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Tim Cole, director of environmental initiatives and product development for Forbo flooring systems, offered members of the Central Ohio IFMA Chapter some “hard and sound advice” July 15 in his discussion on “The Relationship of Moisture in Concrete and Flooring.”
The bottom line is: “Either you have the right conditions in your concrete sub floor in your facility, or you don’t have them. And if you don’t have the right conditions then your chance of (flooring) failure is going to be great.”
Cole said moisture in the ground and in concrete can affect all types of flooring whether its resilient floor covering, ceramic tile, or terrazzo.
Achieving the right conditions in the concrete slab comes through testing the slab for relative humidity and calcium chloride emissions before the flooring is installed.
A kit for testing relative humidity may run as high as $1,000, while the calcium chloride test kits range from $9-15 each. Nevertheless, each is only a small fraction of the cost of replacing or repairing flooring that is covering the concrete.
“Testing is a pro-active method to keep you from having a failure with any type of floor covering within your facility,” he said.
Cole said there are numerous documents available for information on concrete slab composition, moisture retardants, and how to prepare concrete floors to receive resilient floor covering.
>These may be obtained through Websites for ASTM International at http://www.astm.org/, the American Concrete Institute at http://www.concrete.org/, or Cole at http://www.forboflooringna.com/.
ASTM, formerly the American Society for Testing and Materials, is one of the largest voluntary standards development organizations in the world, and a trusted source for technical standards for materials, products, systems, and services.
Cole said he is often told by engineers that a vapor retardant isn’t needed at a particular site because the concrete slab is structurally fine. Structurally the slab is fine, he said, but if there is moisture in the soil beneath the slab, and if a floor covering is put on top of it, the moisture is going to come through.
“As long as there is nothing to stop the vapor emission from coming into the slab, then it is going to go into the slab,” he said.
A bigger problem can often be created by rushing to install flooring over a slab.
“That’s why flooring manufacturers set these guidelines, saying you must have your building fully enclosed and your HVAC up and running. People think that’s a horrible thing to do because they want to get the floor covering done and the building open as soon as possible,.” he said.
The reason for doing this, he said, is because there is a lot of stabilization going on between the atmosphere inside the facility and what’s going on under the slab.
>“If I come in and put my floor covering down, turn on the HVAC system, and take all of that humidity out of the air, the temperature may rise, and I create this inversion. The concrete knows that and says, ‘I need to stabilize again. I need to get moisture back into that room because it is gone.’
“So, what’s it going to do? It’s going to take moisture from the soil, and if there is no barrier to stop it, it’s going to pull it up and we are going to get a phone call saying, ‘Guess what! I have bubbles in my floor covering…I poked a hole in it and water shot out.’
“I‘ve seen that plenty of times. That’s why we say there has to be that stable environment. If you have that stable environment already created, then when you go down with your floor covering you aren’t going to have these issues,” Cole said.
He added that most documentation supports putting the vapor retardant beneath the slab and information on the various types of retardants may be obtained through ASTM.
“Pretty much for anything you can think of in the construction industry there’s an ASTM document sitting out there that will give you the proper specifications,” Cole said.
Cole also pointed out that persons selecting flooring must look for the best adhesives possible, especially from manufacturers who will guarantee their products and put that in writing.
“A lot of times they (manufacturers) will say if you buy 100 gallons of this (adhesive) and there is a failure, they will give you another 100 gallons. Well, what good does that do you?
“You now have $40-a-yard floorcovering that is ruined, and people working in this facility so there is disruption there. This is going to cost you tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars for a solution and they are willing to give you 100 gallons of this sealant?
“So, make sure that when you talk with a sealant manufacture that you have an understanding that if this product fails he is paying for everything. And you want that in writing. That is very, very important. You want to make sure you are protected,” he said.