When stretching carpet we see all kinds of carpet underlay problems. Often the underlay was not fastened to the floor properly, either with a glue on concrete floors or staples on wood floors. The place where the underlay butts up to another piece of underlay just separates leaving a gap between pieces, which makes a valley on the carpet surface. Recently we saw two instances we rarely see …
In one instance in a condo building there was a crack in the concrete floor, some kind of gases must have come up the crack because the underlay just deteriorated right above the crack, after filling the crack with a caulking and waiting for it to cure, new underlay was replaced over the crack and the carpet re-installed.
Problem solved, another happy customer!
The next instance was found in a house over a wood floor. From the top of the carpet it appeared the floor had a high spot at where two pieces of plywood met under the carpet. After lifting the carpet and the underlay, it became obvious that the underlay had a weak edge where it butted up to the other piece of underlay. So only the edge of the underlay was not the same density as the rest of the piece of underlay. After lifting the entire room of carpet then the underlay with the weak edge, the entire piece of underlay was turned 180 degrees so the weak edge of the underlay now layed at the edge of the room by the wall and the regular edge butted up to the other piece of underlay. The weak edge of underlay could not even be noticed at the wall side of the room.
Problem solved and another happy customer who was just living with the problem as it was!
Another common underlay problem often seen is no tape has been placed on top of where two pieces of underlay meet, this is standard practice, or is supposed to be. This prevents the underlay riding up on top of the underlay beside it where two pieces meet making a high spot appear in the carpet even where the carpet doesn’t need to be stretched.
Chris
