Welcome to this new, special edition of Floor Covering Installer, our Troubleshooting Reference Guide. This is the first of two new issues this year; the next will be the October issue, which will be an Underlayment and Subfloor Preparation Reference Guide. The purpose of these two new issues is to offer practical tips and other information that will be useful to installers working with all types of flooring: carpet, wood, ceramic, and resilient/laminate. Instead of the usual step-by-step installation features, we instead asked our columnists to offer their best troubleshooting tips and discuss common problems for all types of floorcovering installation. This issue is intended as a reference, to keep on hand to answer common installation-related questions. Many installers have told us they keep the issues on-hand as a reference guide, so we decided to offer these two new issues specifically to address these needs. In future editions, we hope to answer all your major installation-related questions.

As always, we have tried to cover all types of floorcovering installation: carpet, wood, ceramic, and resilient. Following is a preview of what we have to offer in this special issue. For carpet, columnist Michael Hetts offers tried-and-true troubleshooting tips. For wood, columnist Mickey Moore shows how to troubleshoot cupping conditions in wood floors. For the highly requested subject of ceramic, we have two subjects: columnist Michael Byrne address crack isolation techniques, and Dave Gobis of CTEF delves into the ins and outs of thinset application. Last but not least, columnist Jon Namba digs into his hefty bag of tricks to offer troubleshooting tips for resilient and laminate flooring installation. To round off this month’s features, columnist Joe Grady gets to the bottom of adhesive terminology, and columnist Bill Baxley examines mold-related damage in several resilient installations.