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Spotlight: Carpet
How do you replace carpet in an occupied office building without the usual hassles and downtime? If a magic wand comes to mind, you’re on the right track. Furniture lift systems use a jacking system to lift office furniture just enough to replace the old carpet. Everything is set right back down in its place—without disruption and with a whole new look.
Recarpeting Requirements for the Occupied Office
“Not everyone who wants or needs new carpet is starting with a clean slate,“ explains David Whitney, architect at Reel Grobman & Associates. Whether a company is looking to renew a lease or when carpet needs to be replaced in an existing facility, traditional carpet replacement can be a challenging proposition. “There is always possible damage to furniture by breaking it down, storing and reinstalling it,” Whitney explains. “The existing data and electrical wires within those systems also need rerouting, which requires separate contractors.
But where this system really shines is reducing employee downtime, which is probably the costliest disruption in terms of lost productivity.” None of these are issues with a furniture-lift carpet replacement approach.
The Lift-and-Replace Alternative
Jack Sanguinetti, Executive Vice President of Welker Bros., was among the first to implement Renovisions® type furniture-lift technology for carpet replacement, which has been performed on more than 600,000 workstations nationwide. “Carpet replacement costs can be reduced by as much as 30% using Renovisions furniture-lift system. The savings from not having to evacuate and reoccupy the space bridges any broadloom price gap, and ends up saving clients in terms of employee productivity.” The jacking system fits furniture from manufacturers such as Herman Miller and Haworth, but custom tooling is available to accommodate older or custom-made office furniture.
Ready, Set, Recarpet!
“Employees are left notes the afternoon prior to the carpet installation instructing them to box up anything on their floors. The carpet installers come in the evening and use Renovision’s friction jacking system with custom furniture fittings, which work similar to a car jack. They lift the furniture about an inch from the floor, enabling them to cut and slide out the old carpet from underneath the furniture. They smooth out existing adhesive, put down new carpet tile, and drop down the cube right down where it was. Employees come in the next morning to find everything as they left it, except with a beautiful new floor. “We call that the ‘Wow’ factor,” says Sanguinetti.
Welker Bros. works with property management companies, architects, and facilities managers. Having laid 10 million square feet of replacement carpet tile over the past 12 years, Welker Bros. has refined the process down to a science. “Where we have the most fun is with a customer who doesn’t believe we can do what we say we can, “says Sanguinetti, “Whether it’s our zero furniture damage policy or meeting our schedule; it’s hard not to gloat at the end of another successful project.”
Carpet Tile’s Growing Popularity
The only catch is that you must use carpet tiles and not broadloom carpet for your replacement – but carpet tile has come a long way from computer rooms and airport hallways. “We are using carpet tile as a design element and have a lot of fun with it,” says Whitney. The industry trend of creating more random patterning in flooring is well suited for carpet tile’s unique aesthetic and functional benefits:
- Biomimicry – Reflecting the random pattern of nature is a popular theme in the green building boom.
- Ease of replacement – With random patterning, it’s difficult to tell when a tile’s been replaced. It’s also much easier than trying to patch a damaged area of broadloom.
- Seamless look – Random patterning helps make the tile floor look seamless without some of broadloom’s functional shortfalls.
From a practical standpoint, carpet tiles are not only extremely durable, but replacement boxes are easier to store in a facilities’ storeroom than 12’ broadloom rolls weighing many hundreds of pounds.
No Free Lunch
For companies in need of new flooring without the disruption, the furniture-lift carpet replacement system provides an efficient and economical option. “"But one should be cautioned, because it's a quicker process, there is a modest cost premium," notes Whitney. "However, given the alternative, it's definitely an advantage."
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