The High Cost of Vinyl Flooring Fitting Explained
Vinyl floor coverings are becoming increasingly popular, not only for offices and other types of commercial buildings (including shops, cafés, restaurants, hospitals etc) but also in homes. They come in large continuous sheets as well as tiles and planks (the latter generally referred to as Luxury Vinyl Tiles or LVT for short). Today’s higher quality vinyl is available in a huge array of designs, colours and patterns including very realistic ceramic tile or stone appearances to wood effect planks and much more.
The cost of the product itself is often fairly insignificant compared to that of having it fitted in your home or office. It begs the question – why?
In our business, we generally fit out offices and most of our customers choose to have their office floors covered in either carpet tiles or vinyl – and sometimes a combination of the two. Notwithstanding the fact that in any case heavy contract (hard wearing for commercial environments) vinyl products are on average priced higher than carpet tiles, the differential in fitting costs is normally vast. The resultant fact is that it’s normally considerably cheaper to have your office fitted with carpet tiles than with a sheet vinyl or LVT.
The reason for this is that carpet tiles are far more forgiving and tolerant to substrate condition (substate meaning the surface onto which they are to be laid), require far less skill to fit and are many times quicker (by a significant factor) to fit than vinyl.
A carpet tile will often sit nicely on a slightly uneven floor, and it will most certainly sit directly onto a raised access grid floor typical of most modern offices. Environmental conditions such as relative humidity are also less of an issue with carpet tiles.
At this point in my article, it is important that I point out that I’m talking about vinyl, both sheet and tile, which has to be stuck down firmly to the floor. There are also other types such as loose lay and click-fit boards which do not need adhesives (or not much anyway) but these are a topic for a different article. Needless to say these too have limitations but not necessarily the same limitations and considerations.
So, to set the scene, let’s take a typical scenario for today in 2023. Its reasonable to assume that given the right conditions – i.e. a relatively large open plan office area which is completely empty and has a floor which is in adequate condition that does not require any filling or preparation – that you could pay as little as £20 + VAT per square metre for the supply, delivery and fitting of an entry level priced albeit good quality heavy contract nylon carpet tile. By comparison, its reasonable to assume that for an equivalent entry level priced LVT (luxury vinyl tile) you are almost certainly going to be required to spend upwards of £70 per m2. And I am speaking only of the lowest cost of the reasonable quality products in each case.
So why the difference and what makes it more costly to fit vinyl flooring?
Step 1: Moisture Testing: If vinyl is laid onto a substrate (surface) that has more than a certain level of moisture content then it will almost certainly fail. It could fail within a few days or it could take a year or more, but at some point it will almost invariably do so. And by failure, I mean that it will start to become detached (unstuck) from the surface its adhered to and this might be at the edges or corners, or it could reveal itself as bubbles or air pockets under the surface. Once this happens, there is no point attempting to re-glue it because the same will happen again. Furthermore, in addition to the peeling the material could also shrink or expand meaning that it will never go back properly anyway. With LVT, expansion will mean that the individual tiles will push against one another causing them to “blow” resulting in them all curling up at the edges and in such circumstances we have a problem that can not be ignored.
To ensure that none of this happens, the fitter needs to check that the relative humidity of the substrate floor is within acceptable levels. A floor might look dry and feel dry, and it is easy to assume that it is dry given that, for example, it is on the 4th floor of a modern building which is only a few years old (or perhaps brand new)! But the floor is likely to be screeded with sand & cement, or calcium sulphate, or one of many other types of substrate levelling coverings and all of these contain a high level of water when first poured. Some never dry out and the moisture is sealed in whereas others can take weeks or months to fully cure and lose their moisture content. Prior to 1965 there was no requirement to have a damp-proof membrane (DPM) under the concrete slab, so any ground floor of a house or commercial building would have a concrete slab that is continuously sucking up moisture from the ground and it will invariably be too damp (even though it may feel dry) to lay a vinyl covering without any further preparation.
So, before any work can begin, we need to carry out moisture tests on all types of hard floor surfaces, be they old or new, and this means taking readings with digital devices and then drilling holes and inserting probes and/or leaving hydrometers stuck to the floor for a few days in order to get the necessary readings. Once we have the readings, we know what we will need to do. This takes time, involves relatively expensive equipment and the cost of this needs to be factored into the eventual fitting.
If it turns out that the relative humidity is within acceptable levels, we can move straight to the next stage, but if not, we will have to apply a liquid damp proof membrane to the surface before continuing. But its not a simple case of painting on any old DPM. It has to be the correct type for the level of dampness, and the type of surface it is going onto. Certain DPMs will not stick to certain types of surface, and/or will not give sufficient protection. Again, cost-wise not only is there the time involved applying it and waiting for it to dry before moving onto the next stage, but the price of the DPM which can amount to a few hundred £ for just a few square metres. Nonetheless, it is an absolutely essential step.
Step 2: Primers and Levelling Compounds: The floor surface might look nice and smooth, but it has to be absolutely smooth and flat. The slighted dimple in the substrate or bit of grit left on the floor will show through the vinyl floor – far more than many can imagine. Most surfaces, even if they have been screeded to a sufficient level that would easily pass for a carpet or carpet tile installation, would not be even enough for vinyl fitting. We have to, therefore, apply a levelling compound (and incidentally a primer which we would have also had to do in step 1 above) which is a floated onto the surface, usually to a thickness of between 3mm and 6mm or thicker where there are deeper undulations/troughs that have to be filled. Once it has cured, which can be a matter of hours or days dependent on the compound used, it is ready to be lightly sanded down to take off any small bumps or lumps, filled wherever necessary, in readiness for the vinyl to be fitted. Again, there are numerous types of levelling compound which vary in cost, each having a specific use be it for a particular type of substrate (some compounds are not compatible with certain substrates) and with varying speeds of curing/drying. Each of these compounds is relatively costly (like the DPMs can be £ hundreds for just a few square metres) and again we also have to factor in the cost of labour.
The above description assumes the substrate is a hard surface. But In the event that the floor surface that the vinyl is being laid on is not a concrete or screed but wood, chipboard or even a raised access floor in an office, then it can not be laid directly onto these either. What would normally happen is that the fitters would have to lay flooring grade 5.5mm plywood (minimum thickness) on top of the existing surface, secure it with hundreds (or thousands dependent on area) of screws or nails, and then fill the gaps between each board and screw/nail holes with a filler and sand down once dry. The flooring grade plywood is amongst the most expensive type of plywood available, and the fitting of it is very labour intensive indeed.
Step 3: Laying the vinyl floor: As mentioned earlier, just the slightest bit of grit trapped under the new vinyl can be very noticeable (remember that the vinyl sheets are typically only a couple of mm thick! So sweeping and vacuuming is all important. Prior to all of this, the vinyl, be it a roll or tiles, has to have been sitting inside the building/room in which it is to be installed for perhaps as much as a couple of days so that it can be brought up to room temperature. Everything has to be at the same temperature so this means that it may require the boxes to have been unpacked and the individual tiles laid out to warm up, particularly if they have been sitting in a cold warehouse, storage facility or van prior to being delivered to site. Furthermore, there is an ambient temperature range within which the vinyl can be correctly laid. Too hot or too cold and it will lead to disaster and if the room can not be brought up or down to within this range the fitting can not take place. Why? – because the vinyl expands and contracts with temperature, so if it is fitted at one temperature and the room then heats up or cools down significantly, the tiles or sheets will shrink or expand accordingly after having been stuck down. This will lead to blowing where the joins between each tile push against one another and raise up from the floor, or contraction leaving gaps.
Where sheet vinyl is being fitted, this needs to be un-rolled, back-rolled (rolled back up in the opposite direction to which it left the factory) and left to sit on the floor for some time before it is ready to be glued down.
Having ensured the vinyl has reached the same temperature as the room, and that the room temperature is within the acceptable limits, laying can finally commence. Note that the process leading to this point has taken a number of days and potentially a considerable amount of materials.
Sheet vinyl and LVT (tiles or planks) are the same material but laid slightly differently and there are different/additional processes. In both cases a suitable adhesive needs to be applied to the floor, and the type and cost of adhesive depends on how fast or slow we need to work, and the type of surface it is to adhere to. Some stay tacky for a reasonably long time and allow us to spread it over a large area first before we begin laying the vinyl, and others go off very quickly which means that we have to apply the adhesive and lay the vinyl to smaller areas as we go along. Either way, laying LVT is a relatively slow process which slows down considerably more if creating patterns, boarders or applying in herringbone or parquet fashion. Obviously, the smaller the tiles (parquet size for example) the more time consuming it is, to the point that it can take many, many times longer than large planks laid in a regular pattern or indeed sheet vinyl.
Sheet vinyl is generally much quicker to fit than LVT, but there are circumstances where it can become very involved and with much skill required by an very experienced fitter. Firstly, the rolls come in different sizes, but typically they would be 2m wide by many m long. Therefore, to cover a large area it will be necessary to lay a number of sheets and where these join, they need to be welded together. This requires specialist tools and an experienced fitter. Secondly, in many environments (hospitals, carehomes, wet areas, WCs etc) where hygiene is of great importance, it is common practice to wrap the vinyl up the walls by using a technique we call ‘cap and cove’. This is tremendously time consuming and a job for only the most skilled and experienced flooring fitters.
Conclusion
So, to summarise, over and above the cost of the product itself, vinyl floor fitting involves a huge investment in time and materials. In general, it is far more complex than fitting carpets or carpet tiles and accordingly takes a far greater amount of time. Furthermore, 99 times out of 100, in order to achieve a satisfactory result it will be necessary to take one or many additional steps over that of typical carpet or carpet tile fitting such as checking for moisture, applying a damp proof membrane, priming, creating a flat smooth surface with plywood or levelling compound, filling, sanding and cleaning. The additional materials to achieve this will run into £10s or possibly even £100’s per metre, and the labour costs are also very significant because it is, simply put, a skilled and slow process.
Next time you need a nice new LVT floor fitted to your house or office, please don’t be surprised by the cost. If during the consultation/quoting stage the contractor offers what seems to be a very attractive price but does not inspect the floor or carry out moisture tests – or otherwise give you a very good reason for not doing so – then alarm bells should start ringing. Likewise, if they say they’re going to lay directly to a chipboard surface or floorboards, or a direct to earth concrete slab then seek further advice. Remember, once its in and it fails (or when lines or dimples start appearing where all the joins are in the floorboards or chipboard surface or screed below) it is unrealistic it can be taken up and re-laid or stuck down again. Instead it will involve taking everything up, throwing it away and starting again and doing it properly the next time – by which time you might have had built in furniture, kitchen cabinets and the likes fitted on top so it could become even more complicated.