The Huddle - Episode 108 - The Ins and Outs of Moisture Control in Flooring Projects

In this episode with special guests Seth Pevarnik from Ardex (https://www.ardexamericas.com) and Jared Lockwood from Uzin (https://us.uzin.com) we delve into the crucial role of moisture management in ensuring the longevity and durability of flooring installations. This episode covers why effective moisture control is essential to prevent warping, mold, and other moisture-related issues. We provide expert insights on the best practices and techniques for assessing and mitigating moisture risks, from using moisture barriers to choosing the right materials for different environments. Tune in to learn the key strategies for maintaining the integrity of your flooring projects through proficient moisture control.

The Huddle was created by Paul Stuart of Stuart & Associates and Go Carrera, alongside Jose and Daniel Gonzalez from Preferred Flooring. Aimed at helping you maintain forward progress in your flooring career, they cover topics from personal and business growth, to installation tips & tricks and everything in-between.

Want to be a guest on The Huddle? Email thehuddleforwardprogress@gmail.com today!

Create your FREE Installer profile at https://gocarrera.com and become part of the future of the industry TODAY!
GET TRAINED! Find a list of training dates here: https://gocarrera.com/resources/training/
https://www.preferredflooringmi.com
https://www.stuartandassociates.com

what's up team welcome to the Huddle your weekly Playbook where we strategize on everything from playing the

game and mastering your fundamentals we are here to help you

distinguish yourself in the marketplace sorry I fumbled this one I think you say that quite quite

often Paul well you know it's a scripted opening and I try to change it every week but you know you know you know the

deal we're here we're still here to give the installer a voice and make sure you're equipped with everything you need

that's for sure so this week's topic is uh the ins and outs of moisture

control um I know a lot of you guys uh if you especially if you're in

commercial you're going to run across these situations so I'm really happy to

have guest Seth panar pavik and Jared Lockwood and Seth you are with uh Ardex

and and Jared you you are with usine is that right did I get that right yes all

right did I say usine right or is it I don't know the Germans pronounce iten

but yeah you can pronounce it however you want to with me as always is Mr Daniel and

Jose Gonzalez of uh preferred uh floring out of Grand Rapids Michigan migan and

um so welcome guys uh how's the week going I'm trying to wake myself up here

too good the weather's phenomenal here so the weather outside is

weather weather is good and uh thanks for thanks for having on the show today

more importantly glad you can make it how's

business no business is good for us um Summer's the you know heavy time of the the year for

us the June July August lots of school renovation and projects like

that we're just out there selling fancy dirt in a bag you know just kind of you

know how it goes fancy dirt clean recy from the playgrounds around

around here I sure hope not all right so uh I thought it'd be

interesting to get started by just talking about a few um and uh well you know what first Seth

can you give us a little uh intro on yourself a little bit about your background and then we'll go to you Jared and you guys give us a little bit

of info about you guys yeah certainly so my name is Seth bavar I'm the director of technical for

ardx I started with artx back in 1991 I was uh seven years old I I look

pretty good for my for my my early 30s um now I grew up in the in the

construction industry my my father and grandfather were General Contractors so I was a I was a gopher growing up

meaning go for this go for that yeah and um yeah I started uh started with artx

early 990s and um you know been in been in technical for for quite some time and

uh been involved in the industry quite a bit uh you know different ass

associations uh out there and uh really like to to give back uh to the industry

as much as as possible it's done uh it's been great for me to be in the industry

I feel like I I owe it back and and I like to give back as much as

possible well I know I've seen you in just about every convention I've been to so uh you do I certainly see you out and

about trying to trying to uh improve the industry and your on several uh

committees and different things like this and some boards too right I

am awesome Yep heavily involved with FC NCT it's uh able to be board member with

both of those associations and uh contribute in other other ways as well

Canadian Association nfca um asdm just to help build industry standards um the

I RC help build different inspection standards out there for our industry so just just try to help out as much as I

can sweet Jared give us a little bit of background on yourself sir well um I've

been in the flooring industry for 25 years now I guess so started around 90

99 2000 as a ceramic tile helper like

installing ceramic so um been in the industry a while I started with udine

back in 2016 when we uh when we came strong into

the Michigan market and um just been doing that ever since so I was with USG

for a short while before then um doing some moisture mitigation stuff

so so you both got great backgrounds guys this is why we um you know one of

the podcasts we try to bring on a couple of experts I I can vouge um certainly

for Seth I know him a little bit better but Jared's got a l long history and mitigation like he just said and so if

you have any questions make sure to or comments uh good

experiences uh with with with the uh different self- levelers and because

that's certainly a part of moisture mitigation when you start talking about prepping the a uh full mitigation system

for new flooring um you know give us your thoughts and we will uh talk about

them so Mr Daniel Mr Jose well let me just start off by

vouching for Jared right away he did first time we met him this

guy came up to one of our hospitals and helped us with a night project and I was like oh my God this guy's making us

grind everything why why why you know what I know why

now you know why now you know hey I gave you the why too not just the do what you

do but the why now you know and knowing is half the battle only people that are

probably 40 will know where that came from yeah GI

Joe um it was very refeshing to have someone out there with hands on and actually going through the process

instead of just uh letting us uh fail on our own right he made sure that that wasn't that wasn't in the stars for us

so we do appreciate that you know we were there till what 5:30 in the morning Jose we were there forever it was uh it

was a long long night yeah it was a long night let's mention that for a moment for all the uh installers that join us

we got a large audience that's uh typically on here watching and

and you guys as as Tech reps in the industry you actually want to hear from

those guys don't you yeah from the installers yeah the I would say the the

the wor the I wish I had five bucks every time I had somebody call up and say hey I just use your product I think

I did something wrong I could retire it's like it's called beforehand you

know yeah I think a lot of uh we we've promoted on here quite a bit about like

getting in in touch with the tech reps and getting to know the product even a

few a few days beforehand hey what am I going to run into what are some things to really think about with your product

line um in fact I just did a huge uh exterior uh Ardex with some A4 the the

new stuff brand new like I did it was A14 and X90 and x35 drainage mats I just

got through uh phase one of a a big project and you guys you know had Greg

out and and I I probably talk to him for a week ahead of that project uh every

day I wanted to know now this was brand new so I I hadn't even

really uh thought and gotten the concept through on how to put this stuff down correctly and make sure that our guys

are doing it right but it the point is guys get a get a hold of your Tech reps

ahead of time and they want to hear from you guys they're not you know they're not um shy most time when I'm at

convention or any of the the shows they actually want to hear from you guys more

often so don't don't be uh scared to reach out all right so uh hey boys can

you tell me about a moisture failure you've had um yeah recently actually recently

like within the last couple years yeah well just anytime but yeah whatever you want to bring up Daniel has more

information on that one I mean I I can only uh speculate and add to what was uh

secondhand through most of it well it's just I have a project right now I actually was talking to to Jared

earlier um you were using his system over here and the architect just wants

so much information and it's just like can you just provide me with something he's like I can get you an email she like I need

something by end of dayto day he's like my the the documents typically take 72 hours can I just shoot you an email and

it's like well something's better than nothing right but it's it's the MV the moisture

Vapor emission rate came back a little bit high in a couple areas and it's just

on the trenches where they they poured the new concrete so we're going in with

a onep part System since the RH is in check everywhere and we don't necessarily need to do the two-part

system the epoxy system save some dollars and cents all the way around so I'm switching it over

and this architect is just I don't know man well let's not go down that rabbit

hole of of of how to deal with Architects I think that deserves its own

episode no but but it's it is important to know there are different styles of products out there to address things

differently I mean you know a onep part component urethane can handle moisture up to a certain point and then the you

know an f310 epoxy can handle you know as moisture as high as you want it but

like you it's important to educate the contractors that they do have different options they don't just have to go with

an epoxy if the if the moisture is high you know you do have other options so

you know whether a high moisture adhesive or you know a uh a urethane or

or whatever other like there there are other Solutions out there you know sheet membranes that sort of thing so it just

like it every Situation's different so a lot of it is just letting people know what the options are and they can choose the best one well let's talk about I'll

tell you a quick quick one a specific one we had a um floor and and before I

tell you you know kind of identifying this this balance when you're you know

we know when we take a a moisture test it's really a snapshot of the the floor

under those conditions at that time and

so question to both of you guys after I tell my little story will be what do you recommend when it's like

Teeter tottering it it's really kind of at a certain level where you think you

can get away with this XYZ adhesive that uh says it it's let's let's say it's a

95 RH adhesive and you're you're you're right at 95

and what would you guys recommend doing there um I know circumstances change uh

my circumstance was we were below grade at a Early Learning

Center um we we had the same exact scenario we

opted for a higher moisture adhesive went with an lvt down there um it did

seem to have good drainage and different things on the building not that I'm a you know great expert on the outside of

the building or should have to be but sometimes even those things we have to consider in

flooring um but we ended up going with an lvt we sent all the information to

the architect uh we you know had everything

submitted and approved installed it and it probably

took we also considered we were in a wetter season when this happened so we

figured this is probably as kind of as high as it would get you know it would probably dry out um I don't know the

mistake but it failed it took about a year and it started failing and then it

failed drastically it was like something happened now we didn't by all reports

from the owner and the GC there was no event uh no no flooding event or a

piping a pipe breaking or what have you but it seems to me because it lasted

look great for a year and and then kind of started showing some some signs and

then man it just went to uh hell really quick so we ended up having to replace

that floor now we had full you know I mean to be honest with you the GC and the architect all stepped up and so did

the owner I said here's all the testing here's everything here's the reason we went with all this stuff it was all

approved so I can't replace it for free and uh so I got paid for the replacement

but it was a little touchy for me like it was just one of them touchy

situations like well should should should I have done something different so that was that was one scenario where

I really didn't I don't I still don't know

um if I because I don't know if there was an event and there that circumstance

kind of throws me off a little bit meaning that it lasted so long so well and then kind of failed more uh

drastically but that aside I almost wish I would have just completely mitigated

the floor and and done that anyway I think this will give us an opportunity

to talk about that but also let's go through levels you know you got

moisture uh and I'm going to name them off and any of them that I miss I'm going to turn it over to you two and we

can conversate back and forth between all of us but uh I know we have uh you

know the r Goods the uh like uh used to

be called versus Shield what's the new name of it uh garar yeah like a roll out

membrane stuff you got uh one Parts you

got high moisture adhesive actually that's in there as well some of them go

up to 100 R uh or say they do uh you also if you can correlate those with

um you know a more breathable flooring uh I feel more comfortable in those

situations in fact when we replaced we put a the highest moisture adhesive that

uh that EF Florine had and put kinetics in is what ended up uh happening down

there there and that's performed now for five years on with no no issues

whatsoever um but then we have you know the one parts and then two parts and

there's different levels in the two parts even you know it'll handle different stuff different uh levels of

vapor emissions so I'm going to turn it over to you guys on those with all those

deals all these options do you have standard kind of like playbook for the

the audience that this is kind of how we see you using or looking at these

moisture tests versus your with your projects and what to consider there and

then these are the products that you know you might consider to be the best

solution for those right what I one of the things I want to say and and and you

know I Echo what you said Paul and Jared there there are a variety of different types of materials out there and you both

have mentioned the different types the the key thing uh to keep in mind here is

that any material that has a maximum RH of less than

100% should not be should not be used in envir in an environment that it could be

exposed to 100% uh or condens liquid in some capacity and when I say that uh yeah

there there are single component roll on products that might be at a 95 or 98 uh

I we we we had products uh under our brand like that there's there's adhesives that are high RH adhesives

that are lower than 100% meaning 99 and if you look at a project that

we'll just take a building that's 40 years old something like like like the project that you were talking about Paul

you have a building that's you know multiple years old 10 20 30 40 years old you have a concrete slab on ground

um the likelihood of having an intact Vapor retarder underneath that concrete slab is slim to none if one was ever

used in the first place and even though you test for moisture today and it's 95%

RH today um it doesn't mean that at some

point in the future it can't be higher than that so I suspect in that that application that you were referencing

Paul that you know you were you are at you know moisture tolerances during

installation but it was a slab on ground probably no Vapor retarder that was intact and at some point in the future

whether it it was the rainy season you know the heavy snow that's coming off

winter and you're melting and you have all this water uh you get to the point where you have excessive moisture the

point where you're exceeding the performance of that material in that

application so you could take that same similar product that maybe have 99 or a

95 or a 98 maximum and if it's new concrete that has an intact Vapor

retarder or it's new concrete that's on an elevated deck um with no other

sources of moisture and you're reading 98 today that would mean that next month

you're going to re read 97 and the month after that you'll read 96 because that elevated moisture right

now is just going to continue to go down over time if that makes sense that makes a lot of

sense the way you said that too is uh for everyone out there the way he said it to was if you think that it's

susceptible to more moisture at some point in time chances are just to go a little bit One Step Above and Beyond

what what you were thinking yeah yeah yeah and like our approach is very similar like it's

anytime that there there could be a failure of the of the vapor barrier or

like those older buildings just treat it like it's an open slab I mean it's you're you're going to treat it like the

vapor can freely come in and come out and that just means everything like you have to treat it like it's a 100 you

just you just do yeah so but in that specific uh instance you brought up Paul

like you know you also have to look at the limitation of what the Floor Covering is too so like you you you

could have an adhesive that goes 95 98 99% if you but if you're putting down a 90% Floor Covering you're going to end

up with dimensional instability warping all sorts of issues with your floor covering long and the adhesive is Gonna

Keep it stuck but it's gonna it's gonna look like junk so absolutely and I and I'll just add to that Jared uh there's

two terms that I use when we're talking about all these different uh remediation systems and high RH adhesive so when you

really look at an adhesive the adhesive is tolerating that moisture and and if

you have a floor covering that that is you know a lower maximum RH with that

adhesive only tolerating the moisture then that floor Co covering becomes susceptible to moisture whereas a

mitigation system you know such as an epoxy or the urethane that you mentioned

Jared you know those are those are remediating the moisture you know so adhesives generally speaking High R

adhesives I don't want to include every everyone out there every adhesive out there but a majority of your high RH

adhesives just tolerate the the moisture and where mitigation systems actually

remediate I I like that distinction I do like that you guys bring brought that up

the difference between tolerating and and you know it's called mitigation so

moisture mitigation or remediation of that uh problem actually blocking that

uh moisture vapor from coming through yeah and I say that most most

floor coverings you know are going to have a lower tolerance than some of these high moisture adhesives that are on the market and you know it seems like

industrywide people have been overselling the high moisture adhesives without a proven track record so it's

one of those things where it's just like okay let's let's slow down a minute here

and make sure we we walk through all the details of the project and the limitations for everything involved in

your system right and I think that some of the flooring manufacturers have also

um started like in their SPC instead of giving limits for the actual flooring

they just say for the the moisture it's refer to whatever adhesive you're using

they don't even give you that information outright

anymore well you know so so much had to

happen so quickly on moisture if you think about it you know once we lost solvents and things and our adhesives

and I installed back then so uh I know what it's like to have those adhesives

and not shoot we didn't we didn't care I mean you you had

you know uh you that that is I think why so many

people especially building owners they're like well I had VCT down from the 70s and I'm just putting VCT right

back down why is it ain't different and and you got to walk them through this whole uh education process of why we

don't why our adhesives are not near as durable as they used to be from a

moisture standpoint and uh what it means to have water soluble soluble adhesive

and why we have that and all this but um yeah it's it's it had to progress

quickly and then the the mitigation systems you know they were so high cost for owners and stuff

so then manufact started working on the adhesive side of course those always are

progressing to get better but from a flooring contractor and installer

standpoint it appeared to me that you know mitigation systems came out pretty

quickly and and different ways of solving some of the problems but you know

um you know a coaster product that we used to use a lot of and kind of an

early brand you know it's going to cost you $8 a square foot for to put that

down and uh a lot of times it was more than the flooring system and

so the then then we started getting the high moisture adhesives and such and

like you said some of them seem like they were maybe build uh um or promoted

in um I don't know uh if it's it wasn't necessarily I

don't think purposely dishonest I don't want to say that but I I mean maybe oversold is the best way but the problem

for us installers and what the point I'm trying to get to here is we had to

absorb a ton of crap I mean manufacturers had to deal with it but

you had to deal with it in your Silo of being a manufacturer and then flooring in sters and contractors were getting it

from every rep about all these products you had to absorb so much so

quickly there's no no wonder that there's still moisture failures it seems

like most of them can be solved uh and there's a product out there to solve them but uh that seems to

be toning down people are getting more educated on all the products and and so that seems to be but there was this bell

curve of like even though the products were there wrong products were being used or or what have you because it was

frankly it was a lot of information to try to just absorb as a flooring contractor in the early days of figuring

all this out no you're right I mean you go back uh you know 30 and 40 years it's

not like you know specifically you know cutback adhesive was designed to be a you know moisture tolerant uh adhesive

with VC but the reality is it just performed very well you know VCT with cutback in high moisture conditions did

very well you had a lot of solvent adhesives way back when and when the switch was made um you know to get away

from all the nasty chemicals and you get into a lot of water all the waterborne adhesives there were tons of growing

pains uh you know back in the early days you go back 30 years ago a lot of growing pains with the water born

adhesiv but the technologies have have come so far uh with mitigation systems

and with the high adhesives and I just go back to um there there's different

products for different fits just really understand the project and then the

limitations of whatever product you're considering so that we're using the right product uh for the right

application so we had a few com sorry we had a few

comments about do Point can you guys address

dupoint yeah I mean a dupoint uh is uh

is when your job conditions allow you know condensed moisture to to occur I

mean you you let's let's uh I take it we all like beer you know you get h a nice

Frosty mug uh and you got some cold beer and you got warm moist air in the in the

room and you got condensation happening on the outside of the glass it's that you're hitting

dupoint um if you're yeah so it's important for

flooring contractors out there I think the point that our uh listeners are

driving at here is that you can have Mo your moisture testing but if you do

not uh consider ambient conditions as well yeah which is where our partner uh

here on the Huddle floor Cloud comes in to Great advantage to everybody is

checking your due points and and your your site conditions because if you don't if your do points or your your

your ambient conditions uh are going to cause uh a a a condensation factor to

happen um it on even if your Rh is

correct it it can condensate on top and not affect that RH uh reading that you

had you know the week before what have you so uh you know Jason's been a guest

on here before and and he's he's uh his Jason Ramsey and he's he's an inspector

and one of the things that he's been real um well I say Jason Ramsey but also

Jason Canton over at M brought it up as well that you know dupoint is a important factor in all this um probably

very specifically when you start getting into into your uh your areas of you know

high humidity uh uh climate so right and then you know Chad talking

about Builders not wanting to do anything on top of concrete because they say that there's a a vapory tier

underneath and they don't want to spend more money when I mean all these testing all this testing is there for a reason

right that's why we do all this testing plus the ambient conditions so that way

we know the entire system you got have to look at everything and that's where we always say that flooring installers

essentially need to be scientists sometimes right yeah we need to know a lot about everything and if you're not

that's when you get the these guys that are like I've been and we say it time and time again I've been doing it this

way for 20 years yeah that's like as soon as someone tells me that I'm like okay this

is not going to be a good conversation yeah I mean if there's no climate oh like if there's no climate

control in in the building like your D Point's going to vary constantly so it's

like you know your site conditions are very important part of the whole system

right I mean it's going to affect your I mean your flooring materials need to acclimate like your acrylic primers

won't set up there's just there's just a a laundry list of things that happen when you know your your conditions

aren't controlled so monitoring those is very key well I've ran across process um

a particular problem with a uh project

that the the school had their multi a school uh client of ours had their

multi-use facility it was a a separate facility from the school as a rural

school they built a like a gymnasium but it was multi-use and we put down a you know a

athletic flooring and it got some Bubbles and then we pull it up and you

can see visible uh the visible moisture on the concrete but we RH tested and it

was okay I was like what the hell's going on oh well come to find out they were

turning off and this is a school district thing and I think they're getting past this

but this is a rural School District this was just this in the last 12 months they're turning off the uh their

their building control system every they left it off all

summer and then they they turn it off on the weekends even in the winter because they're just trying to

save on these electric on their you know their bills and I get it but that is that destroys our products uh

anymore add to that scenario there's a a school recently where uh you know tons

of renovations have happened over the years some of the school has HVAC some of it does not some of the HVAC is

shared by opening up the fire doors and blowing a fan down the corridor and you

know and this renovation had a lot of resilient Rubber and some foro and we

couldn't explain it to them enough that something was not going to go right for

them because of that well we left the doors open all all night so that way it could all uh be the same temperature for

you in the morning go okay well thank you I mean Frank Frankly this this condensation and dpoint problem can

cause a problem even if you have a mitigation system down um and you don't

have a high level a high moisture adhesive on top of it uh even in that

case you can still have a problem but uh if you have a you know if you mitigate the floor and you're like okay now I can

just use the manufacturers recommended adhesive for this product and it's a 85

RH even though I had 99 everywhere uh previously and I had

high Vapor emissions I mitigated I'm good well if they're going to have a dupoint issue or building control issue

it can still cause a this condensation problem so I don't want to go down that for so as our only topic but it sure has

uh it got brought up I think it was a good thing to get brought up and um and

like J Jason says right here he's seen problems with integral moisture mitigation products and I think what

he's talking is like ad mixtures and stuff oh ad mixtures and and topal stuff

yeah I mean Jared actually talked about this like this was probably going to be something that was going to get brought

up because we were on a project that it was a whole issue with the the ad

mixture and them not I mean it wasn't even with the the mo it ended up being an issue with the

moisture after everything was done but during this time it was just about why do we have to pay for a blot

yeah yeah and it's with the with the ad mixtures it's just like for decades right the flooring

industry has designed their products to utilize the capillary structure of the concrete for its installation and when

you put a product in that densifies that concrete and tries to cut

off that capillary structure things just don't work the same way so it's just

like you have to carefully think about the process with the ad mixtures there's even new ones coming out like Nano

silicates which you know we've had some projects where those work just fine and

other projects where those have popped up as an issue and they're not even like a silic ad mixture they're just like

they're Nan silica yeah yeah yeah the the um to topically

applied at placement uh products that are Nano Silas and not a silicate but a

silic AIC but yeah they function they're not a reactive but they but they do

densify the same sort of way and cut off the capillary structures it's like they can yeah they fill the capillary

structure and and just to make it clear to everybody I

mean we need me adhesive isn't duct tape I mean it's it's a mechanical Bond once

it it dries you're trying to get a mechanical Bond into the pore structure

and um so it's important to have that

but then it does cause problems and so yeah even even if the adhesive

is uh some adhesives are suitable for non-absorbing surfaces but the the thing

about using you know a densifier whether it's a silic or silica you know changes

the density of the concrete you know the mechanic may think it's regular old concrete as he knows it uses the same

square Notch trial uses the same 15minute open time and the moisture from

the waterborne adhesive has nowhere to go and then there's an issue it may require a smaller Notch trial it may

require a longer open time uh to get the moisture out but you got to check with

your manufacturer and their their recommendations for the application yeah again it's just another dog on softball

well fast ball to swing at is it's another thing that flooring contractors have to

discuss and um and and figure out whether or not I mean if it's going to

be used at the end of the day if an ad mixture res use we usually find that out later I mean I love it when we find out

early where we can either start to plan with all the parties that are going to be involved but often they know that you

know the flooring manufacturer recommendation is no ad mixture and they're going to have a fight so usually

it's one of these things where that salesman selling to the uh the uh

concrete company sells it to the GC and it's it's

a done deal before we ever know it and then we find out later uh hopefully in

some cases we we have found out after our floor's done and we're like we've had the lamination deals come

to find out it was the ad mixure we didn't even know it was there had no

idea so of course your Vapor emissions tests come back just

fine I think the the one reason we found out on the project that I was that I was

talking about was because we asked for the the moisture testing results and they were like oh we didn't need to

because this ad mixture is in there that's what started the conversation with everything

yeah one in there it's fine

yeah go ahead sorry Jose I one of the the the bids that I'm working on right now because there's a lot of information

that's not in there um I think I I I included with uh they must provide um a

copy of the moisture test I also included in there that if there were any

AD mixtures added to the concrete then we need to know 20 days prior to our arrival um like just added that in there

like an hour and a half ago I just feel uneasy about some of the literature that was in this bid and I just felt

compelled to put that in there for safety your larger projects you got to I I feel like we need to do a better job

at my flooring company of of just that to be honest with you it's unfortunate

that we got to take all this on I mean I remember the business years ago it was just not we didn't have to have all

these considerations so um I we need to make more money in the flooring industry

because you got to be scientist and like you said chemists and and uh applicators

and make sure the right products in the right area uh but that that's uh you

know that's always the consideration uh on these larger projects because they want to see the easy button for that that led me to the

question I was going to ask was is there a silver bullet with high moisture concrete a a

high a high moist moisture uh

project I don't know I don't know if I'm totally understand your question Paul sorry is there a silver bullet solution

if there's high moisture like is a is one of the mitigation systems that's to

solve every time or should we always consider all of the different options

I know it's a tough tough question to answer but like if you have a new person

in flooring that is and I don't mean a new person but someone starting we're

we're in this phase I just read an article about how many flooring companies are possibly up for sale

you're going to have new ownership coming through gentlemen in the next five to 10 years because a lot of people

are cycling out a lot of baby boomers are leaving their businesses that so my

my question is with these newer people and some of them are not necessarily in flooring that have have are going to be

buying these businesses or stepping into these businesses my question is is there

a one solution uh and you know is it mitigate

the floor if you just don't know the best thing to do is do this and you shouldn't have any

problems I mean I'll I'll say this um I I've always taken the approach that I

evaluate a given project you know with a contractor look at what the needs are

for the contractor we make a recommendation you know based on the needs um I I'll say this also that there

I've I've worked with different hospital organizations where you know they will

use epoxy mitigation always whether it's needed or not because to them that was an

insurance policy for I have a client just like that Wesley Medical Center and it's it's an

artx product that they're just like nope we put mitigation under everything now they got bit hard enough uh that that's

that's the deal yeah the tough thing here is I I can't say that that epoxy

even though there there's a tremendous amount of experience in the industry multiple manufacturers with epoxy for

you know for decades that doesn't necessarily mean epoxy's the One-Stop shop and that's the

fix all I mean you can get into situations where we have um an ASR

situation alkal silica reaction which is you have excessive moisture but you have

a reactive aggregate in there and putting a mitigation system is not going to correct issues that will occur in

that situation and you can also sometimes get into these osmotic situations where we we have a water

source and we have salts from the concrete and we have a some sort of semi-permeable membrane at the surface

of the concrete which could be the pore structure that no matter what you put down uh epoxy mitigation system

resilient flooring terazo uh you end up with a you end up

with a failure an osmotic blister because of the the condition that's there

so I I don't want to say that there's just a one one product fixes

everything uh by any means I mean you get into those situations with ASR and

that's like the concrete has cancer because you have this reactive aggregate in there and what do you do with cancer

you cut the cancer out you know nobody wants to hear it but you got to cut the concrete out and you know and start

over no and those the NRS it's

like the the near surface like the epoxy moisture mitigation just causes that

reaction right I mean you trap the moisture in there it causes the chemical reaction and you know it's it's like

yeah you just have you get blistering and you just have to cut it out there's just no there's no plan B for it right

there's no yeah it's right remove only and the epoxy is it's a factor in there

but uh like removal is the only option so yeah you make a good point it's like

the the epoxy by mediating the moisture you know ends up uh creating a situation

where the ASR can happen you know the fix to that situation if they're if the

client's okay with it is leave it as as concrete and let the moisture Just Breathe Right out into the air if we

don't have liquid alkaline water sitting at the surface to react with the

aggregate the reaction doesn't happen so if the moisture can just evaporate out of the concrete and never have a

condensed alkaline liquid situation there then the the ASR the na nsar doesn't occur okay so tell

us the test what what um series of testing uh you know

between the uh Vapor emissions uh you know and Rh and pH testing what what

what's a good indicator that that's uh present wait that what's present well

how do you know you're have that scenario or is it

a yeah yeah so so you have you have an aggregate that that is in the concrete

that should not be in there there there are ASM tests that that qualify

Aggregates it might be c33 I can't remember offand here but but um there

there are reactive Aggregates out there that should not go into concrete um you know we and I'm sure usine does the same

thing they have to have their Aggregates tested and confirm that they're not a reactive aggregate that they're using in their material um but they these

Aggregates slip in on occasion and if there's no if there's no moisture uh

there's no liquid moisture with with high alkaline liquid moisture then that reaction never

occurs but to to to go to try to test to see if there's reactive aggregate in

concrete I mean it's a hit and miss thing I mean you could take a core sample and and and find a reactive

Aggregate and you could go two inches over and and not find a reactive aggregate they're not supposed to be

there in the first place but they on occasion slip in yeah the times I've

seen it it actually it's spotty across the floor it's just like some places

have some of that Aggregate and the rest of the slab is fine so you could you could have the slab

95% correct but have a literally it's just like a cancer problem where it's

you have you could have a hundred different areas in a 10,000 squ foot building that all have to get repaired

whereas the rest of the slab is fine and they could all be concentrated together or they could be further apart and it's

just incorrect aggregate impure aggregate that comes through from the querry and ends up in the mix so like

the testing for it most of the time it happens retroactively where we have a problem we get osmotic blisters and we

pull up the the moisture mitigation normally and underneath there's a white crusty filmm and uh react reactions

that's taking place at the surface and that's normally how we identify it it's all retroactively because doing samples

you you gotta learn from from the problem like there's no way to test for

it yeah normally you discover it when the problem when you start and this is good education for me I've never had

this happen to me so I I'm a bit unfamiliar with it to be honest with you so thank you for for uh bringing that up

and and I guess I'm really glad I asked the question is there a one a silver

bullet CA because I I I have not had that so it made me curious if if there's

some combination of the testing methods that would uh expose that problem and uh it's

obviously there's not you just kind to kind of have the failure and then find the solution

so um we kind of started this out and we're running a little short on time but I wanted to kind of just go what you

know the the different steps and have you guys give us a chance starting from

a you know a lower level to a higher level moisture reading on both your guys

products line product lines what what is your solution for like hey I'm a little

concerned it's um uh you know it's a 90 RH floor or 92 RH and just one other

thing is these have a 3% um variation factor in your Rh test

so I mean like we don't have to consider enough these these things could and that

could be up or down so um uh what What's your low to kind of high uh there's no

um no specific project here I'm just curious uh to have you guys give you a chance to start from kind of

your bottom product up and uh what your strong you know your your

mitigation uh solution for you know a 25 MVR or something yeah go ahead jar yeah

s from the bottom so typically how we would approach it was I mean you would we

would recommend the uh the f2170 RH testing over you know a calcium

chloride test just because that's a more predictive test so we would prefer that type of reading as

opposed to the calcium chloride um so like you would get your results of the

testing first so that would be the number one thing and then once you have that results you start asking a question

you're say a is it an open slab situation if it's an open slab situation we need to treat it like it's 100% RH

slab so we would recommend you go up to you know an an f3010 right epoxy

moisture mitigation for us that would be p460 that's uh that's our kind of our gold standard for

moisture mitigation up to 100% our age up to um 14 pH so that you know for most

situations you know that's going to be the first question we ask is it an open slab and then once you know if it's a

new slab where we're just waiting on the moisture to go down then we'll start looking at something like a urethane

where you know you can go up to it can go up to 95% RH typically with two code

application so that'd be something like a P4 414 um but you know there are other

Solutions out there like sheet membranes can also go up to 100 those are those are good for like applications where you

also have moisture problems but you have like oil issues in your slab or

something where you know you're not going to have heavy rolling loads you could use something like an RR 185 sheet membrane but you know and when you start

getting into the sheet membrane category of products you you open up a whole another list of concerns like

condensation under it and mold growth and is you know ventilated Cove Base and

there's a whole lot of other details that you start getting into when you're trapping the moisture in a sheet membrane basically you get a cavity

underneath it right so like typically we're not leaning hard on like a sheet

membrane application as as a fix for things uh you know we tend to like

default back to like the epoxy p460 would be kind of the the final goto because we

know it works in most situations

awesome Seth yeah from from our standpoint um we have the the brand

Henry adhesives and we certainly have high RH adhesives under the Henry brand

647 695 they're acrylic types um but we qualify the installation

of those adhesives so being that they have you know a 9 9% r that means if

they're ever in a situation where it gets to 100 then you know the performance the

adhesive is you know off the table at that point so the application uh the job app or I should

say the the the the the the the project itself has to be qualified in that if

we're at 95 96 97 98 99 it has to be a condition where we can't get to 100% or

condensed liquid so when I say that uh we're talking about like new construction where we have uh concrete

that's on a pan above grade or maybe it's a intact Vapor Barrier underneath

we know that today we have a high R of 96 97 98 99 but we know that next month

it's going to be lower and the month after that it's going to be lower and it's forever going to be in a going down

situation you know if that slab was an existing 10 year old 20 30y old uh slab

that's on ground and we have elevation elevated uh RH readings then we know

that that is not mix water that is causing that high high R the concrete is

too old at that point for it to be mixed water so it has to be another source and it's probably from the ground because

there's no Vapor retarder because the slab is so old so I would never use an adhesive in that situation because even

though the the readings today might be okay at some point in the future you know we could get up to condensed liquid

underneath there and then you know the adhesive isn't going to perform anymore so in that situation we want to go with

a remediation material and we have we have two remediation materials uh we

have a two component epoxy that that meets the ASM f310 it's called MC

rapid um you know permeability of uh below 0.1 perms when tested in

accordance withm e96 so that's one option and then our other option is a is

a waterborne material two coat system uh called vb100 that that also

has a permeability of below 0.1 perms when tested in accordance with e96 so um

you know both of those materials could be used in a situation where we could be at 100% our

age so if we have no Vapor retarder underneath the concrete slab and the building's 20 years old I'm not going to

use an adhesive for that use a medication system like VB 100 or

mcer wow I gotta say that some of that's eye opening even uh to a veteran here

that that uh you know some of those uh terms that you guys used where it's if

there's the possibility for it to go to 100% RH you should still probably go to

a mitigation system and not a tolerance system uh yeah that's that's good

info all right man well that hour flew pretty dug on quick I want to uh thank

you guys for joining us today and sharing your knowledge with the audience

and thank you to our audience for all the participation that was awesome and we really appreciate everybody uh coming

and uh participating here at the on the Hub if you don't catch us live get on

YouTube uh check us out there check us out on any of the podcasting uh sites if

you catch us on Facebook or Instagram or uh you know Spotify or whatever make

sure to like it subscribe give us a thumbs up I guess you can give us a thumbs down if you want and uh but any

interaction give us some comments on on your uh on your thoughts I want to I

want to tell you that was was really educational I I think you know I sat here at the end of that and we have a a

training program a platform at our uh at our flooring company and this is going into our M I'm putting this uh video in

our mitigation uh you know our our uh we have a a uh site condition folder in our

training platform and this is going in there and the mitigation because uh I learned some stuff I know my PMS who uh

maybe uh came from different Industries in construction are going to learn a lot off this so thank you guys for your

knowledge yeah I know you were kind of looking for that uh one product fixes

all right but I think that's what this last project I did because I had to do an alternate for moisture mitigation and

I just went with all right we're going with the top dog and then after all the testing came back I'm like hey there's

an option to save some money here yeah yeah

all right well thank you guys hey thank you Jose and Daniel again thank you

every single week for being Rock gentleman you guys are appreciate that

and to our audience we're GNA sign out now thank you catch us on uh next

Tuesday same time 3 pm Central and uh we'll have another uh great episode for

you guys so thank you guys we love you and catch us on next week's episode all

right thanks everyone