Tales From the Floor: Domed Planks
The call came in that the floor was not staying flat. Upon arriving at the space, overall observation revealed the glue down Luxury Vinyl Planks (LVP) to look bubbled and domed. A few things can cause this concern. One is the planks were not manufactured properly, giving a domed appearance. This is confirmed by examining the uninstalled/attic stock planks to determine if they are affected.
These planks are installed in a large event center, and the doming was discovered by the general contractor right after they were installed.
The most common reason is plasticizer migration. That’s a big word that means that the old adhesive and the new adhesive don’t like each other. It usually happens when old, multi-purpose adhesive from a previous broadloom carpet installation was not mitigated properly and a new, pressure sensitive adhesive for vinyl was installed directly over it. The plasticizers (the things that make the glue gooey) don’t like each other and start trying to break each other down. This results in them also attacking the plasticizers in the vinyl plank. This causes the planks to bubble and dome. Sadly, the only way to fix this is to remove the flooring, mitigate the adhesive including the old adhesive, and reinstall new.
The following planks were installed in the large social hall of a church. The installer told the dealer ‘don’t worry, I’ll take care of the cutback’, AKA, asphalt adhesive. Obviously, he didn’t and now the entire installation has to come up, mitigate the asphalt adhesive, apply a bond breaker if needed, and install new product.
One thing to remember is that any type of skim coat is NOT a mitigation method. There are specific products out there that are bond breakers and will create a better bonding surface for the new adhesive.
