Hi Mahmood. The flooring courses are good and you will learn the correct ways of fitting but depending on what you pay your fitters and what you charge your customers will determine what they actually do. For instance a fitter doing things the correct way with time allowed would change the gripper to suit the carpet but I've worked with lots of fitters and 95% say, the gripper is down, great. They won't change it. I'm also surprised that most of your business is top end like westex but they still just want the lowest price and don't care about installation. I find customers who want arriva/ gala don't care how it goes down they just want the rock bottom price but when you have customers £30-70 just on carpet , they do care. Thats how i find it anyway. Top quality jobs asks so many questions, cheap just want it thrown on the floor. Carpet right specials. What area is it?
Ive known mahmood for over 4yrs, a 2nd generation flooring business owner, where his relatitives also each own shops, I believe as he has already said, he's joined this to learn, adapt and improve on what his business has done so far, looking to learn new things within flooring to adapt to the market, such as lvt installation, contract methods etc, there is no doubt him as him family know what here doing, but gaining advice from others isn't a bad thing. Everyday is a learning day!!
@adam. I was trying to give my advice to him in the response I gave. I also run a business passed on from my dad. I wasn't doubting that he had a business, I was just surprised that top end customers didn't care how it was fitted and only the cost mattered. This forum is definitely the place to learn. I've Been taught a lot from others, been own some courses and had some guys from the forum to jobs for me.
Knowledge is most defiantly power lads. Anybody can afford to charge more do to a better job with better end products regardless of which area your from. (In my opinion)
best practice throw out your PU foam underlay samples and stick with heavy rubber waffle/sponge (100-130lb) for rooms, a good crumb i.e. treadmore for stairs and heavy traffic areas and a good cobi felt i.e. kensington deluxe for your top end carpets akkies etc...(system 10/durafit for commercial, bordering or naturals) doublebank all your gripper unless you use golden or diamond gripper (the others aren't half as good as they should be) use the correct pin length (and concrete/wood gripper NEVER sell dual 'no' purpose) any woven back needs power stretching regardless of size and any secondary backed over 5m needs to be too.
We'll like I said in the thread before the area I am its all about being the cheapest so its cloud 9 pu and dickinson moore dual pin gripper , but im fed up of this and have decided to open another flooring business for customers who appreciate quality and understand it cost money to get it, so therefore I'm asking you guys these question, as I want my new business to give the customers best service possible and making their each step of the process to remember
no worries mate, do you have a floorwise distributor near you if so get the diamond gripper and run their hyper range, bit cheaper than cloud 9 but are decent PU's if you like that sort of thing and their gripper is one of the best on the market yey costs less than some of the cheap chinese stuff but defo drop dual purpose and split into crete and wood.
Well I take your advice and look into it mate, can I ask you a question mate how long you been installing floors for ? As you deffo know your stuff
was born into it mate but started weekends when i was around 10 or 11 with my dad (oddbod on here), but properly since 15 ish
both mate, knees are knackered now so pick and choose what i want to fit mainly do shopwork now subby out the rest
