Carpet gripper.

[lukemcinerney]

Hello all first post,
We are buying our first house soon so we are a bit tight on money, the new house we are moving to has no carpets, we have brought some at the moment one is a felt backed carpet and the other is not (but not sure what you would call it). I have had a look at carpet gripper and to cut the long story short i dont known which one to buy
would a normal meduim pin wood gripper be ok ? for both types of carpet ?
or would i have to buy a wood grip with this microplast stuff on due to it being a flet backed carpet ?
or would i have to buy both for each type of carpet ?

Hope this makes sense and thanks for your help

 

[crazydaze]

The feltback carpet is designed to fit straight to the floor, it is not designed to be fitted with gripper and underlay. The feltback is usually fitted two ways, you can finish the edges with special product that locks onto the felt backing but most fitters would use a strong spray adhesive around the edges and tuck against the skirtings.

The other carpet depends on what type of backing it is as to how it should be fitted.

If you are fitting carpet on gripper, you will need a seperate underlay and a knee stretcher to stretch the carpet onto the gripper - it's a proffesional job if you don't know what your doing so you would probably be better off going with felt backs or product designed for direct fit rather than stretch fitting if you want to do it yourself.

As for gripper, there is short, medium and longpin available, it will either be standard (no fixing nails in, designed for being glued to concrete floors with the minimum of prep) or pre-nailed. Pre-nailed will be sold as suitable for wood or concrete floors, the fixing nails are different for wood or concrete. Basically most fitters will use medium pin wood or crete gripper for the majority of work, the other types are used less often, on less 'standard' carpet types.

 

[lukemcinerney]

i have heard though that alot of people use underlay aswell due to the felt not being that good and wears away quite quickly so quite alot of people use underlay. we have got a friend who is a capret fitter so he is doing it for us ! So are you saying then the gripper with the microplast is not suitable for the felt backed carpet ?

 

[crazydaze]

It's not ideal to use gripper and underlay with felt backs as the felt backing does not hold on the gripper like a hessian backing, but yes it is possible to fit this way.