Measuring Carpets

[andrewpreece]

I'm trying to measure up my hallway, stairs and landing for new carpet, being an untrusting fellow and wary of what a carpet fitter might try and put over on me! Thing is, all the pieces I need don't fill up a 4m or 5m wide carpet roll in a way that there isn't a significant amount of wastage ( c. 25% ). I know that I have to allow a bit extra and for pattern matching etc but even so there is still a significant unused strip of carpet left.

Am I charged for this leftover remnant or will the carpet shop try and sell it on? I may try and find different carpet in a 3m roll and see if I can squeeze my needs onto that if I am charged for carpet usage by the linear yard, instead of by the square yard ( I can get the best usage out of a 3m roll since I need 2.92 m of width to accomodate the three pieces of carpet I need ).

Oh, and does anyone have an opinion on nylon carpet for use in high traffic areas?(versus polyamide or wool mix etc ).

cheers

Andy

[Rick]

On staits, you can have *LOTS* of joins, as they get hiden at the back of each stair, This makes more small bits, and will fit better than trying it in long chunks.

Rick

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The beauty of using one piece is that it may be turned to equalise wear - most occurs right on the front of the tread. But keep spare bits so you can put the worn bit in the least obtrusive place then add a spare bit for one step.

[Bob Eager]

Our carpet supplier always leaves the bits behind, at least the significantly sized pieces. We keep them for spares, and for odd applications (e.g. under a paddling pool).

[Simon Stroud]

Recently had the landingsx2 and stairsx2 done (plus a few bedrooms). The one surprising thing was that I ended up with a join on the landing where I wasn't expecting one.

Because ...

It seems that landings have to be done "the way round" that means that the bit that drops down over the top step riser has to bend the same way as how it comes off the roll. In my case I thought that our 5m long landing (perpendicular to the stairs) would be done along the "length" of the roll so no join would be needed.

BUT they can't do it like this because when you bend the carpet over the top step the warp or weft (not sure which is which) "opens up" if it's bent that way. I think it's called "grinning" in the carpet trade.

So, the landing has to be done the other way, so if you have a long landing you can't avoid a join.

Ho hum. It made sense after they explained it. But it was a bit of a surprise after I'd planned out exactly how much carpet I thought was needed to mm accuracy.

Good luck, Simon.

[andrewpreece]

Diabolical, aint it! You plan ahead and then they hit you with stuff like that! Seriously, that's very interesting to know. It so happens that my hallway, landing and stairs are all parallel so I don't think they can clobber me with that one. I was just reading about carpets on the web, and one site mentioned that certain carpets or weaves had the property that you could not see the backing even if you bent the carpet double. Thanks for the info anyway, I'm starting to refine my estimates in the light of info provided on this thread,

Andy.

[Rod Hewitt]

"andrewpreece" wrote in news:41dd5fe9@212.67.96.135:

IIRC, polyamide = nylon. Anyway, if considering normal carpets, I would probably choose a predominantly wool mix in high traffic areas.

[andrewpreece]

You are right about polyamide, just found that out myself. I fancy a wool mix too, just a little wary of wool being expensive. Another little snippet I found today was that if a fitted carpet cannot be tucked into a skirting board as usual, or under a brass strip where it enters a room, it is usual to fold 2 inches of the carpet back underneath ( taking the underlay back 2" to make room ), and tack it down. This occurs on the edge of my landing where the carpet meets the balustrade for instance. That's another 2" of carpet to allow for.

Andy.