I highly doubt your fault.

 

[sweendogg]

And P.S. I could go into most homes and stretch out another 2 inches of carpet. We rarely find installers who will put the correct tension on the carpet. While CRI sucks in some areas, their carpet installation standards are pretty good. With a required stretch of 1 to 1.5% for tufted broadloom carpet... in 12 feet that is 2 inches.

 

[Shane T]

Have the buckles occurred in the same basic location each time? If so I don't think it has been stretched right from the start or since. Depending on the room size 1.5" isn't a lot.

 

[Jim Martin]

all carpet is up stairs....the furniture has been in the same place since the first day I set foot in that house....it is always pretty warm up there....the a/c pretty much concentrates to the lower floor and all the heat rises up....and never really seems to cool the second floor like the first floor....no wheel chair or things like that...from what I seen on the backing it did not look dense at all.......room is pretty big with a small angled hall that feeds a closet on both side and leads into a master bath....the other room was a small 10X10 area...bed...dresser and a few other things thrown in there.....not sure if they has been stretched in the same areas or not...........

 

[ronbeatty]

Jim, I have to agree with Dave, I have had the same thing with a couple homes that we do.

 

[Mark Imbesi]

...

 

[Jim Martin]

it is just like the first picture with the well used tape measure on it..........

 

[Mark Imbesi]

...

 

[Goomer]

So how many "picks" in the first "pic", and how many "picks" in the second "pic"?

 

[Lee Stockwell]

8 & 12 it seems.

 

[Shane T]

Jim, with todays action back carpets, the stability of the stretch is going to be dependent on the quality of the latex in the carpet and mostly the number of picks in the backing. In other words how dense is the backing. A high pick carpet backing 8 or more will hold a stretch for a good long time under moderate traffic.

A low pick back say 5 pick which is standard builder grade is not going to hold a stretch for long at all. We have a room like you decribed that has a cheaper piece stretched in at a lounge area in the local university. We have restretched it three times. Each time getting between 2 and 3 inches out of it. And we stretched it very tight the first time. But pushing furniture across it all the time coupled with foot traffic simply stretched out the carpet.

Here a few other things to consider.. how hot does the customer keep his/her home. How often do they move furniture around and are the just pushing it across the carpet.. Does the customer use a walker or wheel chair. We have more restretches because of the these three things than cleaning could ever come close to. 9/10 times cleaning will expose a loose carpet... but almost never the actuel cause. Its either installation, poor reinstallation, or what I stated in the questions above. or combo.. but no I highly doubt your fault.

Good information, thanks for sharing.

 

[Goomer]

8 & 12 it seems.

So the number refers to number of picks per inch?

 

[Jay D]

kicker install, kicker restretch, and then powerstrecthed restrecth? just guessing.each would yield 1-2" strecth each time.

 

[Mark Imbesi]

...

 

[Jim Martin]

[quote="Lee Stockwell":2l2l9ybl]8 & 12 it seems.

...it seems Lee's eyesight has held up throughout the years....[/quote:2l2l9ybl]

apparently better then your tape measure.........

 

[John Buxton]

You did nothing wrong. And the carpet mills wonder why people are moving to no maintenance flooring.

 

[TimP]

I agree with what David is saying.

But also to add, some carpet companies buy seconds on purpose and sell them as 1st quality. And that could be a factor for having this happen so often. Moving heavy furniture by dragging could cause the problem.

My first thought was that the power stretching of the carpet. Few installers will do a proper power stretch if they even do it at all because it requires extra work to make sure the tack strip is down adequately to hold the carpet for the stretch. Jobs that I have put in personally and power stretched where I have also cleaned, don't have wrinkles even through many were builder grade. It takes so much time to get the strip in right to hold a good stretch that for the going rate to put carpet in you lose your butt in wages.

But what I said doesn't mean that the backing isn't swelling due to the above reasons both David and I mentioned.

I'm sure you know for a fact after schooling that getting carpet wet doesn't create permanent swelling of the backing. The latex if it were to get excessively over wetted it could delaminate and be problematic were it's hooked to the tack strip, but I seriously doubt that's happening. If it were you'd probably see the carpet pull away from the strip and leave a gap, especially if it had a proper stretch.

 

[Mark Imbesi]

...

 

[Jim Martin]

what do you mean nothing wrong........it is so crinkled up....everything you measure is going to be a quarter inch short.....

 

[Becker]

is it possible to over wet things in AZ?

 

[Jim Martin]

is it possible to over wet things in AZ?

you should of seen the 150 gallon fish tank episode......

 

[alazo1]

Was the problem just in that big room?. It would seem larger rooms are harder to stretch / install properly.

Albert

 

[sweendogg]

Actuelly you are couting the wrong direction.. That would be a five pick and an 11 pick as I described above... (good pics Mark! and my tape measure looks the same.. see if any of these yahoo's tape measure looks as good after so many installs!)

 

[Mark Imbesi]

...

 

[Joel D]

Just clean a scrap piece of carpet in your garage or whatever at your normal pressure and check the backing. I do a lot of restretches and many have been cleaned by one particular cleaning company. A lot are from people who clean it themselves. You can always tell by the delamination and just general weak backing that acts and bends more lke a rag than a carpet.

 

[sweendogg]

Actuelly you are couting the wrong direction.. That would be a five pick and an 11 pick as I described above...

Not "picking" a fight (pun intended...was that funny Crowley?), but I was under the impression the pick was the number of weft (horizontal (directional...up and down sweep)) yarns (rows) in an inch? The warp being your vertical or side to side stitch and not counted? This crap's always been confusing to me....

From the CFI installation study guide
The "pick" of the backing is described as the number of weft (widthwise) yarns in one-inch that are shuttled across the warp (lengthwise) yarns that indicates the closeness of the length weaves. A larger pick number & a closer weave = a backing of higher quality. Example: 5 pick backing = larger areas in backing that allow the "fillers" to fall through 12 pick backing = smaller areas that keep the fillers and backing intact

So you may be right.

however, if we are getting very technical.. we shouldn't be useing the word pick at all as that really is reserved for woven carpets and indicates the closeness of the knots/backing. And in that case it would be knots/in or per foot or meter depending on the country. On hand knotted we would cound the number of warps or or war pairs. On machine woven, we sould cound the number of knots on the weft.. as most machine woven axeminster and wiltons are woven on the weft compared the warp for hand knotted rugs.

When we as an industry moved into tufted goods, we carried the term with us to describe the "closeness of the secondary backing. But we never really defined whether we were looking at the weft or warp for a long time.. I guess someone decided to standardize it which is good. ... if you are considering only the secondary backing. We have always counted the lowest density of the backing as that will be its weakest point...

 

[sweendogg]

so yes its still confusing.

 

[Steve in Omaha]

Marc & Dave...good thread!

 

[sweendogg]

Jim I guess I missed your second post.

Here is a good rule of thumb, if there are no wrinkles when you leave and the carpet is at the highest amount of moisture and subjected to the highest temps/humidity levels while you are cleaning.. then you can pretty much assume that cleaning had nothing to do with it.