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Resilient Floors
Care and cleaning
The trick to keeping resilient flooring in good shape is good preventive care. You need to protect your floor against indentations and furniture damage. Make sure your furniture legs have large-surface, nonstaining floor protectors. Glides should be covered with felt pads. Also check to see that rubber wheels are nonstaining.
You will need to protect a resilient floor from dirt. Using mats at your home's entrances will help keep grit to a minimum. You'll need to be sure that your mats feature latex backing rather than rubber, which may stain your floor. Because extreme heat and sun pose a threat to a resilient floor, you need to draw your window coverings during strong sunlight to minimize fading. On a regular basis, you'll need only to sweep or vacuum your floor and then mop it with a pH-neutral cleaner.
Installation
Resilient flooring needs 24 hours to acclimate before it's cut. Afterward, an installer will either trim resilient sheet flooring in place or cut from a template of the room, allowing for expansion due to changes in humidity. There's usually no need to remove existing flooring if it's in good condition. In fact, if your existing floor is an old resilient floor, it might be advisable not to remove it because some old resilient products contain asbestos (today's resilient flooring does not contain asbestos).
Most resilient tile is self-adhesive, basically peel and stick. If your new sheet flooring requires a seam and is being applied over an old floor, the installer will offset the two seams. The installer will then either apply adhesive to the entire surface area or to the perimeter of the floor, and use a roller to tightly bond the flooring to the subfloor, and a seam sealer to bond the seams.
The trick to keeping resilient flooring in good shape is good preventive care. You need to protect your floor against indentations and furniture damage. Make sure your furniture legs have large-surface, nonstaining floor protectors. Glides should be covered with felt pads. Also check to see that rubber wheels are nonstaining.
You will need to protect a resilient floor from dirt. Using mats at your home's entrances will help keep grit to a minimum. You'll need to be sure that your mats feature latex backing rather than rubber, which may stain your floor. Because extreme heat and sun pose a threat to a resilient floor, you need to draw your window coverings during strong sunlight to minimize fading. On a regular basis, you'll need only to sweep or vacuum your floor and then mop it with a pH-neutral cleaner.
Installation
Resilient flooring needs 24 hours to acclimate before it's cut. Afterward, an installer will either trim resilient sheet flooring in place or cut from a template of the room, allowing for expansion due to changes in humidity. There's usually no need to remove existing flooring if it's in good condition. In fact, if your existing floor is an old resilient floor, it might be advisable not to remove it because some old resilient products contain asbestos (today's resilient flooring does not contain asbestos).
Most resilient tile is self-adhesive, basically peel and stick. If your new sheet flooring requires a seam and is being applied over an old floor, the installer will offset the two seams. The installer will then either apply adhesive to the entire surface area or to the perimeter of the floor, and use a roller to tightly bond the flooring to the subfloor, and a seam sealer to bond the seams.
