Lock-In: Building for the Future (Carpet and Flooring)

We had a double feature on our Expert Lock-In this week – and after a quick but very important announcement from Jewson. It was on to Carpet and Flooring with LNPG member Max Hoyle and Carpet & Flooring Sales and Marketing Director, Wayne Smart.

You can view Carpet & Flooring’s section of the webinar above, but if you’re short on time, then scroll down for just the juicy details.

Safe Surfing

We’ve heard the internet is going to be massive! And whilst we may have become accustomed to using it for nearly everything, landlords need to be weary of buying carpets online. Wayne warned of the oft-hidden costs internet shopping for carpets (such as delivery and those necessary associated products). Underlays seem to be the main offender in this regard: classed as an associated but clearly vital product, this is often where retailers look to make extra margins. Buying carpets online may also mean measuring it yourself when it arrives, which even for the least optimistic among us, isn’t nearly as straightforward as you may expect.

Keeping Pets Out the Loop

Pets can bring joy to any household, and can be a major selling point of your rental properties if you allow or encourage them, but there’s nothing joyful about watching Mr Snuggles destroy your carpet three weeks after it’s been installed. Whether for your tenanted properties or your own house, the take home from this webinar is that with pets or small children in your properties, looped carpets are a dangerous game. This is because pets are likely to pull out the threads of a carpet, and with a looped carpet, they’re taking out whole sections at once as the loops are threaded together. Instead for these properties, it is recommended that you get a straight or twisted cut carpet where the exposed threads are cut off at the top.

Don’t Get Swept Under the Carpet

This is one of those tips that is obvious in retrospect, when your lying in the middle of the street with a five-metre roll of carpet pinning you to the tarmac, but it’s all-too-easy to ignore beforehand. The fact of the matter is this: no matter how strong you think you may be, when a roll of carpet is delivered to your property, the likelihood is you won’t be able to carry it on your own – they are deceptively heavy! Make sure that you have at least two people to take the goods inside the property (drivers can only come as far as the door, or even kerb in some circumstances). In fact, delivery can even be refused if the carpet is unable to move from the wagon into the house, so it’s important to get this planned out beforehand.

It’s Not All About the Price Tag

You’d be forgiven for thinking that price is always a representation of quality and hardiness when it comes to carpet. Strangely enough, in the world of carpets and flooring (that’s all of it, not just Carpet & Flooring the company) this is not always the case. If you want your carpet to be hard wearing, you should look to areas such as the density, classification, and specification to judge its ability to go the distance in your property – these details are all available in LNPG’s Carpet & Flooring Brochure. In contrast to pets, non-pet households, particularly those that are high traffic, should look at the loop pile style carpet because of their thicker density rather than the cut pile alternatives. The specification recommended by C&F in their brochures is 21-23 specification for higher traffic areas.

Underlay, Underlay, Ariba!

We’ve established that price isn’t everything, but still you should be weary of overly cheap underlay. In the webinar, Max used an example of a carpet with b-stock underlay underneath it. While it may look like a bargain online, it often means that the underlay hasn’t measured up varies in density across its breadth – leaving an uneven, wavy look in your carpet. The reality is that this underlay isn’t fit-for-purpose. Max had to learn this the hard way; let his sacrifice be your lesson too! On top of creating a seas-sick effect in your living room, the different density levels of the underlay mean it doesn’t support the carpet properly either, reducing its longevity.

And that’s your lot! You can learn more about Carpet and Flooring here.