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Top tips for laying carpet tiles
clean and scrape the subfloor. This is obvious but before you start laying carpet tiles you will need a clean sub-floor, scraping the subfloor is important as any bits sticking up from the floor will mirror through the tiles and potentially not allow the carpet tiles to join properly.
Make sure the sub-floor is smooth and free of old adhesives. Carpet tiles need to be laid on a smooth floor as with the above any bits in the floor will have an impact on the finish of the carpet tiles. If old adhesives are still on the floor it is important that a smoothing compound is installed over the adhesives so that the new tackier glue that you should use will not reactivate the old adhesive. I suggest using a smoothing compound like F.Balls 1200 that is designed to go over old adhesives and does not require the sub-floor to be primed first.
Plan how the tiles will be Laid. Always plan before you start laying the carpet tiles, make sure that you try to plan that the tiles are square on the main walls and that you can eliminate any awkward cuts, good planning can make the job a lot easier and is essential for a good finish.
Glue the sub-floor. We will use an adhesive like ‘F.Balls Tackifier’ . Once we have planned out the room we will spread the tackifier with a paint roller ensuring that the complete floor has been covered, this is where you will see the benefits of smooth floor. In general conditions it will take 30-60 minutes for the glue to dry, do not start laying the carpet tiles until the glue is dry and tacky, if you lay while still wet the tiles will move and the glue could potentially seep through the joints of the tiles.
Cut the carpet tiles as you go along. From experience there is nothing worse that fitting all of the ‘field’ of the carpet tiles and leaving all of the cuts until the end of the job (especially on large commercial jobs), it will feel tedious and fell like hard work. From my experience doing the cuts as you go along is much better.
Make sure that all of the arrows on the tiles are going the correct way. If the carpet tiles are laid with the arrows going the wrong way the tiles may look different colours as most carpet tiles as some king of pile direction.
Keep the blades in your knife sharp. Try to use a carpet fitters good quality knife ‘we use a Dolphin knife’ and ensure that the blades are good quality and kept sharp at all times. We don’t sharpen our blades we just replace ours as a sharpened blade is never the same as a new one.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]