The Huddle - Episode 112 - Flooring Industry Myths Busted: What You Need to Know

In this episode we tackle common myths that persist among flooring installers. From misconceptions like "you don't need to scrape up old adhesive" to "moisture testing isn't necessary," we debunk the outdated beliefs that can compromise the quality of installations. This episode emphasizes the dangers of the "it'll be ok, I've done it this way for 20 years" mindset, advocating for best practices that ensure durability and customer satisfaction. Tune in to arm yourself with the right knowledge and leave behind harmful myths.

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!

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what's up team welcome to the Huddle we're your weekly Playbook where we not only strategize on playing the game but

changing it from mastering the fundamentals of the craft to distinguishing ourselves in the

marketplace we're here to give the installer a voice and ensure you're equipped with everything you need let's

band together and for a new Legacy in floring this is where you belong welcome to the

team much better much better much better sorry we're late everybody if you're on

here uh had a few technical difficulties just

a couple can see Daniel's head down right now trying to get everything him and ashin are working

their tails off to to get this thing live streamed so what's up fellas what's

going on brother how you doing how was vacation dude it was pretty

sweet it was pretty sweet we caught a bunch of fish went up to Northern saskatch went to my buddy's place called

Ena Lake Lodge boom way up uh and I tell

you what it was the first time I got to see the Northern Lights really pretty freaking crazy we

got to see him from my house this year you did I just never gotten to see them

I've been up there a couple of times to the lodge and never caught him and then the

I don't know if it was the first night or second night um it they just came through and

the pictures are crazy I bet I bet you they looked way better from where you

were at than my house anyway they were PR it was pretty crazy I'm gonna do an upload

and share some of them but uh yeah so we're going to debunk someo myths

today is that right we're going to try see uh we're gonna give our

input give our input let's establish some I'm not showing that we're live

over on my side are you showing yeah yeah showing live over here all right

well I don't know maybe platforms I don't know maybe I'm a maybe I'm a guest today because it's uh on all so socials

that show them we are live all right why can't I can't see any of my controls so

I can't see anybody chatting you have to call them out if there's anybody because I

can't I have I have zero

chat what's up well I guess Daniel do you have chat over on your side I have

everything on my side we're good all right very good that's going to be just handy dandy all right so number one

floring meth that I can think of swirls around

moisture and the KN the the the lack of the need to moisture test an old slab

and I know we went over this with um in our moisture mitigation kind of

podcast uh several weeks back but it continues the the mystery continues at

least in the general contractor's minds and I hope all of our out there who may

be dealing with this um you know a GC saying well uh the slab's 40 years old

well that's all the more need to test the dog on thing that's the thing it's it's always they say the slab's really

old it doesn't need to be tested or the slab's brand new it doesn't need to be tested it's like or this stuff's been down for 30

years and it's doing just fine yeah well best I can tell you is

follow the rules gentlemen you know we know that as flooring professionals we need to test these slabs particularly

if it's getting a moisture sensitive flooring like an lvt sheet vinyl those

kinds of products and um but I still between our

last podcast and now that has come up again you know that it's an old

slab uh it had a a resilient product on it before and why do we need to test the

the the floor so obviously if you were with us during

that podcast you know but the um the likelihood I forget who was our guest on

that do you remember Daniel Seth theck oh it was yeah was

Seth Jared Lockwood from U yep so you

know they they said it straight up but I don't remember the um the percentage but

it the likelihood of you having an intact um VAP under that yeah under that

slab even if they put one originally is

like there's no chance you know I lost was

deteriorated I had a video from uh some the the the house I moved into a few

years ago and up top in the Afters in the garage they had some plastic wrapped around some carpet like they were trying

to save it right and I went to grab it and it just like it like flaked apart

like I I could scrape the whole thing off of the carpet like it was dandruff and it was like in a bag it was like a

bag and it was just I know it was pretty thin but that just showed exactly what happens to it over time yeah and imagine

it with several tons sitting on it and moving around from the earth over 40

years so so obviously this is a loow hanging fruit as far as a myth but that

is continually brought up um I've even heard floring guys say it in the past

and I'm like dude that's not the that's not true you have you need to the crazy thing is is that they're like super

proud of it when they're like I don't I don't moisture test anything well there there's a heck of a

lot of risk and um no reason not to test it I mean you should charge for it and test it take

time I mean but that just makes them get another certification so yeah but they're so

easy go on to Wagner meters get you one uh pretty easy to get a certification there guys and um also you

know get get floor Cloud if nothing else yeah uh you know those kinds of that

that product right there will will help you with um not only the site monitoring

but you can set your moisture test and then and you know Bluetooth those two together and you can get your results

right back at your office so or on your cell phone if you're an installer that's uh following the moisture testing

so um I had one texted to me uh flooring

is easy H that's a good one brother because I think it comes from the the the one

floor that seems to be pretty easy click together but you still have to know I

mean tell me Daniel what you got to know put together click together LBT properly

I hate click together LBT like so that's one of the things that I had on the list was uh floating floors are easier are

always easier to install right but then at the same time another myth is that

they're foolproof because they're not it's a I think they're

a lot more math is involved because you're dealing with the logging mechanism as like uh a glue down plank I

can shrink it and then you know piece it in and take an eigh inch off and you'll

never notice yeah well let's talk about this a little bit more because there's several

things that I think need to be uh brought up a uh your floor this this

could be a myth on its on its we do have gravity on our side yes yeah that's

about it Nate um the

uh the myth this could be its own myth by itself which is that you don't have

to have a as much floor prep for for solid core clict together

products I can tell you that if you have ulations in your floor whether it be a

hard wood or a wood substrate or a concrete substrate what happens with a big Valley on this

product if you just Loos lay over a big old like a

big and then the the clicking mechanism breaks yeah well and you get a gap or it

starts deaminating uh all kinds of stuff I've seen it happen on Plenty of projects one

of my own uh RPM didn't you know I mean we we've changed our tune and we glue if

it's a click together floor we can't find a good alternate to uh from a style

perspective and and do a u a full glue we'll glue that sucker down we're not

we're not we're not Loos laying anything anymore and

that's and if you have depressions in your floor or high spots you still need to take care of those almost better

really because you get Hollow spots you get deflection in your floor which breaks those mechanisms just take one of

those click uh uh tongues and go like that with it see what happens you don't even need to do that just like your

finger sometimes just a fingernail yeah I tell people too when when when

hey my floor is feeling can you come and take a look at it oh this was just installed a little while ago and blah

blah blah I was like well what well who installed it well I did and then you try to explain that to them and no one ever

understands until say remember the hangers you take a metal hanger and you don't have wire cutters you just bend it

bend it bend it Until It Breaks I said that's what your locking mechanism is doing that's what happens over time on

the deflection and then they go oh just to show that that flooring is

not easy in this Regard in particular I had a general contractor uh he was a

carpenter um that moved up in the ranks and he he was uh fi ops manager for one

of my gc's he installed his own floor he had seen it 100 times and it failed

miserably uh and it was all the locking mechanism and the retailer he bought the

floor from uh telling him that it was

a um that it was uh not necessary to prep as as well

so all you guys out there any homeowners watching you're going to have to prep your floor

so it is not easy that's the most important part of all of our products is having a proper substrate so Roland my

trip was ridiculously great I caught a bunch of

fish uh the travel getting there is quite the adventure because it's far

Northern uh friends don't let friends float floors that's good uh the travel was uh

you know getting to the lodge up there is half the um half the experience and

journey uh we we take a I got a fly to to uh

Edmonton from there I jump on a a plane to uranium City I actually toured

uranium city looked that place up it's it's crazy uh went into the high school

and you can see nature just taking it's been about 30 years I've got

better facts now after doing the tour but it's about 30 40 Years of um the

environment you know just nature taking over and there's there's uh trees

growing up between the walls and the freaking uh concrete

slab like it's Vines are everywhere Moss is growing all over it if it was any of

the wood structures they've completely caved in like the old houses and stuff anyway we fly into uranium City we jump

on a float plane and fly to the lodge and then we jump on another float plane

to go to the Northwest Territories to slay some some big Old Pike I took a client with me and um general contractor

a friend of mine and he caught a 45 inch

Pike holy SM like almost 4 foot dude

second largest pike ever caught at the lodge and get get and check this out

he's never been pike fishing he's NE he's he's done some cat fishing and noodling he's a country boy I remember

the first time I went pike fishing with my uncle I was dude that dude was like shaking the boat it was just like a it

was nothing special right nothing like motorboat and I was so scared I was like

eight years old you these fish are gonna eat eat me up they tried to drop me in the water it it was actually pretty

hilarious after the fact yeah that so thanks for asking Rand it was uh it was

fantastic man just got back about an hour and a half ago already banged out a bid and now I'm here with you fine

fellas talking about floors uh the other thing about uh this whole thing uh you

know it not being easy um and the floating floors and all

this stuff is you know putting them

together getting the locking mechanism Done Right is not Elementary I've seen

so many times it just starts spreading because they didn't get it fully locked in well there's so many locking

mechanisms out there that you have to deal with now you have to know exactly what you're doing what product you're

working with what locking mechanism yeah I could tell you one that

I don't care for but that's another story yeah I won't throw any manufacturers under the under the bus

here but I but I would tell you that most of the locking mechanism stuff just

floating locking floating floors uh you really it's not just a floor prep that's

one thing and that takes a real professional to level a floor and get it actually done right then you have

expansion and retraction stuff so if you go over a 25t span you got to have a

expansion joint and many people don't do that they don't even think about it and I had an

architect spec a spec a uh floating floor in an assisted living down these

200 foot hallways oh well obviously we're going to run at the length but do

you realize that every 20 to 25 foot I'm going to have to put an expansion joint

in here and all the all the accessories uh

you know you can get them to match but nobody wants to go over a big old

hump living yeah what are we pushing there right that's the thing solution

even a floating floor in a commercial application in general it's not the best

idea right because just not a good idea like I I'm not doing it I we quit doing it we we're gonna if you gotta click

together floor we and we can't cross it to a full glue down product we'll still

glue that sucker down yeah I went and looked at a project and he was like this other company came and gave me you know

some samples and he was like these bathrooms flood all the time so I just want to do like an epoxy or something I

was like oh yeah we can do epoxy he was like this other company brought me some click together floor and I asked him

what company waterproof dude and he it was a residential company and that yeah

they told him that it'd be no big deal but yeah I mean it's waterproof that drain floods and then

man that waterproof word you know what that's one of the that's the one word that one written out that's a a a myth

and a half like um I really water resistant yes yeah water resistant is

one right but the the way that it's explained to the consumer the way that it's sold yeah sold to the consumer is

like I have to or marketed rather right marketed to the consumer there you go marketed yeah it's just I hate being the

one to explain it to them but I have to explain it to them because they have that uh they already have that in their

head that I'm buying this because it's waterproof it's it says it right here it say I'm like you're right that piece

itself is waterproof if I dip that single piece in there and I bring it out you know if as long as it's intact it's

waterproof it to to an extent but um it's not giving you a waterproof floor

like you think it's going to right and then Rollin says they let you go 60 to

80 foot without one and deflection is a floating floor's enemy and I think a lot

of people because on the notes well that kind of depends on how big the area is

Rand because it's usually uh most of them it's like 2500 square foot square

feet yeah is another thing that's and hey you got to be damn near a professional just to read the install

instructions and understand what all they're trying to uh tell you but the gapping and the the um you know

expansion retraction if you got a area that's bigger in 2500 square foot you're GNA have half inch expansion around the

perimeters so I remember seeing the specs the first time the SPC came out those specs surpris me um you know they

said I go you know 100 by 100 or whatever when it came out and I wish that the Locking mechanisms weren't so

so booty on SPC because it was pretty sweet to be able to do that but Andy

McWilliams explained it that one really good right like the thinner you go the weaker the locking mechanism is going to

be because they don't have that body there correct because I mean um when we

did the tour there they kind of showed you a microscopic view of it right and you can still see an entire void in

there so when you're already that thin and you still have a void in there it's going to be weaker but I think the the

bigger thing like he was talking about is the deflection and people not realizing that um you're supposed to

have an inch of subfloor underneath a floating floor and people just go over like the three4 inch on a regular basis

like it's no big deal not even rigid not even Goodwood right like three4 inch uh

call particle board or waffle or something like that something that already has deflection at its thickest

um and it's just not even interlocking sometimes sometimes it's a one of those

homes where they just kind of slapped something down right away or did some repairs and didn't uh they didn't put any

thought into the process no and then Nate says uh I'll put the the thing

up again the comment crawling around for a couple hours gives you a whole lot of respect for babies how do they keep on

crawling for years man ain't that the truth I don't

baby some Pro knes man I know because it's it's not

just to cushion your knee right it's it helps your back it helps so much like I

didn't understand that by not wearing knee pads it can

mess my whole body

up and today's knee pads are way better I mean pro has been around for a long time but when I first started installing

it was those hard shell just knee pad you put on the tile scratchers yeah and

they had the they had the soft shell ones too I wear the hard hard shell when

I was laying carpet because you can slide around real nice but they had the soft shell ones too for when you're

doing VCT and stuff it only took me a few times when I was uh early on the uh

install days to scratch up some nice VCT with my knee pads putting

on before I got the soft shells but yeah

nowadays when I crawl around I just usually stand up well the point here is that freaking

I'm not crawling my bad the point here is that you know

these products that are easy to put together if you take two pieces

and you put together yes that that that uh process is easy but leveling your

substrate making sure you put your poly film down or or any you know Prine

moisture barriers about the where your crawl space is to your like in residential stuff if you're going over

concrete floor which again I just glue it down with the high moisture adhesive to always you know go back to your

moisture readings and remember what uh Seth and them said which I learned uh in

that podcast was it's not just that if the the the

question about moisture mitigation is if it has a chance to get to 100 so without a vapor

barrier it will have a chance and so you should moisture mitigate that was a

whole new kind of you know whole new

uh yeah it was new to me I honestly hadn't looked at it that way I didn't know that that was the way the industry

uh you know the manufacturers uh dealt with it I thought changes changes the

way you look at it right it instead of looking at it what it is right now it's does it have the chance and that it's 95

now but your slab is 40 years old you should probably

mitigate yep that's that's the that's the recommendation the to the high

moisture adhesive right I have on here that any adhesive will work right because there's been a lot of times

where we're we when we used to be on jobs and or talking to someone and

they're like I'm just going to grab this adhesive and throw it down with this and it's like man

that's it's not what you should be doing like there's different adhesives for different things

and like then there's also different like it could be for the same product

different moisture tolerances for sure so I think that myth is busted floring

isn't easy even the easier to assemble is not

easy uh you know tile's another example everybody there's man there was so many

people I seen on social like homeowners like doing their own hard tile yeah and

they they're just using the Spin Doctors or you know a leveling system of some sort that they got from Florida core

Lowe's or Home Depot and they're like this is easy you know so easy just spot bonding it this is so easy dude it's it

is uh it's insane or they're not spot bonding and you don't realize that uh

how many Hollow floors are out there because of that product um you got to make sure your

thin set you get away with a little more if you're not going to be you know

lifting it back off that thin set you know your thin set maybe just a sco a

little bit drier than normal hell you got to have a a perfect Bond so that

when you level and pull that that tile up level with the next one that there's

legs to your thin set you know otherwise all you did is pull it off the thin set

and now you have a hollow spot and it's either it's Hollow if it's ceramic tile

it's going to break because ceramic is really not that strong porcelain tile a good 38

porcelain tile probably lasts a long time before it breaks 58 probably won't break but still Hollow still not going

to last for as long as if it was done correctly so some of these things I

we've talked about in previous podcast of Manufacturers and tool companies

trying to engineer the skill out of of uh some of the products because you know

I think it all goes back to the uh shortage and Quality Labor you know um

get enough bad floors they start trying to engineer out the failures I don't know that that's working because 23 to

22 the failure rate or the uh overall dollars in uh failures did not change uh

anything worth talking about so not folks hire a local professional

floring installer to do your project and you'll be

happy I like this one this one's for all the the gc's out there and the people who are actually in the construction is

a new concrete doesn't need prep that's brand new concrete what do you mean you

gotta skim the floor what do you mean you got to encapsulate it what do you mean you gotta grind it buff

it that's brand new yeah and you over tried it looks like a sheet of

glass and the adhesive that we need to use for this particular product has to have some

mechanical Bond you know there's any number of things that go wrong with new concrete

yeah they got a vapor barrier but the the schedules cause a lot of that problem you know again a lot of this

stuff goes back to Mo to moisture and proper preparation of a

job I mean you guys know it's like the stuff isn't it look looks easy even

carpet tile has things you need to be concerned with you know and it's about

as easy as it comes I'll never forget the first carpet

tile project that we were part of that failed this is years ago right and it was uh installing everything to spec but

all the edges started curling because of the way the material was stored and then we installed it in a very large wide

open building and everything came in and I remember them telling us hey we got the manufacturer to send us a back

Bender like what a back Bender what do you mean we got to peel it up run it

through the machine so it cups it and then then we install it again dude you

don't even have to say another word I know who the manufacturer is but don't say I'm not gonna say but don't say it

don't say it we need all you guys to support us so we're not going to call you

out though we might just saying no some point it's not g to come out in the wash

right and and I'm sure they've learned their lesson from that it was a learning learning uh moment it's got surface got

it has to do with surface tension in the

product so yeah that damn HGTV is telling these homeowners they they can

do the flooring themselves but man we were just talking about that Yeah we

actually our episode in a couple week is going to be kind of focused on this

topic itself yeah H has has caused more flooring failures

than than anybody because they the you don't get to go back and

look it it's not like they go back and they're like oh you know that house we did on the flipper flippy Flip Flip

flipper uh whatever show had to replace everything we had to replace it all you

know you don't get to see that I watch those shows and I cringe sometimes the thing about those shows too is you're

watching it and they're like they do everything in this amount of time and then you go give someone a bid and they're like I just watched this show

and they did all their flooring in like three hours what do you mean take you two days I will I will say that being on

set with Rollin a few times and learning the the ins and the outs um what those

crews are able to do with buildings in such a short amount of time

it's amazing yeah had you had somebody like

Rollin yeah he knows like you got you got Mr certified with you yeah well I'm

talking in general have a a a carpenter putting it

in or or they have the homeowner I've I've seen a show where they were doing the deal and the they were letting the

homeowner do some of the demo um and do some of the stuff like

whatever they felt like they could do and they were like oh we think we can do the tile backsplash and we think we can

do the the lvt and you know they're in there putting lvp in and trying to

figure out how to cut around door jams and it's like oh no they figured it out

they figured it out oh yeah I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure it's a beautiful floor well if you if you actually care

about your home and you want some of these products look we're not saying that it

can't be done correctly we're just saying have an actual professional installer do your floors and you got a

hell of a lot better chance of uh of it working out for you in the long run so

you know flooring ain't easy baby hey pay up you want you're account

do my taxes for free Mr accountant you know I think that's the that's the

professional version is like doing that's the original DIY right there what's that your own taxes

yeah well I'll let the pros do that and U for any accountants out there thinking

of uh doing their own floors leave it to us that is hilarious all right what's

our next myth what about um acclamation oh acclamation yeah doesn't

need to acclimate doesn't it what's what's the myth about that one Daniel what's what's you don't need to acclimate what is what do you need to

acclimate for like especially on these we were talking about like click together and stuff a lot of these are

just say just go in and throw it down no acclamation needed so why won't we just

believe them yeah that I don't know maybe Sunny can uh uh chime in here cuz he he's he's

on all these um you know kind of on the front line of a lot of these deals but

try and take an SPC or any floating floor out of a 100 degree warehouse and

go put it in a 70 degree office the same day and watch I it ain't it's not a good

scenario well and like even if it does pan out a time or two you put enough

humidity or something that's in the air like it's going to sweat in between it's

just not a good thing you should always acclimate your floor that's my opinion I don't care what it is I will say we'll

pull it into our where into our office to get it at least you're attempting right and like with us we just delivered

what like six or seven skids of lvt oh to the job site oh did are you laughing

at a comment that came through I don't yeah yeah I'm laughing that that comment right there

that's the one shy category see that's we're boys bro

that's why we're boys right there yeah thermal dynamics that is uh you can't beat

physics folks and quit getting sold these uh pipe dreams

from the manufacturers out there so yeah I think it's pretty clear that

acclamation is I mean all you got to do it it most of the products have well you

know what the other problem with all this is a lot of that has recycled content and different you never know

they don't even know how it's to react no they they they made a mix it didn't

need it I the bottom line is they don't know what's in it even because they get

different raw materials from the you know when I say raw materials recycled

materials to make these backing and these products out of and they don't even truly know what's in that you know

magical pellet dust that they buy and make their products out of

so Nate you're hired volunteer to do some

smacking he's Indian and then uh another one that I I

was looking at was uh heat welded vinyl is completely waterproof like

well there's a couple there waterproof seamless um seamless yeah it's flash coved right you you think

that it's not going to have any anywhere to get water in but that's in all in uh

who's doing it because we've been in projects before where it's like they didn't do any vertical welding

at all and these are in like areas where you can't have any bacteria growing or

harboring and it's just not good I will I will say I will add to that the way that that that

I learned and the way that Daniel was taught back in the day too like was not

right was not right let's just say that every corner had some sort of matching

silicone or [ __ ] yeah like we thought that that was the way it was supposed to be done you know you don't know what you

don't know I remember and then then learning was like what you can do that

you can I didn't know yeah well done

properly it's still a big ask for it to be completely waterproof and just mop

like you know I don't know you can always go into

a lot of these hospitals and you see where the mop line is on the the in uh intergral base it's like that far up and

they just you can just tell they're slopping whatever cleaning uh products

they want on that so maintenance doesn't matter is another

one that uh I don't know if it's a myth but it sure does um come up a lot is

like well I thought we just had to no you still have to clean your floor man epoxy grout will still get

dirty you know it may not we put grout sealer on it too though like it's supposed to stay clean why does it have

all these PE stains man like it's not supposed to do that but look I know it's PE smell it scratch it sniff

it Jack steam

mops that's good for the floor that's especially the lvp yeah it's good for the and real wood

let's run a let's run a thermodynamic product or a real wood product even uh

and let's let's just put freaking as much moisture as we

can into it yeah let's open up the pores by getting as the surface as hot as possible and then I had

a one of my floating floor uh like

disasters was about a 2500 square foot area maybe 3,000 ft it was cafeteria

walkthrough area for a corporation is in there uh you know their their food court

whatever and it was not it ended up curling and

coming apart and all the joints broke and it had nothing to do with the

product or the installation the floor was we made sure the floor was nice and level everything was right other than

today I would glue that sucker down still or talk him into a different product but the guy we went and watched

um them clean it right after the lunch rush and the guy goes back to the

like Boiler Room to get like hot water in a mop and he goes out there with a

mop and I'm talking 212 water you know dunks it in starts mopping it goes when

it hits it start bubbling it took that floor through that expansion retraction

that thermodynamic the the thermoplastic product was just it can't handle that

kind of heat and and uh it ended up curling and failing because of that obviously but um you know he was like

well just cleans it so much better yeah yeah dude you're you're

you're using boiling water it's going to clean it better you got to do proper

maintenance to your floor take care of it if you want to last long that goes from carpet to hot you know hot water

extracting it getting them oils and the dirt and the sand out of there that sits there and every time you walk on it that

sand Cuts Little Fibers if you don't have a good vacuum uh that's both residential and

Commercial more so in residential because it's a it's a cutpile uh you know

construction and it doesn't affect the loop carpets as much to death you know I

would I I would add that maintenance thing that that uh and this might be a myth in its own but to me maintenance is

probably more important than the initial installation right because maintenance can if it's a bad installation it can

kill it faster if it's a great installation it can still kill it like maintenance yeah I don't think anything

is more important than a proper installation but I would say that it that if you you can just like you said

you can kill a great project by improperly maintaining again these

marketing materials not to [ __ ] on the manufacturers out there but you know when it says on your binder in your

office no no maintenance or low maintenance it's like to the enduser

what that me I don't have to clean every day clean it or low maintenance means I

can clean it every once in a while no if you want your floor to last you got to

take care of it and um you know carpet's one of the the biggest it it just gets

matted like you know nothing it turns into like and people wear bare feet on

the carpet and those oils get in the carpet and M mixes with all that get a

uh uh what's that graphic uh um what am I trying to say like alert

to the audience it's gonna get gross uh you know all that yeah disclaimer it gets mixed in

with dead skins and and dirt and dust and just that carpet up I will say that

anywhere I see Daniel walking barefoot I make sure I put my shoes [Laughter]

on is that you don't want to walk on his oil but it's true you're not it's best

for your carpets if you do not if you wear socks at least or you do not uh walk on it with bare feet we we were

just having to he had a deal with the client that he was like there's something wrong with carpet and then he goes over there and he drags his feet

he's like you just got to vacuum it more man you got to get those fibers back up yeah like yeah and who knows how much uh

if you take a good vacuum how many fibers you're going to capture in there uh I would assume you guys aren't

selling like staple products or something like that you're probably selling continuous filament you know one

product cut you know we try not to sell anything that we wouldn't put in our house so it's um yeah he just just

needed a little bit of a a nudge in the right direction so he could understand it and why it was creating that yeah so

no M low maintenance floors do not mean no maintenance floors it means take care of them don't use steam mops like if

you'll read the the install instruction or the uh maintenance car and maintenance that is where the

manufacturers really do come clean they're like giving you not on their marketing material but how to properly

maintain the floor they cover their everything in there because they they'll that's what they point to if you're like

this is not doing well and a homeowner calls and there's a claim or you know an

end user calls and there's a claim they're they're always going to go look at them what how are you maintaining

that floor that's the first question I almost always get when we have a claim how was it properly acclimated

blah blah blah you know did you who in installed it and was it installed properly and some install um background

and then how's it being maintained yeah that I mean in their warranty documentation they have how

you're supposed to well that you need to follow their maintenance plan in their maintenance manual

so yeah so none of it's that easy so here here's one for the salesman out

there right because we've been we've dealt with this uh a few times that like

T size and roll sizes doesn't affect installation

difficulty we' had we've had it where sales people are like you're going to do this 20 foot right here and then no seam

but you got to go through this three foot door and then another

25 dude it's like are you serious dude like how we do it all the time I'm like

okay how does that job look so they're

dropping yeah they're dropping through a door a three foot doorway dropping another like it's said 25 feet right

then you have a three-foot door and then you have to drop another 25 feet through that door that's I'm exaggerating but that's

what it seems like like that's still crazy that's what my brain does crazy large large

format what do you mean you can't put that on here that the the floor goes like this

yeah as with almost everything when we start talking about install it shows you how much it matters to properly prep the

floor you almost have to be a chemist to make sure you got the right ad adhesives

that if you're going to you know have a glue down product and you know maintenance like

all these things matter and it boil normally boils down to proper

prep proper you know Le leveling the floor Moisture

Control situation so making sure you know the moisture and that's another

thing a lot of homeowners don't think they need to worry about moisture well if you have a freaking crawl space

that's only 15 in from from you know the ground level to the bottom of your wood

and you have no the the ba that crawl space is not taken care of um and

waterproofed you're going to get moisture coming up through that wood substrate and into your products so even

with wood floors you guys uh especially in older homes that have really small crawl spaces you got to worry about that

so I had a gentleman um recently actually that he did an add on to his

house and he added on over an existing sidewalk or like concrete that he had

there um for like their like back patio and I saidwell this is what I'm going to

have to do um because you're going to like I guarantee you they didn't put a

vapor barrier underneath your sidewalk and now you have all this finished wood everything's all highend looks super

nice and and I just made some recommendations and and he didn't he didn't really enjoy what I had

to say about his um ideas but most don't yeah it's just trying to protect his

investment for him man I was trying to help him out sure that's most of the most of the time when

you're trying to um uh deal with these things the you know you're you you got

to make sure you got a good project team if you're in the commercial world and that the gc's like understands that like

I'm not trying to we're not banking over here on these these issues we just soon

come in lay our product and be done and be gone man we don't want to have to

level floors mitigate moisture deal with all these things

like we just soon come in and do flooring

but six months down the road get a failure you get a problem who's getting

the first call we are so we have to bring those things up or else you

know yeah I agree Nate that's that's like 90% of it the pro I think a lot of the problem at least with retailers I've

talked to uh like retail installers is that salesmen don't do that a lot of

sales don't do it and they they just want the sell because everybody's paid

on commission or most of them and so if the store down the street will sell it

to them in a kind of I don't know maybe an unethical manner you know uh then you

got to do it well that's a a plague of of the retail world and Commercial you

know we got the Architects and things in the in the in between that at least have

some common sense to it to listen I think for the most part I'm not saying all the time but there's a lot of times

when they'll they'll actually listen to you especially if you've been around a long time and you're a good flooring contractor and got a good reputation

they'll they'll listen to you if you say hey this is the deal but going back to

your myth Daniel we got a job we're bidding right now I got to be real careful because it's in the bidding

process and everything but we have a job right now where an architect it's a big

open area and um uh oh he was about to tell a real

finish s let me finish a sentence big open area and it is

open and it's got floors going in I wonder if his computer died

it probably did well guess

uh Ash what the hell yeah we we can't put hers on there can we um no what

about some other things that that uh that new concrete doesn't need prep and

I like you know we we talked about it not needing moisture testing but when we always why do you need to do so much

prep when this is brand new concrete when you know that story that I told about um being on the job site with the

the GC and then being like it's a half inch different from me to you and you know you're only six foot away from me

dude yeah I know there's so many of that so much of that they just you know what's funny it's like it always comes

back down on the flooring installer and they don't ever want to back charge anybody else right but we have to deal

with all the problems we always have to be the uh we always got to be the the bearer of

bad news we are just the messenger at the end of the project you guys when it comes to stuff like that told you his

computer died yeah my computer totally died and it's been plugged in I kind of

worried about that at the moment so I I'm back can't get rid of me that easy although I do think that the gods are

looking out for me to keep me from saying whatever I was about to say about just gonna leave that alone said

I'm not gonna say anything El customer cut you off right C you

off someone was watching we filled it we we finished your your um because yeah because and

then we started talking about how brand new concrete doesn't need any prep because it's brand

new yeah this had to do with uh tile size and uh how how people budget things

for uh um not consider child yeah for tile size I'll just leave it at that I'm

not going any deeper I feel like I just maybe got saved for no reason at all my computer shut off so I'm just gonna shut

up on that one I I will say like uh when we did the the podcast with uh the gentleman from overseas drawing a total

blank on his name Tom Tom oh Tom cooch and and he said we just self-level every

job like yeah I'd love that I wish I wish that that was that what what

conference were we at that uh that sherox guy said the same thing he said he came over to America when he brought

sherox from Germany he's like you remember that yep that was uh fcica I

believe yeah he was like they they just like kind of rough trial everything in

with a broom and then you go in and Prime and self-level everything all the

time I'd love self-leveling if it was that way like we'd just buy pumps and

and like that' just be part of the business Pump Pump Pump It Up has anybody uh this is not a flooring

meth but has anybody used Sher knox's uh moisture like resistant not resistant

it's like it's moisture proofing like mitigation and leveling at the same time have you guys has anybody used that we

have not used that know about it for a few years and comment if You' used that

if any of our audience has used that uh comment tell me what you think I've got

a job coming up where the the concrete slab is horrendous it's a newer slab

sounds like the slab got away from the concrete guys uh but on top of that it

is testing high and I'm like well if I can kill two birds with one stone right

yeah so I'm wondering if anybody I'll get Shane out here one time so he can talk about that stuff because

that with the way he explained it like he told me about it a while he said there's some things in the works and

this is what it might be and then once it was released he was like hey come here I got I gotta tell you something

that's it's released isn't it right yeah

M I think there's if you're watching us on any of our socials let us know if you've used that product and let me know

what you uh what you think what your experience has been do we have a link to that webinar

coming up Daniel it's um FP and I'm I'm looking it up right

here I got a notification today about it that'd be a good one for people to to

sit in on that's through the FCI right yep and you don't have to be a member to

watch it you might have uh to pay a little something but it's like 25 bucks or something I don't even

know so they're going to have a webinar on it well I don't know if it's necessarily on it but uh Shane um is

going to be speaking on webinar yeah presenter is this Thursday

actually oh sweet they record those too so for

anybody who uh wants to go back and watch them in the future uh if you can't make the the FCC

webinars they record them all and you can get access to them so sweet all all right well hey we only

get through a few of the myths because we get kind of deep into it but I think what we've learned today is acclamation

is necessary flooring ain't easy and level not waterproof and it's it's not

waterproof and you better know how to floor prep if you really want to install flooring correctly right and then we

touched on it but make sure that you know how to heat well too when you're talking

about doing vinyl floors and rubber and all that because especially your inside

Corners where a lot of lot of guys try to get away with just uh uh you know

silicone or right I mean you know I'm guilty of it so I'm not dogging

nobody I'm just as guilty as anybody over the years uh but it should be welded and I know that there are some

inside Corners that are it's dog on near impossible due to other factors

but is what it is if you catch us on our uh you know YouTube Channel please give

us a like And subscribe you know let us know that you're uh enjoying the content

feel free to suggest topics that you guys want to hear topics that interest you doesn't always have to be about

flooring there's a um we have a good network of professionals if you feel like you know uh accounting we had an

accountant on before we've had you know uh personal well-being I for lack of a

better way to say it you know um uh yeah so if you got a topic it doesn't

just have to be about flooring uh let us know what you guys want to see Catch Us on one of the socials uh Facebook or

whatever uh interact episodes are like put online if there's one that catches

your eye and it's like I really want to talk to you guys on that one I'd like to be on that one just reach out man we'll get you on yeah

yep there for and then in in about a month we got the the Spanish episode

coming up too sweet yep Spanish episode's going to be great for all our

uh Spanish speaking uh you know crews out there that uh like to listen to us

ramble you can listen in uh native language when uh Jorge and I Think Jesus

Jorge for sure but they're GNA be Jose is that

right yeah Jose so yeah make sure to tune in for

that and um uh one final plug for FCC

and CFI is coming up really quick it's just in October in Orlando so we got

about a little over a month out now so if you guys don't have travel plans get them booked come down and see us come

hang out and um you know I might even get down there a day or two early I know

that CFI would really like to see some of the local Crews so if you're down in the Orlando area come on over um we're

um we're going to rock it out one other thing CFI a lot of the guys have gotten together uh is and I think this is going

to be for next year going to be doing a Fantasy Football uh league and all the

proceeds are going to sponsoring some installers to go to uh convention which

is pretty freaking cool and uh so hopefully we get a good turnout there and and and make some money and and get

to sponsor some people so just trying to get it to where everybody can get involved uh get in the industry if

nothing else uh reach out to Rolland and and start a local chapter if you're a carpet or you know a vinyl guy and start

a local CFI chapter um you know do this kind of things to get involved you can

always reach out to any of the training entities for training opportunities go to go career's website and go to

training and check out all the training options there uh we just onboarded all

of rx's stuff so you know get trained and and and and get paid man that's the

easiest way I can tell you is getting trained and proving it um you know that's where go Carrera comes in you get

your free profile on there and um you don't have to do work on the platform

but you can and get your Hammer rating and prove to your customers that you uh

Stand Out Above the Rest man so get on join join the uh join the movement you

know our our entry or intro into this podcast is true we're trying to forge a

new Legacy in flooring and that's one based on quality and getting paid what you're worth all we got to do is prove

it and then we can get paid yeah yeah and if if you uh if you have a a project

that you're really proud of make sure sure you go to uh floor trends.com and

submit your uh project to be in the installation Awards I think that that deadline is coming up pretty quick yeah

that's cool August 29th you have in to enter so

make sure you get your projects in there got nine days eight days got plenty of

time th your project about it and be about it be about it all right guys is

the pleasure as always to the audience thank you for joining us today and uh it looks like Efron's going to be joining

on the uh spanishs speaking uh episodes coming up as well so uh yeah tune in

boys and next week peace