By
Ben Laslett
Carpet is still one of the most common types
of flooring you see in homes today. Trends come and go such as shag carpet,
rich colors, neutral colors, but the fact still remains that no matter what is
in style, people are still purchasing carpet for their homes. Because this is
the case you, the customer, need to be aware of what the warranties on a
particular carpet are.
I like to talk about
warranties because so many times a person will buy a product knowing it has a
warranty but has no idea what that warranty actually is. Well if you read my
blog you will not have that excuse when it comes to floor covering.
Carpet warranties are
usually broken down into these three categories: Abrasion Resistance,
Resilience, and Stain Resistance. Now let's break each one of these categories
down.
Abrasion
Resistance: Abrasion is when a fiber loses some of its mass, but
because synthetic fibers such as Nylon and Polyester are made of plastic this
does not happen very much over the life of the carpet. Most warranties cover
about 10% loss of mass which means they guarantee that their carpet will not
lose more than 10% of its mass for the life of the warranty. Your carpet will
definitely ugly out before it ever wears out, this is where the next part of
the warranty comes in at.
Resilience: This
is what I like to call the carpet's bounce back ability. Every yarn has a
memory built into it, and the resilience is this carpet's ability to bounce back
to its original form after it is walked on. The better the resiliency in the
carpet, the longer the carpet will keep from crushing or matting. So basically
this part of the warranty is telling you how long the manufacturer promises the
carpet will keep from matting down or uglying out so to speak.
Stain
Resistance: This part of the warranty is pretty self explanatory; here
the manufacturer is saying that for a certain amount of time this carpet will
not permanently stain. But what you need to find out is what type of stains are
covered in that particular warranty because trust me, all stains are not
covered.
After reading this you
will hopefully no longer be in the dark about carpet warranties and you also
know the right kind of questions to ask once you are in the store before you
buy. Make sure you know the details before the purchase so that there are no
hidden surprises later on down the road.
