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.
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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