What did you do today?

[highup]

Finished the job and next day wood floor refinisher started, so I waited a week to seal it. I did seal seams under fridge and another 18 inch seam. The recommend heating seam area to 100 degrees to make inserting the needle easier. I did that and seams closed up, so the look fine. That said, the fill pieces were narrow.
Here's the ones that bother me. Doorway and one 7 footer that will go under washing machine or dryer.

 

[highup]

No gaps when I cut em..... Invisible.

 

[Jon]

We never waited to cold weld a seam
Tooooo far to go back with our parking lot motorways

 

[Jon]

No gaps when I cut em..... Invisible.

What would happen if you run along the join with the point of the knife backwards, or the pointy sharp end of your straight edge to bur the gap then seal with your sealer?

 

[highup]

I got one side with my Armstrong trimmer for non patterned material, so zero Burr on one side. Miniscule Burr on the other.
I finished 7:00 on a Sunday. So these two seams were the last thing I did. Says in instructions to wait minimum of 2 hours before sealing.... doesn't say "seams must be sealed"within a certain time frame.
Because of that, plus the vinyl had been layed out flat for a day and a half, I figured it had stabilized. The IQ Granit instructions said seams need to be sealed to keep out water and dirt, but didn't say that it will shrunk up like a wool jacket in a rainstorm.
Makes me wish it was Armstrong Brigantine. Those seams wouldn't move if the house was flooded or torn apart by a tornado.

 

[highup]

We never waited to cold weld a seam
Tooooo far to go back with our parking lot motorways

This was 4 1/2 miles away like most of my work. Heck in the past 2 months I have done 3 jobs on one street less than 10 houses apart and another .2 tenths of a mile down the road from those...... and three of the homeowners are related. The motorway is two lanes, one each direction like it's supposed to be.

 

[DarisMulkin]

Just wondering here. If you was to heat it with Hair dryer/heat gun could that make it expand enough to seal it before it shrinks back? Just thinking out side the box again.

 

[Floorist]

Flat metal

 

[Jon]

I got one side with my Armstrong trimmer for non patterned material, so zero Burr on one side. Miniscule Burr on the other.
I finished 7:00 on a Sunday. So these two seams were the last thing I did. Says in instructions to wait minimum of 2 hours before sealing.... doesn't say "seams must be sealed"within a certain time frame.
Because of that, plus the vinyl had been layed out flat for a day and a half, I figured it had stabilized. The IQ Granit instructions said seams need to be sealed to keep out water and dirt, but didn't say that it will shrunk up like a wool jacket in a rainstorm.
Makes me wish it was Armstrong Brigantine. Those seams wouldn't move if the house was flooded or torn apart by a tornado.

No try to fill the gap by burring the vinyl. Okay it will leave a little hollow Even do this with little gaps with vinyl planks. It just seems to fill them. We used to do that all the time on commercial type vinyls just to tidy up the joins before heat welding came in. You will always get a better looking seam if one double cuts as that "lump" where it goes over the bottom layer makes it "tight"
Too hard to double cut commercial type vinyls as one has to make more cuts to get all the way through both layers

 

[highup]

Just wondering here. If you was to heat it with Hair dryer/heat gun could that make it expand enough to seal it before it shrinks back? Just thinking out side the box again.

That worked a bit on the 12" wide seam that will be under the range and fridge. Because the fill piece was so narrow, it didn't shrink as much as these two did. I can't imagine the chemical sealer being strong enough, especially if the seam doesn't make full contact with both edges.
I called another installer that does welding. Checking on how long it takes to get welding rod. I showed him the images.
Customers turned the heat off or way down because the house is being worked on so much with the doors open a lot running in and out.
Maybe have em crank the heat up for a few days until the floor temperature reached 74 degrees like when I installed it....... and the heat up the seams.
Maybe Jonsonite uses the same plastic formula as Manninngon did on their Fine Fields and Magna crap.

 

[highup]

No try to fill the gap by burring the vinyl. Okay it will leave a little hollow Even do this with little gaps with vinyl planks. It just seems to fill them. We used to do that all the time on commercial type vinyls just to tidy up the joins before heat welding came in. You will always get a better looking seam if one double cuts as that "lump" where it goes over the bottom layer makes it "tight"
Too hard to double cut commercial type vinyls as one has to make more cuts to get all the way through both layers

They say to scribe. Maybe an electrically heated utility knife would work to double cut. You have one of those?

 

[DarisMulkin]

I got an electric and also a butane one.

 

[Jon]

No try to fill the gap by burring the vinyl. Okay it will leave a little hollow Even do this with little gaps with vinyl planks. It just seems to fill them. We used to do that all the time on commercial type vinyls just to tidy up the joins before heat welding came in. You will always get a better looking seam if one double cuts as that "lump" where it goes over the bottom layer makes it "tight"
Too hard to double cut commercial type vinyls as one has to make more cuts to get all the way through both layers

You not getting me
Okay go back to basics when these plastic backed and other vinyls came out
Why did they invent seam sealer heat welding?
Cause it was the nature of the beast that vinyls shrink and something was needed to seal the floor from surface water going down the joins especially cross joins on the product you have used along with similar commercial vinyls. If you recessed the cross join before you heated the "curl" of the end of the rolls it would really shrink. Now if you heated the cross join then use the recessing sriber it wouldnt shrink as much. I use a rag about the lenght of a scarf kept very damp to cool the vinyl after heating
What we used to do to tidy up the joins was to use either a Stanly knife or now we use a straight edge to as I saw bur the gap to fill it by holding the straight edge perpendicular to the floor using the point
It is a lot easier, quicker to leave a slight gap with the scribe tool set to about half the thickness of the weld rod
Then just heat weld
Nowdays you can get the weld rod, the one with lumps on it, which matches the vinyl and you cant even see where the cut off weld rod is

 

[Floorist]

Fun evening.

 

[DarisMulkin]

Looks like the bad stuff is going to miss you. Keep your head down.

 

[Floorist]

After the storm.

 

[zannej]

I'm feeling better. Brother went to the doctor yesterday (I dropped him off & went to the post office). Then we went to the store & got groceries. Had dinner. Mom isn't feeling great, her blood sugar got low & her stomach is bothering her a bit. I made her some chocolate pudding that she liked though. We had rice & chicken for dinner. Thunderstorms hit today & took the power out while I was sleeping. It messed up the router's connection to the modem. Now the router won't detect the modem anymore. I thought maybe it was the cable so we popped in to the store to grab a new ethernet cable (cat6) and a new cheap router just in case. Cable didn't work. We plugged a computer to the modem to make sure it wasn't the modem. It worked. So then my brother set up the new router & it's working. Mom is using the TV as a monitor right now & has the volume up so high no one can stand to be in the room with her. LOL.
I'm in my room with cats piled on me. One of my fluffy black & white tuxedo cats decided to pet my face earlier. He touched my face with his paw (making sure not to put his claws out) and ran it down my cheek a few times so I returned the favor.
When I was away from the computer my cats opened the command prompt & had a bunch of 00000000 typed in.
Chatted with my friend online a bit about what he needs for his kitchen still. He asked me what size cabinets he needed. Apparently he found more vinyl plank on sale as well & got it for his bathroom. His stimulus check helped. I'm waiting for him to tell me when he wants to get the cabinets & when he wants me to stain them & put a coat of poly on them. I suggested cutting & staining the toekick trim before installing so I don't derp and get it on the floor. He's thinking of putting a backsplash up under the wall cabinets but I think painting would be easier & cheaper.

 

[highup]

I heated the doorway cross join (end joint) and rolled it backwards and side to side to flatten it. It had 15 or 20 minutes to cool maybe longer before I folded it back to start glueing. I didn't heat it after gluing, scribing and cutting the seam. The second seam with a gap was a seam in length. It shrunk the same amount.
After a week of having the house a good 78 degrees day and night, the heat was at some point turned down, then once the hardwood floor was sanded and refinished, the heat was turned off. It's probably around 58 to 60 degrees in the house overnight for the past week. I'm judging by the outdoor temps we are having.
If the house cooled off 20 degrees since I installed the flooring..... could that be part of the problem?

 

[highup]

expand...

"You not getting me
Okay go back to basics when these plastic backed and other vinyls came out
Why did they invent seam sealer heat welding?"
Because the stopped making good vinyl like Armstrong's Corlon products.
This is some sort of PVC product. My water pipes don't shrink.

 

[highup]

After a week and a half is this going to continue to shrink forever or is this as far as it plans to recede?
Do these materials ever curl like old paper backed vinyls of days gone by or do they just shrink? I'm guessing the latter.