I want to address the issue of carpet tile installation. It seems that no one is installing them correctly.
Lets make it clear–the old adhesive must be removed! You cannot apply the pressure sensitive adhesive over the adhesive from the previous installation. If you do the adhesives mix, they don’t dry properly and when you lay the carpet tiles on the adhesive they trap moisture underneath and eventually the moisture has to escape and it does so by vapour coming out from under the sides of the tiles. Then the carpet tiles curl and the manufacturer gets blamed.
When an inspection is commissioned a person like myself comes out and has to recommend complete removal of the tiles and adhesives. The job has to be started over again. The removal of the adhesive is a long arduous affair. Some times its necessary to bead blast the substrate. This is frequently just entirely impractical, there are work stations on top of the carpet everywhere etc.. Now the worst part– to compound the problem many of these same installers go back and relay the carpet tiles on some sort of epoxy glue. I can’t imagine what it is going to be like trying to remove all those tiles when they are done but it won’t be pretty. We all know what its like to remove the old vinyl tiles that were epoxied right? They come out in chips the size of quarters.
Its time all materially interested parties start reading the installation guidelines of these products. Many manufacturers will go on and say to cover the freshly prepped floor with a proprietary sealer. If these guidelines are not followed the installer and retailer will own the floor.
I think a huge part of the problem is that we carpet inspectors cannot tell the customer whats actually happening so the customer never knows what a poor job was done in the first place. If the customers did know I bet there would be less and less of this nonsense happening.