Shrinking a carpet?

You need to stretch your floors to the carpet size.

Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus

the OP reports the carpet is 10 years old. aggresive stretching may rip it.....

at this point live with it, stretch it a little and live with it.....

or replace the carpet. 10 years is a long time for carpet..

We just replaced 20 year old carpet - still in good condition but went to hardwood. Good carpet can last a LONG time. Cheap "berber", not so long

It depends a lot on what the carpet is made of.

Nylon is the strongest fiber that carpets are made of, and so nylon carpets are the longest wearing carpets. 10 years is not old if it's a nylon carpet.

Olefin is the least expensive fiber that carpet is made of. My experience with Olefin carpets is that they last about 15 years, give or take 2 or 3 years.

You should be able to get 30 to 40 years from a nylon carpet in a residential setting if it's vaccuumed regularily. Not cleaning your carpet is the single biggest thing that will shorten it's life because road grit (if you live near a graven road) will get into the carpet pile and literally cut the fibers to shreads when you walk on the carpet.

And a good wool carpet CAN last 50 years.

Nestork,

What is a graven road?

Dave M.

Hot melt taping a carpet together is not a job for an amateur. I used to do that, but now when I have to install carpet in a 14 foot by 14 foot room, I buy a 15 foot long, 15 foot wide Berber instead so that I don't have to do any taping.

I'd tell anyone in this forum that they can restretch their own carpet, but I'd tell them to hire a pro to hot melt seams back together if the tape lets go.

It would be far easier to just make the house bigger. Just move all 4 walls outward about 2 inches.

Actually a less technical skill - easier to do right, harder to do wrong - but more time consuming and more labour intensive.

Oh, I'm not concerned about the seam tearing. I'd be concerned about getting the tape down the middle of the seam. I was always concerned that the tape would move and by the time I got to the other end of the seam, there wouldn't actually be any tape under the seam.

And, I was always concerned about pulling the seaming iron out from under the carpet at the end of the seam, and having it come out like a great piece of pizza with glue stringers coming off all over the place just like mozzarella and getting all over the carpet pile.

'Oren[_2_ Wrote:

I'm chicken. I'd either butt two pieces of naplock front to front under the door, or use aluminum track and push a vinyl molding down between the two carpets.

'Oren[_2_ Wrote:

The truth is that there isn't a single thing on this Earth that doesn't seem easy once you have enough experience to be proficient at it. I just never had anyone to learn from, and so I figured it out as best I could on my own, but I learned that berbers were available in 15 foot wide rolls before I ever became proficient at it.

In my building, there are only 3 apartments that have living rooms wider than 12 feet, and I find it easier to install a 15 foot wide carpet than to seam together a 12 foot wide carpet to fit a 14 foot wide room.

One adapts to one's situation as best one can. My situation is completely different from a carpet installer. If the prospective tenant doesn't like the fact that I installed a 15 foot wide carpet instead of seaming together a 12 foot carpet, he can go rent somewhere else. I'm not the only saloon in town.

When you say"good carpet" do you mean wool or synthetic?

HB

Both. Good wool or good Nylon can both last a long time. Polyethelene is crap.

NEWBIE ALERT!!!

NEWBIE ALERT!!!

NEWBIE ALERT!!!

I'm calling a newbie alert so that the newbies in here don't get the impression that carpet is actually made from polyethylene.

Carpet is made out of three synthetic fibers; nylon, POLYESTER and Olefin.

The kind of polyester used to make carpet is called polyethylene terephthalate or (PET for short) because the plastic consists of repeating pairs of terephthalate groups bonded to ethylene groups like this:

-ethylene-terephthalate-ethylene-terephthalate-ethylene-terephthalate-

so, it's realy poly(ethylene-terephthalate), which is a totally different animal than polyethylene which looks like this:

-ethylene-ethylene-ethylene-ethylene-ethylene-ethylene-ethylene-

Poly(ethylene-tereaphthalate) is a polyester because each terephthalate group consists of a benzene ring with a carboxylate ester on each side and it's those ester groups that make PET a polyester.

poly(ethylene-terephthalate) is the plastic that soft drink bottles are made of, and much of the polyester carpet that's manufactured in the US today is made from recycled soft drink bottles.

I have an 11 year old house & carpet, with really light use

what would be a cost "range" to stretch my carpet? maybe 1500 sq ft of carpet

thanks marc

Smartass alert!!!! Smartass Alert!!!!

Sorry - PolyPropylene. AKA Olefin was the one I was thinking of - drag a chair across an "olefin" berber and you have a permanent drag mark melted into the fibre. It has pretty good colourfastness, mold resistance, and a lfew other good qualities - but it makes a crappy carpet for living spaces because of it's high friction and low melting point. It also attracts dirt like a dog attracts fleas. Skin oil from walking barefoot leaves tracks, and it is terrible stuff to clean - and it is not nearly as wear resistant as nylon.

And you forgot PTT, or Triexta, or Sorona

And you forgot PTT, (or Triexta, or Sorona) ( poly (trimethylene teraphthalate)

$.01 to $1,000,000,000.00 range.

Lot of factors to consider.

. Christ> I have an 11 year old house & carpet,

Over 80 percent of the commercial carpet made in the USA is made out of nylon. Compared to Olefin and Polyester, Nylon is the strongest fiber and makes for the longest wearing carpets. You can get even longer life if you choose a LEVEL LOOP nylon carpet because of the natural resiliency of a loop.

Almost exclusively Nylon. High end hotels may use wool.