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Walked into a house in Phoenix last month and the carpet was glued directly to concrete slab
No pad, no moisture barrier, nothing. Just glue and carpet right on the slab. Client said they had it done 3 years ago by some guy who said it would be fine. I pulled up a corner and there was black mold already starting. Had to tell them the whole thing needs to come out and the slab needs moisture testing before anything new goes down. Anyone else running into this more often with these budget install crews?
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aaron67713d ago
Yeah I had almost the exact same thing happen last year with a flip house in Tucson. Only way to fix it right was pull everything, grind the slab clean, and put down a proper vapor barrier with new pad. Saved the client a lot of headaches down the road but man the extra cost stung them.
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burns.ruby13d agoTop Commenter
Putting in a vapor barrier is good but there's a bigger problem nobody's talking about here. If that slab was really wet enough to ruin the flooring, you probably had moisture wicking up from groundwater through a missing or failed underslab vapor retarder in the first place. Grinding it clean and slapping on a new surface barrier just traps that moisture between the floor and the concrete, which can eventually cause mold or delamination anyway. The real fix is verifying the slab is truly dry before sealing it, like running a calcium chloride test or checking relative humidity in the concrete. Otherwise you're just spending money on a bandaid instead of curing the root cause.
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