By Jake Stadler, Market Manager- Hardwood & Soft Flooring Systems, Bostik
Today’s construction industry clearly is going through a number of changes. The current “need for speed” has made tight timelines and professionally planned job scheduling more important than ever. It is fairly common that one trade must work on one specific portion of a building-in-process, while another unrelated trade toils concurrently in another area of the structure. Owners don’t want surprises, especially those that occur on contractors’ bottom-line invoices. And owners want to have their buildings ready for full occupancy and total performance, according to initially agreed-upon scheduling projections.
As a result, the term “Value Engineering” is now a much sought-after tenet within today’s construction industry. To the point, value engineering is a well-thought-out methodology that ultimately assures the lowest project cost without sacrificing performance and quality. The entire value engineering “model” focuses upon the optimal usage of any available budget.
Savvy contractors are now insisting upon hardwood flooring adhesives that not only offer high performance bonds, but moisture control and sound reduction as an all-in-one. This saves labor and product expense. For example, using a single-step solution that offers unlimited moisture vapor protection means that costly and time-consuming concrete moisture testing is not required when slabs are properly prepared. The added material cost for installing moisture mitigation products are not needed as well.
Regarding sound absorption, installers can eliminate having to install a rubber or cork mat. Via the ICC sound rating system, most rubber sound mats have a score of around 50 regarding transfer of noise between floors. These single step systems can have a score as high as 70. Without purchasing a separate sound mat or the adhesive to bond it to the subfloor and all the planning and labor necessary to do so, customers ultimately save considerable amounts of expense.
What about overall time savings? Because crews have less work to do overall, based on eliminating moisture testing, moisture mitigation, or sound mat installation (transporting heavy mats, prepping subfloor, spreading glue, laying out the rubber, waiting for it to dry before starting to install the hardwood flooring, etc.) not only are they able to finish the job earlier; in-demand professional contractors can then be on their way to next jobsite.
Putting down a single-step layer of adhesive also saves on the thickness of the flooring installed as opposed to results when using a ‘glue/acoustic mat/glue/floor’ technique. This is especially meaningful when every inch around doors and overall headspace is critical.
One-component/one step installation products make installations so much easier. It makes perfect sense. They save time, money and labor.
This clearly represents…Value Engineering Personified!
