Checking the layered floor structure

When lay­ing tiles, par­quet and oth­er floor cov­er­ings, a mul­ti­tude of oth­er products is employed. Vari­ous install­a­tion mater­i­als are con­cealed under the wear lay­er. Once installed, they are prac­tic­ally invis­ible. Nev­er­the­less, they may con­tain harm­ful sub­stances that pol­lute the air inside the room. There­fore, it should be care­fully checked wheth­er the mater­i­als used for pro­du­cing the floor struc­ture are low in emis­sions. These tips will help.

1. Examine the floor structure

Sev­er­al lay­ers of install­a­tion mater­i­als are hid­den under the floor sur­face. Apart from fin­ish­ing products like par­quet var­nish, also floor­ing adhes­ives, lev­el­ling com­pounds (fillers) and primers play an import­ant role. In addi­tion, there may be inter­me­di­ate lay­ers such as under­lays and oth­er products like joint fillers and seal­ants. All these lay­ers should be low in emis­sions. Oth­er­wise, res­id­ents run the risk of breath­ing in pol­lut­ants via the indoor air and of harm­ing their health.

2. Check out the packaging and ask the expert

Layper­sons often under­es­tim­ate the com­pos­i­tion of install­a­tion mater­i­als. They don’t know, for instance, that even water-based products are not auto­mat­ic­ally free of health risks. Low-solvent does not always mean free of pol­lut­ants. Build­ing products can nev­er­the­less con­tain vari­ous volat­ile organ­ic com­pounds (VOCs). Reli­able eco seals on the pack­aging like the EMICODE^® indic­ate wheth­er the products are really low in emis­sions. If in doubt, ask a spe­cial­ist for advice. In any case, you should always con­tact a floor lay­er to obtain a per­fect res­ult. Only pro­fes­sion­al floorers know how to prop­erly pre­pare the giv­en sub­strate and under­take full-sur­­face bond­ing. Both will increase the use­ful life of the floor­ing and enhance your com­fort of liv­ing.