Carpet tile questions

[KPack]

I'm looking at putting carpet tiles in the game/hobby room portion of my shop and need some guidance. The floor is bare concrete, smooth finish, not polished. Poured in November of last year.

1.) Cleaning the floor - mop with water only? I don't know if using anything else (cleaner, soap) will interfere with the adhesive
2.) Saw cuts - do I need to fill them in?
3.) Does the bare concrete need to be sealed before adhesive and carpet? If so, any specific kind of sealer?
4.) Do I need to use a roller on the carpet tiles after installation?

First time doing this, so looking for advice. The space is large (~1300 sq ft) and carpet tiles would be the easiest way I think of getting it covered up. Easy to replace as well. Rolls of industrial carpet would not look great with the long seams, and I've had experience with that type of carpet fraying at the seams....and the only way to fix it is to replace the whole thing. I'm hoping to avoid those problems with carpet tiles.

 

[duneslider]

The carpet tiles that I have installed were "glue" down, its more of a pressure sensitive type glue. So the tiles stick down but can be fairly easily pulled up and replaced. With that type install it was just clean the floor with water and spread the glue (honestly, most of the time we just swept and vacuumed. It is possible for saw cuts to show through the carpet, personally I wouldn't worry about it in a garage but when I was doing it commercially we would use crack filler on all cracks and joints in the concrete.

There is usually a direction arrow on the bottom of the tiles and they need to be oriented correctly according to the manf directions or you can run into issues.

Long seams shouldn't be any different than a million little seams you will have on carpet tile. If tiles have issue you just pull it out and put a new one in and on seams there are other more complicated technics to fix it. I spent a lot of time fixing seams. Generally, if i could catch a small piece starting to come up I could fix it very easy but once the kids get a hold of a string and start pulling it gets ugly fast. Schools are a nightmare, I rarely had issues in churches and business buildings.

 

[vlocci]

Thank you all.

I have a wonderfully successful attorney at the ready, but at close to 600/hour in trying to spend funds that come with the best ROI.

Given the likelihood of bankruptcy by my contractor I'm equally trying to spend only the minimum.

While more headaches than expected I'm fortunate to have the opportunity to even try to make this happen.


In the end I'm confident this will work out fine even if it comes with some hiccups along the way.

 

[KPack]

The carpet tiles that I have installed were "glue" down, its more of a pressure sensitive type glue. So the tiles stick down but can be fairly easily pulled up and replaced. With that type install it was just clean the floor with water and spread the glue (honestly, most of the time we just swept and vacuumed. It is possible for saw cuts to show through the carpet, personally I wouldn't worry about it in a garage but when I was doing it commercially we would use crack filler on all cracks and joints in the concrete.

There is usually a direction arrow on the bottom of the tiles and they need to be oriented correctly according to the manf directions or you can run into issues.

Long seams shouldn't be any different than a million little seams you will have on carpet tile. If tiles have issue you just pull it out and put a new one in and on seams there are other more complicated technics to fix it. I spent a lot of time fixing seams. Generally, if i could catch a small piece starting to come up I could fix it very easy but once the kids get a hold of a string and start pulling it gets ugly fast. Schools are a nightmare, I rarely had issues in churches and business buildings.

With the pressure adhesive, I'm assuming you can walk on it before the tiles are down and it doesn't make a mess? I'm trying to figure out if this is a project I have to complete all in a day or if I can spread it over a couple of evenings.

If I'm doing alternating directions on tiles, which way should the arrows point? Is every manufacturer different on that?

I know I'll have lots of seams with carpet tiles, but if I have a problem I can simply pull one up and replace it. With a long seam my options are limited. My work office had industrial carpet that eventually had every seam unraveling. We replaced it all with carpet tiles about 4 years ago and they still look almost new. Not a single issue since then. That's the only real experience I have with either of these systems, so that's why I'm leaning towards tiles.

 

[duneslider]

The glue should not be walked on once put down. I usually snap a grid, so 4 quadrants and depending on size I spread 1-2 quadrants at a time and go to town.

For rotating every other check your instruction but I would do all arrows North and then the rotated 90 all East for example. You just want all the corresponding arrows the same direction. If you start putting them in any which way you can have issues and they may not be 100% perfectly square.

 

[rlitman]

...I know I'll have lots of seams with carpet tiles, but if I have a problem I can simply pull one up and replace it. With a long seam my options are limited. My work office had industrial carpet that eventually had every seam unraveling. We replaced it all with carpet tiles about 4 years ago and they still look almost new. Not a single issue since then. That's the only real experience I have with either of these systems, so that's why I'm leaning towards tiles.

My office installed carpet tiles in 2009. We replaced a couple of high traffic tiles in the lobby after cleaning attempts failed, and we use carpet runners to protect the highest traffic places (by the suite, entrance and elevator doors), but for the most part, they're all still in great shape. You could just barely make out the replacement tiles when they were installed something like 6-8 years ago, but they've blended in since then.

Inside the office suite, we replaced all of the clear plastic chair mats at everyone's desk a couple of years ago, because they were falling apart, but the carpet tiles are also all fine.

 

[KPack]

Thanks everyone for your help. I was able to finish installing the tiles late last week. About 1300 square feet. I vacuumed and mopped the floor, filled in most of the saw cuts (I found that it really wasn't necessary as it was impossible to feel the saw cuts under the tiles), measured out the room and marked the centerlines, then did each quadrant separately. I used Megabond adhesive, applied with a trowel. It goes down easy and a little goes a long ways. I had a five gallon bucket and only used half of it for the whole floor. Tiles laid in alternating directions, following the manufacturer's guidance. Overall it took four evenings of work....probably about 12 hours total.

 

[duneslider]

Looks like it turned out quite nice.

 

[John-C]

Can you tell me more about your carpet tiles?

I am in the process of finishing my basement and am in a quandary about what to do with the floor. I'm stuck between carpet tile and epoxy. Your floor looks very nice.

 

[KPack]

Can you tell me more about your carpet tiles?

I am in the process of finishing my basement and am in a quandary about what to do with the floor. I'm stuck between carpet tile and epoxy. Your floor looks very nice.

I believe the tiles are from Shaw Flooring. I'll have to look and see what the actual pattern/color is. Our local flooring place had them for about $3/square foot. That was about average from others that I looked at. Some were much more expensive, a few were less, but the quality was obviously lower. So I went somewhere in the middle. The color is just about right for the space....the walls are a light beige, so the darker floor works well with it. I was concerned that it would absorb too much light and make the room appear darker, but that's not the case. The lights are normally on ~70% power and it's plenty bright. At full power the amount of light is nearly overwhelming.

They were not hard to install. A few YouTube videos and some reading online and I was good. I'm not a super handy guy either. The most important thing was to make sure I had the center of the room marked perfectly, otherwise you would easily see that something was off. Once that was marked, I just did one quadrant at a time and everything ended up lining up nearly perfectly.

The worst part of it was trimming the edge tiles. I could lay a whole quadrant of tiles in about 20-30 minutes, but it would then take at least an hour just to cut in the edge pieces. Sore back for days.