Cheap Carpet Tiles
Cheap Carpet Tiles : Making Sure Cheap Carpet Tiles Are High Quality
You may have found some cheap carpet tiles either online or offline through a storefront somewhere and you’re ready to lay the carpet tiles down to redecorate your home or office. The problem with cheap carpet tiles is that sometimes discounts are offered for a different reason than simply good will toward the customer from the store. If you’re getting carpet tiles for too cheap a price, it could have been a sign that you weren’t getting what you paid for. The best thing to do in this case is to look at the cheap carpet tiles and run several types of tests on them to make sure they’re of high enough quality to put safely on your floor and make it look presentable. Carpets should stand up to several types of tests to make sure they can handle daily traffic and other use.
First, your cheap carpet tiles need to be tested for pile weight. Pile weight, when the carpet is actually first made, is done by taking the amount of threads that are use in the creation of a tile and weighing them. If they are above a certain weight, they are deemed to be passable quality. You can reach down and run your hand over the carpet. You should feel the actual carpet mostly, and not the backing. If you feel the backing, it means that the discount carpet tile’s threading has been worn thin and it’s no longer really useable. Factories measure the weight of the pile in grams per meter, but you likely don’t have the materials to do this. You can settle for just feeling what the carpet feels like and walking on it a few times.
Next, you should test to see how well your cheap carpet tile gives. This is important because thread that gives too much means that you’re going to be standing on the bare backing before long and it won’t be comfortable on the feet. In addition, the thread itself could be damaged or even ripped completely free. Too little give in the carpet would mean that it wasn’t comfortable to walk on. Either way, your carpet can’t have too much or too little give. The best way to test it is to press on it with your hand and see how much bounce it has. Also, take your shoes and socks off if possible and walk on it to see how it feels beneath your feet. It should feel pleasant beneath your feet, with or without shoes and socks.
Next, you can try to see how well your cheap carpet tiles stand up to scuffing. This is when people simply drag their feet or any other objects across the carpet, pulling on the threads and possibly ripping them free. Good carpet shouldn’t suffer from this. In fact, Berber carpet usually doesn’t give unless something gets caught in the loops in the yarn. What you can do to test for scuffing is to actively scuff your shoes on the carpet. Take a close look after a while of doing this and take note of the threads where your feet were. If they look pulled out or changed in direction, then the carpet was poorly made. Usually, it should be able to stand up to the force of a human foot. However, if the area is highly traveled it might be a little more difficult.
If you’re in an office or if you have a rolling computer chair, you can test one of these on your cheap carpet tile. Sit down in the chair and roll back and forth over the same spot several times. After you’ve done this and allowed the carpet maybe ten minutes of recovery time, take a look at the pathways you traveled. If the carpet is of poor quality, it will have very pronounced tracks from the rollers. However, some particularly well-made carpets will resist this.
These are just a few tests you can perform on your own. There are other tests done by companies, such as the test to see how well the carpet insulates delicate equipment like computers from static electricity, and how well thet carpets stand up against carpet water damage but you likely don’t have the equipment needed to measure electrical current with your cheap carpet tiles. Instead, simply walk on them and test the feel. The difference between high and low quality is very evident, even to the novice observer.