The Huddle - Episode 176 - The Science of Adhesives: What You Need to Know

This week on The Huddle, Paul, Daniel, and Jose are joined by Sonny Callaham from Divergent Adhesives and the NAFCT to uncover the science behind one of the most critical components of flooring installation — adhesives.

From chemical make-up to job site performance, adhesives can make or break an installation. Sonny brings decades of experience and technical knowledge to the table, breaking down how installers can make smarter choices, avoid costly mistakes, and improve long-term results on every project.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The science behind adhesive chemistry and how it affects performance

• How to choose the right adhesive for each flooring type and condition

• Common installer mistakes that lead to adhesive failure (and how to avoid them)

• The impact of temperature, humidity, and surface prep on installation success

• New innovations shaping the future of adhesives in flooring

Whether you’re a seasoned installer or just starting out, this episode will help you stick to success (literally) by understanding how adhesives truly work from the ground up.

Why This Episode Matters: At The Huddle Podcast, we believe in Forward Progress — empowering flooring professionals through real, raw, and practical conversations that elevate the trade.

⬇️ Don’t miss our sponsors who help make The Huddle possible:

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NAFCT is a leading provider of flooring solutions, offering top-quality training, certifications, and support to elevate the industry.

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Stay Connected & Join the Conversation!

The Huddle Podcast is where the flooring industry comes together to connect, learn, and thrive! Recognized as the #1 podcast in the flooring community, we provide an unmatched platform for professionals to discuss everything from installation techniques to industry trends.

At The Huddle, we’re all about driving Forward Progress—empowering seasoned installers, contractors, and flooring enthusiasts to grow, innovate, and lead in their craft. Whether you’re looking for real conversations, actionable insights, or inspiration to take your career to the next level, The Huddle is your home for real discussions that matter.

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Heat. Heat.

Heat up here.

What is up, guys? Little uh misstep there by me. Welcome back to the huddle,

the number one podcast in Flooring. We're here to help you gain forward progress in your career. Simply put,

we're here to help you guys win. All our new viewers, welcome to the team. Don't forget to like, subscribe, comment on

our stuff. Go over to our YouTube page and hit that good old bell notification

as well. Today's sponsor, Shag Tools. As you seen, want to thank Shag Tools for

sponsoring this episode of the huddle. Today's topic, science of adhesives. With me as always,

Mr. Daniel and Jose Gonzalez and frequent flyer here on the huddle is

Sunonny Callahan. Mr. Sunny, how are you doing today, sir? I'm good. How you guys doing?

Doing well. Great. You know what? Can we start landing planes?

The glue. The glue. Oh, it's

I'm the glue dude. Someone else is the gluru. They've already stole that name. So, I'm the glue dude. Oh, did they?

Dang it. He's got enough like plays on names. Oh, yeah. Sunny Claus. That's the one.

This time of year everybody calls me. Sunny Claus and Diverg.

diver. Oh, that's hilarious. But hole, you know, that

I think you're the perfect guy, Sunny, to talk about the science of adhesives.

And I appreciate that. But first off, I want to ask, is there really a science behind adhesives or is

it just colored water? You know, depends on who you ask, I

guess. You know, there actually is a lot of science that goes into it, but the basic

chemistry of carpet and resilient adhesives is pretty simple. You know,

you're just mixing ingredients. It's not uh uh until you get into the urethanes

and the modified silanes and epoxies do you start getting that reactive chemistry to where there's, you know,

takes a little bit more to it. So on your standard adhesives,

uh, latex modified, acrylic base, that kind of stuff, can you kind of just do the quick rundown of what the science

behind, you know, behind that is and and what makes one he adhesive maybe more,

uh, I don't want to say better, uh, better, more appropriate. Yeah. feature

features and benefits of of why one acrylic adhesive is preferred over

another in certain circumstances. Oh, sure. That's uh fortunately that's

something I go around and talk about pretty often. I just did it the week we had our heat welding class. I gave the

presentation to the ICRC. Um, basically when we start talking

about uh flooring adhesives, we're going to talk about three main

categories. Hundreds of adhesive categories, but for flooring, we typically just talk about the three,

which is SPR, carpet adhesives, and then uh acrylic polymer, acrylic emulsion,

acrylic dispersion, all that. It's all the same thing. Those are those white adhesives for resilient floors. Um, and

then what we just talked about was the reactive, you know, chemistries, the MS, the epoxy, um, the urethane, things like

that. So, each one of them have a have a great benefit, you know, have a benefit

to what they're being used for. We'll start with the easiest one. That's SB.

SB styrene, but rubber, and that's used for carpet adhesive.

Down and dirty commodity item. We all buy latex from one of two people, right?

It's just how much good stuff do you want to put into it and how do you want to mix the ratios of things? Do you want

some something soft and gummy like a VCT adhesive? Those are SBS or do you want

something um you know lowend latex cost

effective or do you want one rich in latex so you can use it forster and woven double glue down things like that.

So, it really is just a mixture of how you want to do it. How much good stuff do you want to put in it? Um,

for the reactive chemistry, I think we need to do that that one first. Um, just

like what it says, it reacts, right? So, the SB and the acrylic emulsions that we

talked about, they all when they flash off, they dispel the water. The water

goes out from it, right? where reactive chemistry and the

urethane and MS polymer, they're sucking in the moisture. That's why sometimes you'll see people putting water near it

to try to kick off the urethane. Um it's pretty comical. There's there's a

artificial turf company out there that shows videos of them gluing these artificial turf Yeah, I know you saw it.

Yeah, but the the they're just pouring bottles of water onto the urethane adhesive and it's just

the dumbest thing you'd ever watch. You're like, "Yeah, it makes it kick off." No, that's not what does it water

vapor. That will do it right. Just spritz it. Yeah. Your your comment was just like so

professional. I wanted to add to it, but I knew that it would go nowhere. Uh oh.

Yeah. I don't even remember what I said, but it was like, "What are you thinking?"

Al Gladen says he will donate $1,000 to any charity of Sunny Shaves the Beard.

Yeah, it's going to take more money than that, my friend. I was gonna say, you're gonna have to add some zeros to to get to get Sunny to

shape the beard during Christmas time. Man, time makes that every time he goes to

the mall. They just throw them out of bed.

In December when he steps out the door, his bank account increases just for walking out there with that beer.

Yeah. One, one day I'll send you So on the react.

Go ahead. No, I was just gonna say one day I'll send you guys a picture of me the last time I shaved it off for No Shave

November. We did a charity who was gonna, you know, who could grow the longest beard in a month and uh I was

like, "No, I don't care how much I win." You know, we donated it, but I don't care how much is at stake. I'm not

shaving it again. Looked like Groot from Despicable Me.

Well, on on on the topic of adhesives, when you're talking about reactive, you got epoxies and urethanes and uh

modified silines. Modified silings use moisture kind of kicks them off. Is that

correct? Right. Yeah. The urethane and a modified siline, they all they both, you know,

they're going to absorb the moisture that's in the air. And then there's what's called an exothermic reaction.

So, if anybody's ever left a two-part urethane or two-part epoxy in the bucket

too long, you feel that bucket warming up, right? It can actually start smoking. That's what the exothermic

reaction is. That's why you've got to get it on the floor and spread it out. That heat is is dispersed and it won't

cause the issue. But it definitely wants moisture in the air. So in Florida in

the summertime, it's going to kick off a lot faster than it would in Arizona in the summertime. Even though they may

have similar temperatures, it's the humidity that really does it.

Gotcha. We've uh we've done stuff with like the

the urethanes too where we had to spritz it with water because they're like, you know, this stuff is as soon as you're

done, people are going to try getting on it. So that's right. Oh, and you and I spoke about this. I've got that information

for you. I got to get it to you. But there's different ways that you can speed up these urethane adhesives, but

you know, I in the industry have really seen an increase in using single part

urethanes for resilient floors because yes, they cost more. They cost quite a

bit more than the acrylic emotions, but they're they're almost bulletproof, right? They'll stop the moisture. You

know, rolling loads doesn't matter. You can leave it at the door when at a grocery store for the walkoff mats. The

ice and snow and salt not going to hurt it. Um, you know, I've always told

people I can make an adhesive that will do anything and never fail. Wouldn't be able to afford it, right? And this is

kind of the the midpoint using that, you know, reactive technology to make it

work and not ever have any issues.

We did. We just You're dealing with all these Go ahead. We just did a entrance at a grocery

store that that was their issue was that every time someone would come and replace it, it would end up failing

again and again. And I was like, "Well, we do have this adhesive that doesn't react with the water and stuff, so

that's what we're going to end up using." And she was like, "Ah, can we just use the regular stuff?" And it's

like, no, because then we're you're you're going to think that it's my fault when I'm telling you that we can use

something else and mitigate this, right? Like you you want this to be solved long

term and not just keep on doing it and doing it and doing it. This is what we have to do. She was like, okay,

she want me to come back again in six months and redo it all. You know, let's try this. But,

um, you know, a lot of people when we talk about two-part urethanes and two-part epoxies, they've both been

around for a long time. And historically, the epoxies have always been a lot um, a lot harder, a lot more

brittle, and the urethanes have been a lot lot more on the softer side, right?

So, a little bit elastic elasticity to it. over the last 20 years, epoxy and

urethane adhesives are so close that you really can't those two categories of the way they're different are not really

there any there's some epoxies that are that are more brittle, but for the most part epoxies and urethanes do the same

things now. And and epoxy catalyst is urethane, right? That's the catalyst

that's in there. So there's uh where there used to be a lot of differences in them, there's really not anymore.

I know this is probably uh you know the most obvious thing but can you go ahead

and describe for those uh who have not used these two-part uh systems? Um

what's the number one rule like what what do you have to do

for them to be the number one rule is not putting start to work. Yeah. not putting all the catalyst in

the pale and mixing it up, right? That's the biggest thing that we see. I mean, I had one, it was a very high-profile job.

Um, the adhesive uh was still wet underneath what it was and we scraped up a sample, sent it back. Um, you know, we

did what was called an FTIR, which basically is the DNA test for what's there. We found no uh presence of the

catalyst. They had just poured the single part of the bucket out and used it. Oh man.

Yeah. I mean,

make sure that you are utilizing uh the proper mixing instructions, the ratios.

Yeah. Uh secondly, and maybe uh where I was driving at, but your point is even

better. Uh you got to mix it right first. But, uh, we've had, um, heard

stories of people gluing up, uh, large areas and laying on it like it's

pressure sensitive and they soon find out and and and, uh, that it's not

sticking. And so, this is a these are wet set systems is the bottom line. Uh, you got

to get into them as soon as you can possibly get into a reactive adhesive,

whether it's modified silene, epoxy, or urethane. You got to get into them while they're

still wet. Follow the rules on the buckets. I know we we say that all the time, but it'll tell you, you know,

you average open time or, you know, spread in 50 square foot grids or some

type of a or it actually says must be set in wet. Yeah.

Yeah. They put that on there for a reason. Yeah. You know what's funny is uh that that

comment that this part of the conversation right there is literally the what made me start

reading specs a long time ago on the bucket and calling the phone numbers. It was a horrible project and we did

like I didn't I was a helper, right? I was still learning, you know, and didn't read it. Just kind of, you know, do as I

say type deal. and it failed and we installed it like like sheet vinyl,

right? We we treated it like it was what we installed every day. It was my first time working with it and having to redo

that project. I knew that guy I I know how much stress he was under, but man,

that was like I can't trust this guy to lead me anymore. Like

I got to read the bucket, not just listen. That's literally what started the whole thing. like,

well, not only that, then it was the heat weld and not sticking and not knowing that you got to get back to

the juke, but that's a whole another topic. Um, we that's a whole new podcast is what that

is. What is your favorite floor? What is your favorite white adhesive? Whitebeard.

What is my what your favorite white adhesive? and white adhesives.

I think uh you know I miss the traditional wet set adhesives and the re

but the reason I not is because we don't get non-porous slabs anymore. When I installed they were all porous and that

wet set made life really easy, right? Um but now with everything being power

trial and steel trial, whatever you want to call it, you have to open them up anyway, right? Um, and there are some

manufacturers who say no matter what, you've got to open it up to use their adhesive. Um, so as simple as it sounds,

not to minimize it, but yeah, you got to read the pale. There's a data sheet there for a reason. Everything's going

to be easy. That kind of that kind of comes back to to one of the things I wanted to talk about today is, you know,

for a long time, people had carpet adhesive. They had resilient adhesive. And this is my wood adhesive. This is

what we have. Those days are over. There's there's 20 different PSAs. There's, you know, there's multitudes of

wood adhesives that are different and they're all a little bit different. I mean, Dryte's got a great product that

you trial out and let it flash. You tried to do that with a urethane, like you said, Paul, it's going to be an issue. Ours are wet sets, right?

Everything's got to get in it. So, it they're they're not the same. You know, technology has has bettered it itself.

Even though people say they miss solvents, that's a completely different conversation. But, you know, solvents

had their place, they don't anymore because the polyme products that we're selling now are better than the

solventbased. People just don't want to change. They don't I don't Well, they are now you know when the

when the I was I was installing when that transition happened and the first

generation of polymer uh based adhesives were nowhere near as

good as the solvent based adhesives but of course they got much better and and we're doing uh you know as an

industry I think you know attacked and approached the problem of moisture in

slabs non-por for poor all these things. And that's why you have this that's why we're having this discussion. You got to

have the discussion because there's so many adhesives, but it's because there's so many different site conditions and

products that require a little tweak here or there in the adhesives. Um that

that's why you got to be a a dog on near a scientist or a chemist to to do the

floors anymore. Uh I I would like to uh say a couple of things. First off, I got to jump off

here fairly soon to everybody. I want to thank everybody for joining us. I am uh I've got a board meeting I got to jump

into for the children's home here in just a few minutes. So, I wanted to uh get that out of the way and thank

everybody for being here. Uh secondly, a lot of these adhesives the uh when you

when you're trying to get a certain result out of a out of a flooring and

you let's say you do pick a um an adhesive that needs, you know, needs

some paracity, which is most of them. Do yourself a favor if you're in the

commercial world and make sure you're s do adding that that adhesive to your submitt package because when you go

there and it's hard trial and you have to do extra work in grinding to grind

the floor up, at least you have something to point back to and say, "Hey, I submitted this product. You've

seen the the requirements for the slab on the product data. I made that very

clear to you up front. And now you've power trled and closed this slab up like a polished con partially polished

concrete slab. I have no choice than to run a grinder over it and open this thing back up

for free guys. So, and I know that most of us who bid these projects uh site

unseen most times because there is no site, right? It's a big field. they're getting ready to put an elementary

school on and um or a hospital or a restaurant or whatever this the

situation. And when you're when you are doing those types of things, make just

do yourself a favor and make sure you're submitting your adhesive along with the rest of your uh flooring products in

middle so that you have something to fall back on if you do have to go grind 50,000 foot of floor to open it up for

your adhesive. Right. And how how much longer do we have you for, Paul?

Uh, couple minutes here. Let's uh let's do this drawing while you're on here so that way we can uh see

who figure out who wins this. Yeah, I'd love for you to see that. Let's do it.

Let's Let's do it. I got it right here. Thank you to uh Tammy for putting this together.

And we are just going to click to spin and see whose name it lands on. Ready to

go? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. Here we go.

Oh, that is awesome.

Hey, Robert. Yeah, I know that cat. Nice.

All right. Fantastic. We got Scott on here. Let's do it.

All right. Congratulations, Robert. Yeah. Congrats. Thanks everybody for uh

on behalf of uh you know, the family. Thank you. Thank you to everybody for uh

participating and uh working working through all the technical difficulties

early on there. and and you know, thanks thanks for everything, you know, Sunny and Scott for putting, you know,

everything together and we hope that uh Denise, we hope that it it helps you out with what you got going

on. I mean, we know it's not going to solve any you the big issue stuff, but

you know, any any little thing that we could do, but that's what we wanted. That's right. Happy to help.

Denise on here right here. Oh, do you? That's great. All right. I love I love what she says. She calls it

the tribe. That's her tribe and I think that's a great way to describe us because we're, you know, we're all

together to make it work. So, I love it. Absolutely love it,

Robert. All right. Congrats, Robert. And uh

thanks to everybody who participated. That's that was cool. And that was a way better way than our little uh roller

ball thing. We used to use the old analog version of that. That was pretty

cool. G7. That's pretty cool. G7. Denise says, "Thanks." And she loves

everyone. And then she did. She said, "The tribe." That's where we're I will I will see you next week. I'll be

there Thursday night, but probably see you Friday. Going to Daytona.

Nice. All right. Well, thanks Paul and enjoy your meeting. All right, guys. Well, thanks Sunny

again for joining us, everybody. Thank you for all the comments and being on here and uh give the uh give the guys uh

uh all the questions. Shoot. Make them hard.

Yeah. We're gonna start with this comment right here from Jeremy. Um he loves Lew

said no one ever. Yeah. That's going down.

That That stuff will last a lifetime. That's right. That's right.

I I do want to go back to something we were talking about with the two-part adhesives. Yep.

You know, what are some of the biggest things that we look at? One is, you know, putting the catalyst in there and mixing it right. But another way to make

sure that that's right or the only way to do it right is to use the proper mixing paddle.

Yes. I can't tell you how many times do what RPMs do. RPMs matter.

Yeah. You don't obviously you don't want to whip air into it, but I I see guys on the job site using those paddles for

patch or self-leveler, right? Or they're using the one with a wrap bottom plate. That doesn't get down into the corners,

right? You've got to get that dispersed throughout. the the one with the fins on it, right? So, we got to use the one for a pin. It's

got a red fin on it. Yeah. I just had this conversation with somebody and and to me, I was like,

well, there's a difference between a a whip and a paddle. A paddle is not a

wire whip. When someone says whip to me for mixing, I think of a wire a wire

mixer, not a paddle mixer. So, maybe Yeah, those two terms were the same for

me when I was in middle school. I got a whip and a paddle. Yeah.

You're welcome. Can't do that anymore. That one right there. Then they call CPS on you now.

That's right. I miss those days. You used to talk to CPS.

Do what? No. When they No, when no one called CPS. You were scared that like if I would say I would call CPS, I'd get

whipped again. I don't know. I flip my kids off every

day. So, we do have a a question here, right? Let's uh

transitional adhesives. And Jeremy said this ear or no, who was it? It was Charlie. He he was

like, uh he he said glue and he was like I mean adhesive. I need to start calling it adhesive instead of glue.

Yeah. I mean adhesive is the proper term, but I mean by we're talking to the glue dude.

We're talking to the glue dude. So transitional glues. Let's talk about them. Well, I I I think that's uh I think

that's a great question because I think what I want to do is have some people answer. When you say trans transitional

adhesive, transitional glue, what do you what do you think it does? Because I can ask 10 different people and get 10

different answers. And I've been trying to explain to people that if I have a really aggressive PSA

this I'm I'm trying to pick my words and and and not pick a battle. If if I have

a really aggressive PS and it's soft and tacky on the front end, but over time the bond is so strong because it's a

soft grabby um adhesive and that vinyl can't come

up. That's that's pretty firm, right? Did it actually change in chemistry from

one to the other? Right. No, it didn't. It was just a really aggressive adhesive. Um, some people say that the

transitional term means, you know, tacky on the front end.

You can set it tacky, you can set it wet, or excuse me, dry, or you can set it anywhere in between. That's the way I

look at it more than anything else because if you can use it all three ways, it's going to be firmer on the

back end. So, even a PSA, if you get that PSA transfer to the back of a piece of flooring, it's permanent instantly,

right? There's who cares if you let it flash off or not, once you get transfer of adhesive to the back of the flooring,

it's permanent, right? So, I don't know. There's just a lot of misconceptions out there and and

misunderstanding that that it became such a buzzword and and uh the company who did it did a great job of marketing

it. Uh it's a great product that the industry needs that product and it just

depends on what you need it for. What do you need the adhesive to do? Then you can go out there and find what you want.

Yeah. Because I think we talked about it briefly before, right? And people tend to think that it just means that you can

use it use it either wet or let it flash off completely and use

it like a a traditional PSA. Right. Right. And and that's the answer

I get a lot. And there's a lot of people that didn't even they still

we just had this conversation in one of the meetings we had here at work and even our own guys three people were

referring to the same adhesive with a different terminology and Daniel had to

go into a spiel on this is where we're at. This is what we got to do. We have to check the adhesive. We have to

understand the difference between open time, flash time, transitional PSA. and

he gave examples of current projects that we were working on. So then you could see the guys were just like it was

like click click click. Oh, you mean that's why it wasn't uh it

wasn't sticky anymore after, you know, five hours of open time when I was doing all those intricate cuts.

Yeah. Oh, that's it. The label's going to give you that timeline, right? You got to follow that timeline.

Yeah. When it says two hours, hey, you better have that stuff installed in two hours. You better be rolling it in two

hours. That's like, yeah, my my mind. Well, think of it this way. As an adhesive manufacturer, if I thought you

could get the exact same installation, quality of installation by letting it go 10 hours, don't you think I would tell

you to do 10 hours, right? I would want to do everything I can to help you. If I say two hours, that's the limit, right?

There's a significant falloff after two hours. So, you want to make sure you follow it. So, you know, the idea of I

just glue it in the afternoon, I come back the next day. Well, apparently you do ECT in the 80s because we don't do

that. The adhesive isn't black anymore either, right? So, that's just

Yeah, you got to follow the instructions that are on there because if I could leave it that open, I absolutely would.

Right. Everything we try to do is to make it every adhesive manufacturer. What we try to do is make it as easy as

we can for the installer because if they don't if they have to fight the product, they're not going to like the product

and they're not going to buy the product. And then if they're not happy and they're fighting the glue, the whole job suffers, right? Your your mentality

changes if you're fighting fighting the glue. If you're fighting the patch, if you're fighting anything, you got to

make it as as friendly as possible is the way I look at it. Right. And I was just talking to baby sister about Forbo um and the old

adhesive. I was like, you know, back in the day used to be like almost base adhesive. You're spreading spreading base adhesive out and there was no tack

to it whatsoever um you know after it it cured or it dried. And now it's actually

pretty sticky. And this is the you know their second generation of their sticky stuff. So I'm I'm here for it.

Yeah. Well, TW 20 years ago, we made adhesive for a lenolum manufacturer and

it was just a uh carpet adhesive on steroids, right? It was even richer in X

than Lee's adhesive was. I mean, rich in latex, rich in binder, um high super

high solids, and that's all it is because you're going to that backing of that of of that jute and that PVC

doesn't come into play, right? You don't have to have the poly adhesive.

That SBR will hold it in place and not break down. So, there's a lot of different ways to skin

a cap. Yeah. Um, but definitely everyone like if there's

anything that you take away from this episode, it's read the bucket. That's right. Hey, my phone number is

all over the place on social media. If you have a question, call me. Shoot me a text. Call me. I don't care whose it is,

I'll help you. Talking to a manufacturer, right? And they were like, I was asking them questions about the adhesive. And they

were like, you know what? Let me just give you the person's uh information that that we get the adhesive from. And

they were like, it comes from a a Sunny Callahan. I said, I already got his number. Let me just give him a call.

And you know why you have that number? Is because you're involved with trade associations in the industry, right?

youwworked with people and got that information because I'm sure you have it for Ardex, from Repay, from all these

other companies because you've gotten out there and you develop the relationships that you know it makes

your life easier, right? It doesn't save the day. It makes your life easier and that's all you want,

right? And sometimes it feels like I'm cheating because some people will be like, "Hey, what should I do here?" And

it's like, you know what? Let me text this person over here real quick. And it's like skipping steps kind of. It's

not it's not cheating. It's not cheating, right? Like if you if you're if you're an unhappy client somewhere,

you don't say, "Hey, hey, waiter, let me talk to another waiter." You say, "Let me speak with the manager." Right? It's

just you're just skipping that part. You're going directly to You're not cheating. You're not trying. Right. I mean,

Oops, that wasn't I wanted to Was that not allowed? My thoughts. Jose wants to know why some

adhesives come in metal buckets and others in plastic buckets. Okay, good question, Joe. The mentality

has been for a long time that urethane u urethane and uh wood adhesives or you

know urethane adhesives in general needed to be in metal pales. And what

that does, that prevents air and moisture to come in from the side and from the lid because if it get comes in

contact with with the air and the moisture is going to cure around the edges, right?

Um get a heavy enough pale, a 90 mil pale,

and um you you can make sure that the lid gets sealed on there. Then you can

use a plastic pale for urethane. Um it's kind of in phases we see. Uh we we've

gone back and forth between metal and plastic. Uh they both work if you get

the right one. Um acrylics, carpet adhesives and things like that, they just go into a plastic pale because

they're not as sensitive. You can you can seal the pale up and it not be an issue. Um because metal pales are quite

a bit more money than plastic pales. So, that's that's one of the main reason it come down comes down to that. Um, you're

talking about a price point adhesive and you can save $4 on a pale. Well, yeah, that's what you're going to do. You're going to go with the plastic cheaper.

Yeah, those buckets aren't cheap. I do have a question. Um,

do you advise when you open up a brand new pale of adhesive, do you you advise mixing the pales and where it specifies

maybe it needs to be mixed, maybe it doesn't or stirring or or anything like that? Do you advise mixing them up like

that? Yeah. No, if it doesn't say to mix it up, don't mix it up. It may say to do

it. I mean, we have a it's not an adhesive, but it's a mitigation system that we say, you know, mix it slowly

with a stir or stir it slowly with a stir stick, not mix it, right? Um, you

know, sometimes people want to do that when the adhesive has been frozen. Don't do that. Just set it somewhere where

it's above freezing and let it come to temperature itself and you'll be able to use it as long as you didn't go too far.

But, you know, mixing it just doesn't fix it. But if the manufacturer says mix it, mix it,

right? And they even like it should call for how many free stall cycles that an

adhesive can have as well. I don't know if it says that on the bucket itself or you have to go online to get it, but

there are ways to find it. So when they say it's freestall stable, they're going to be testing it in

accordance with ASM's test method, right? Or standard, excuse me. And

if for me in the companies that I've been with, we always shoot for zero, right? That's the number that we want to

go to. We want to we want to be able to take the adhesive all the way down to zero. Let it sit overnight, come back

day, let it thaw, and then test it. If it's still within the specifications of when it's produced, okay, that's good.

But you got to do that five times. And if zero, you know, damages the adhesive,

then we go to 10. And if that doesn't work, then we go to 20, right? Wherever. But depends on going through that cycle

five times. That's that's when you can say it's free thaw stable. If you get it freestyle

stable 10 degrees F and you go to five degrees one time, it's going to fail,

right? But it can go to 10 five times, but if it goes to five once, it's going to fail. Could fail be a better way to

put that. So it's not a hey, it can do whatever you want. You've just got to find out what that temperature is. Um,

it's just not that hard to keep it in a enclosed area. Don't leave it in your van overnight.

That's where we see it. We even have crates here, right? Because it's like, "All right, guys. You're you're you're there's some things that

are pretty sensitive. We're going to put them in crates. We bring them in every night. We put them back on the van. When

you get to the job site, you bring it in the job site. That way, nothing is going to That's right.

keep on free stuff. Yeah, we try to make it easy. We have carts allocated to the vans, crates

allocated for the the items that we're worried about. So, yeah,

let's try try to make it easy. Now, what about um what about this comment right here?

Like, uh oh, about got Sunny's number from a bathroom stall.

Is that you that's been calling me? I got your $20. Hang on.

I forgot what I was about to say. I think Oh, um, go ahead. I was gonna say, um, we we just talked

to to to the guys too about uh making sure that they're checking dates even though like we have a rotation like when

we reup our stock and stuff like that or project to project, we still check dates and try to rotate. Um,

somebody had brought the dates up. I don't know if it was a phone call or what, but how the importance of checking

dates and shelf times and or shelf life, not shelf time, shelf life.

And just letting them know that it still breaks down even though it hasn't been opened, it still breaks down and settles over time. So

separates. Yep. Yeah. So we have some products that are a year and some that are two years, right? We we have some

seam sailors that are six months, right? You just got to understand what you're dealing with and and the label will tell

you what you need to do, right? I mean, I think we've all opened up a seam sealer, especially back in the

day, where you open up the can and it's like you try to pour it out and it's like solid in there and it's like, yeah,

that's not stinks so bad. Oh, the stinky ones. Yeah. Yeah. It's just grow It literally is

growing bugs in there. That's what it's I will never forget the color and the smell. Like it's like is that mold? It's

It's brand new. It was like, "Yeah, that that's what I was going to bring up because, you know, we I think

it was, you know, we talked about it before, but someone was like, "This this adhesive says that it doesn't grow mold,

but when I le I'm done with it, I put it away." And then I open it up and there's

mold. And I think you you had to explain to them why. So, can you just explain to everyone what's going on? No,

that's a great question. Great question. It's um you know, when it comes to

preventing mold from growing in a water-based adhesive,

um you can treat it for both the wet state and the dry state, right? You want to have both on there. Um

unfortunately, the products that kill the bugs and the bacteria are also the

products that kill humans and pets, right? So if you put too much in there,

you're not going to get the floor score, the CRI, or any of those green certifications that everybody and their

brother want, right? So it's a balance of what you need to do.

But again, the the mold and bacteria growth is just like plasticizer.

They're not mold proof plasticizer proof. They're mold resistant. They're

plasticizer. Once you get past that point of no return, it's gonna grow it. There's nothing you can do about it,

right? Um, again, to make it mold proof, you're going to put so much of the bad stuff in there, you'll you wouldn't want

to use it or just take the water out of it. Water is like one

then it's reactive and you don't have to worry about it. Yeah, water's like one of the mo the main catalyst for mold. So,

well, and it will That's right. Got to have something got to have water and something to eat. Yeah. you know, talking to someone else

maybe about it, but they were like, you know, when you're done using it, what you're doing is you're picking it up

from the floor and introducing that back into the bucket. So, it's not just the adhesive that is molding. You're

actually introducing whatever's on that floor to the bucket. Could be. Yeah, could be.

It's a good question coming up here, Nugget. And Kevin,

you know, it's a good one when Kevin when Kevin's on here. Oh, yeah. Thanks, Kevin. Why are the flooring manufacturers

looking for an adhesive to solve dimensional stability issues instead of try to figure out why their products are

not stable? It's easy. They suck. I don't I don't

know if there's a different answer than that, but you know, we get that all the time. I you know, and when we have this

conversation, and Kevin will feel the same way. If we get a water-based adhesive that can prevent dimension uh

dimensional movement on vinyl products, you'll be the king. That's the golden,

you know, that's what you want. That'll be you would be the only manufacturer out there if you can do that. That's the

golden ticket is what I was trying to say. But we can't do it. Thermodynamics is real. And if there's enough of a

swing of any of of the temperature and the parameters or outside the parameters

of what the flooring guy asks for, it doesn't matter if it's epoxy, urethane, MS, transitional pressure sensitive,

PSA, it's going to move. All of those are going to move differently because of the technology they are and their sheer

strength. But, um, it's just easier to try to pawn it off on uh on the adhesive

guy. and and that I'm talking about most not all manufacturers

um to to to try to minimize that. So

um that's why we've seen a swing in the process of installing vinyl planks. More

and more people are asking for that wet the wet adhesive transfer. Maybe not wet

set, but wet adhesive transfer. Semi wet set. Semi-wet. If you're going to do that,

just just uh use a wet set and install it like you would a wood floor, right? The whole benefit for having something

transitional or something PSA is you can do the whole room and then come back in and work on top of it.

Well, you can't really do that anymore. You can't even do that anymore. So, that's why the the time savings right

now doing three feet by 50 foot at a time versus uh what

an entire room. Yeah. Well, versus what the limitations are right now, right? An entire room. you have to have a whole crew of

everyone who knows what they're doing and the timing still got to be right. But if you're only doing a small runs at a time, you can still time it out and

still be productive. You can have couple people installing the last couple feet while someone else starts spreading the

next run of adhesive. It's just a matter of learning the products you're working with. But when they require that and this lab

is nonabsorptive, how you going to do what's how you going to get that transfer? I mean the the to me the root

of a lot of the evil we deal with is having nonp permeable or nonabsorbents.

Yeah. Yeah. And see porous is not the right word and I use it all the time but we're

trying to make a push that porous and non-porous are really really aren't the same. Aren't what we're looking for.

It's like if you do anything with ceramic tile, it's vitrius and non vitrius because you're talking about of

the product when it comes to moisture and non-porous just means it has pores

or it doesn't have pores. It doesn't. Yeah. Concrete concrete has pores, right?

But it could absorb or not absorb, right? Just depends on what you're doing. And it's just uh it's it's it's

something that we want to do. One thing I want to get in here before we before we wrap up is I I I want all of you out

there, especially the technical guys there and the installers, if you think you have a moisture related failure,

check the absorbency of the slab because I have never seen a slab that

has been uh absorptive have an ad have a moisture related

failure. And if I say I say that and why do you think that is?

Because when that that moisture comes up and gets to the to the back of the flooring and it condenses

and it goes back to the slab. If it's absorptive, it's just going to go back in. If it's nonabsorptive, it's going to

sit there in that adhesive as liquid water and it's brought up those alkali salts. So now you have water, you have

elevated pH and it's just sitting there in the adhesive. That's a recipe for disaster, right? It's going to break

down. Kevin says, "Unfortunately, we have to retrain an entire nation. That is a

tremendous burden." And that's true because there's a too many people out there that that don't that think, you

know, we say it time and time again, I've been doing this for 20 years. This is how I'm going to keep on doing it.

And that's just not the case. You can't have that mindset. That's something uh something I heard

today um is uh and and this isn't exactly what I heard. It was this was like based off

of a memories, right? Um so set and holding on to our ways that we're not

willing to learn the new ones. Um so, and this was off of a comment about memories. We're so set on holding on to

our memories that we're not willing to make new ones, right? Um not letting go.

So, I just kind of restructured it and talking about just learning period is

just a fancier way of saying I've been doing it like this for 20 years. Like Daniel said, you've been doing it for 20

years. It's worse when you get older because I know more. If I know more, I'm older. I'm an old man. I know more than you

young whippers snappers. And I just, you know, it's it's confirmation bias. If

you guys know what that is, confirmation bias is when, oh, you know the answer. You know that's it. Well, maybe it's not

that, but everything you look at is going to support what you think it is, and you may be completely wrong. Right.

Right. So, be open-minded and and and understand what's going on in totality.

We talk about in law enforcement is the totality of the situation. Right. It's not just one little part, it's the whole

thing. Then you can start putting things together and you can check off, okay, so it's not this, uh, it's not that, it

could be this. And then you can make a rational decision of what you need to do to remedy it.

And I think uh like when we do the class down in Ohio, Sarah actually she you

know she writes they give us a thank you card and all this stuff every time we go down there which is amazing.

And in the last card that's what she put in there is she said that she likes my open-mindedness approach to everything

because I go in there and I'm like guys if I'm showing you something and you know a better way to do it let me know so I can change too. Share it with me.

I'm not I'm not here to just try and teach teach. If you know a better way, I'm open to to changing my ways, too.

That's right. That's what the tribe does. Shares their ideas and and real

life situations. Jason says, "An absorbative slab can reach saturation at that spot, making it

nonabsorbative and can cause moisture related problem." True.

Yeah, I think that's um I mean it's a true statement, but it's it it takes a while to get there and that takes a real

problem, you know, real moisture problem, but absolutely true. But if you get get that non-perable, I

know what I was going to say. I don't know if I can say it on the air, but when when you turn it when you've got that water sitting there with the

adhesive, it just turns it into soup. And I usually say something else, but it it'll break down the adhesive because if

you just put an adhesive film in water, do what? No, I know what that something else is.

I just I was going to say it wrong intentionally. So yeah, false the uh

So you take a film of adhesive and put it in just the thing of water. Most everyone's, you know, acrylic emotions

adhesive are just going to sit there and it's not going to be affected. you take that same one and you put it in water

that has a pH of 11 or 12, a lot of them are going to break down. But that's how you know not to compound around it, you

know it has the polymer has good water resistance. So that's what you want to do,

right? I mean, so if we if if a manufacturer comes to me, we were talking about that before,

and I want something that really tacky on the front end and I can be able to

replace my carpet tile, you know, a year later. Okay. So, you want something soft and pliable. So, what we would do is we

would go to a polymer manufacturer and we would ask for a soft pliable polymer

and then we would compound around it. We wouldn't start with something that's really hard and has no tack and then try

to bring it back to that. So conversely, if I wanted a wet set, I wanted something with no tac, I would start

with a polymer on the other end of the spectrum and then that way we can we can go around it and make it have the

features and benefits that our customer needs it to be. So

Nate is saying that aggregate affects concrete more than people think. Limestone is porous, but the East Coast

uses granite rock and west coast has a lot of volcanic glass in the aggregate. So you have to, this is where knowing

what's going on and why we say that installers essentially need to be scientists sometimes so that way

when we do get thrown under the bus or they try to throw us under the bus, we have something to come back with, right?

Like I already knew this and this is what we did to mitigate these issues.

Mhm. Well, and again, it's not to oversimplify it, but if you're using a

product and that manufacturer says you need to do A, B, and C before you can do the floor, and you do A, B, and C, and

then something still fails and it's coming from this lab. That's not on us, right? We followed the instruction. You

as an installer, we can take it back to the manufacturer, say, "Look, I did it."

Document it. Just don't tell them you did it. document that you did it and it it protects you from having to

worry about something that happens with this lab because again we're we're not concrete experts but we're asked to be

all the time. Yep. And so I showed this uh picture to Sunny prior to us jumping on here and

said that I was going to show it because these are the kind of um things that you

know we get and someone just will text a picture and say, "Hey, what's going on with this?"

Oh, the social media is famous for that. There's a lot right now that that forum

that that you comment on the uh the water bottle on the adhesive.

So, you know, we we'll get something like this, right? And it's like, what is going on? Why is

it doing this? And you can see the adhesive um coming up through the seams and you

can see it kind of doming here. And I don't know how easy it is for people to see, but

and then you get I can tell you 100% by looking at that picture what's going on.

It's failing. Adhesive is coming up through the joint. That's all I know. You can't talk about

anything else. I left my X-ray vision gone. I Yeah, I can't see.

And then you just have to start asking questions from there, right? Because it's like what what why is it doing

this? Well, it could be

um moisture. It could be, you know, something reacting with the plasticizers.

Wrong adhesive. Why is the adhesive wet after installation? Right. I don't know how long this floor has been down, but that

would certainly play a role into, you know, what I would look at next. Right. Right. And then so the the text messages

I got were floors are two coat moisture barriered proper trial with PS adhesive

clean substrate. Um, and then I asked was the adhesive

removed? They said yes, bare smooth slab. And this is where it kind of got interesting because we you say smooth

slab and before I said that you kind of interjected and said that it's probably

on a slab that is in today's terminology non-porous,

right? Mhm. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's that I

mean, that would be the first thing I would check because, you know, for that for that piece, that plank to dome up,

you know, there's some kind of reaction going on underneath there. Is it the reaction of the plasticizer and the

adhesive? Is it a reaction of the adhesive not ever drying? Um, is it a

topical cleaner? Something affected that plank because if you left it on the floor just sitting there, it wouldn't

dome like that, right? So there's where you got to just start looking and checking things off the box. Like I said

earlier, you know, until you open it up, you just don't know, right? And this is where, you know, we

had David Zack on last week and Jason is on this week and, you know, uh, commenting, it's when you talk to

inspectors, it's like these are every scenario that they would have to go through when they're inspecting

something like this. So that's where you as an installer, it it'd be beneficial

to take this same stuff. So that way when you're on when you come into something

like this, even if it's your own project, it's like, "All right, let me start investigating what could it be?" And then you have to kind of reverse

engineer. That's right. the best way to learn anytime you get training uh like

inspectors take an inspector course or even factory training like they did at

Taylor last week um you're going to learn what going to happen when you do

this and if you don't do that what's going to happen so it gives you an idea

this is oversimplifying it but it gives you an idea what can you skip on the job site sometimes and what can you never

skip right because there's no perfect job site sometimes We have to make a change and pivot while we're there. What

can we pivot on and what can we not? Right. That's what what's really going to be important.

Yep. And it's all about Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Said it's all about that substrate. You got to start start at the base, right? Because we've been in situations where,

you know, contractors are like, "We spent a bunch of money to put this moisture barrier in here."

Yeah. Why can't you just go over on top of that? And it's like because we need

something that's absorbent, right, Sunny? We'll change it right now. We need something absorbent.

Absorbent. If we go over this, it's it's like going over glass

that he said we'll never set up. Well, and it's hard for people to understand

why we have to do extra stuff when they already spent all this money to try and not do extra steps.

Speaking of that, in that situation and also this picture right here, I'm going to guess that the

problem can be figured out by referencing ASM F710.

There's going to be something in F710 that wasn't done. That's why they're having that issue right there.

that it has to do with a well I just can't say right if you are not a member of ASM FO6 you

need to do it it's $115 it gets you all the documents you need

and you say oh what kind of documents the documents you're going to be judged by if you ever have a problem on the job

how can you comply with those requirements if you don't have them right so is going to come in and go look

you didn't do this, this, and this. Here's the document I'm going off of. And guess what? If you didn't do it,

you're going to be responsible for that installation. It's all about limiting liability. That's what we all do in

life, right? We don't want to have extra liability. If you have those ASM standards and you can look at them and

make sure that when you do your job, you're following these standards and following the manufacturer standards,

you're protecting yourself. And and if you're just an installer, you know, you don't have to you don't have

to have a store or sell material. If you're just an installer installing for multiple locations,

it's even more important for you to protect yourself because you don't have anything to offset any of the costs that

are associated with losing on a project like that, right? Like if you go install a 20,000 square foot LVT project and you

do it all wrong because just because the the the office told you that it's good to go and you lose, man, that's like

that's your business, bro. Like like I've seen people go out of business that because of that, right?

You know, same with moisture testing. people don't, you know, unfortunately people don't moisture test until they're

burned. And hopefully they didn't didn't get burned to the point where they've got to close their business, you know,

and and I've been, it's real, folks. I'm honest with people. Some of the projects that we get, you know, they

came back um to me and they said, "Look, honestly, you guys weren't the lowest bid, but when you came over here and we

walked the project and you're telling me about moisture testing and why we have to do this and why we have to do that," they're like, "That's the kind of people

that we want, right? like we're trying to make sure that there's no issues, too. And then they ended up switching to

um a different carpet that didn't require moisture testing. So,

yeah. Yeah. Broad carpet typically doesn't. As long as you use a a premium SBR adhesive, it's not going to break

down from alkalinity, the moisture is going to pass through it. Same thought before with the the absorptive nature of

of the slab. So, there's a lot to it. I mean, you know, we're talking about

limiting liability. Most, you know, superintendents on a job

site, they're going to want to minimize their liability because it's their butt on the line, right? If you show them a

tangible reason of why you need to do this. Here's the standard. If you don't do this, you're not going to have a

warranty. Guess what? That cat's going to start listening to you, right? He doesn't want to negate his warranty for

not only his company, but the building owner. So, you gota if you show them why you're asking this and show them why

you're you need to do this, it makes things go easier. And there's still some who are not going to do it. I'm

sorry. There's still some guys out there who are not going to do it. Makes for a great episode. Most of them are going to

Yeah. And that's the thing, right, is when they realize that most of the failures end up happening after they're

already moved in. And then to tell a client, "Oh, we have to take all your stuff out and then have this shut down

again after you're already moved in." It's like, you don't want to do that. Yeah. We didn't want to pay that $15,000

six months ago, but we'll pay 80 now to redo it, you know. Yeah. And Yeah. Right. The convenience

it would have been to to pay an additional uh fee versus what we're losing and still paying the fee on top

of that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I tell you, you guys have probably heard me tell this story. It

was at the Smithsonian Institute. They had me go up there and they're redoing putting they took up carpet tile and

they're putting in hardwood floors and they'd already had the job was like 100,000 square feet. They already had

about 10,000 maybe a little less than that already installed. And I walk in there and they are spreading urethane

adhesive right over the old green pressure sensitive adhesive

right over the top of it. And I stopped the job. I'm like, "This has got to stop." You know, it was our adhesive

they were using whatever. But then the superintendent came out and he's like, "Oh, we've done all this over here and

you know, everything's fine." He goes, "I don't have the money to to stop the job and and do it right." And I said,

"Well, do you have the money to do it again?" Because it's not a matter of if, it's when this is going to fail. And I I

hope that 10,000 or how much it is is fine, but moving forward, we're not we're not going to keep doing this. And

uh so I stopped a federal union job in Washington DC. And I lived it. I lived

to get out of there. I wasn't thrown in with the fishes. But I mean it's you you

I get my point to that was is you gota I mean you've gota and to stand up you got to show them the documentation of why

you're saying it. It's not just Sunny saying it's not just Daniel saying it or say this is the standard in the industry

that we need to follow and if we don't do it it's on you. Yeah. I mean we're working on a project

right now where they put um fire rated plywood on

on something and it's they're like can we just go over this and I'm like no. And then they're like,

they said, "I asked Chad GPT and ChatGpt said we could." Yeah.

Well, I guess I'm wrong. And I and I was like, "Listen, man." I

said, "The thing is is that the the manufacturer's documentation was

kind of vague, right? It was like, you can go over it, but you also have to do these steps." And the way that I

understood it and the way that they understood it, we weren't on the same page. So I was like, you know what? Let

me just call them. They went they went like this. You can go over it. And then the next

line said, if you and they were like, you can go over it. If you install underllayment,

there you go. Bam. Oh, f you. I mean, you know, here's the other thing

that I tell people that are not done enough in the world is bond test. If you have a question, something do a bond

test. Let it sit for 72 hours. Come back and peel it up. If you pull it up and all the adhesive comes off the

substrates on the back of the floor and there's something wrong with your slab, right? If you pull it up, everything's,

you know, all the adhesive stays on the substrate, nothing on the back, and it wasn't a PSA. Okay. There's some

compatibility issues with the adhesive in the flooring. It will tell you a ton of information.

Yep. And that's what we did. So, while I was on the phone with the manufacturer, I I got a hold of the guys and I'm like,

just go spread some adhesive, put some pad on there, put some carpet on there, so that way we we can show them that

it's not going to work. Just like a 6 in x 6 in or 1 ft by 1 ft piece, right? And by the time um I called the

manufacturer, sent him an email, they sent me um some

pictures back and was like, "This stuff is already falling off." Yeah,

let's Yep. There you go. Just had to do that with the guys on that broad loom job, that pattern job we

did a couple weeks ago. We had three different scenarios and I had them do three different scenarios on

bond test, right? Like we got to see make sure that we're limited. We got to see which one's going to work, which one's not going to

fail, and why are we doing this? And then they couple extra trips to the job site saves you about $50,000. It's

worth it. That's right.

Solving problems you didn't know you have in ways you can't understand. So, we'll do one

deep thoughts by Jack Handy. We'll do one more because we're over on

time a little bit already, but I do want to do this last question. Talk about Trial Notch important on absorbative and

not absorbive slabs. Jason is a smart guy, man. I like that

guy. is, man, we got to get him on again. Yeah, we do. He's just He's all in, man.

He's committed this industry. Um I like all the questions that he asks. Just he he'll just post questions just

to see what people will say. I love that. Right. Instead of just saying what it is, he'll ask a question. Yeah, I love

it. Yeah. Um, but when we talk about trial notches, the the size is dependent on

the absorptive of the substrate, right? You're going to use a lot smaller

non-porous than you would if it's porous. And the reason that is is if you're working on top of a porous

substrate and you use that smaller trial, just go from 16th to a fine notch, whatever. If you use that fine

notch on there, you're doing half of a fine notch because some of it is absorbing into this slab. So you use

that larger trial. So if some does go into the substrate, absorb into the

substrate, you still have plenty on top, right? And the other thing is is um you

know, we're telegraphing, right? That's that's a whole different show in itself. That's another reason why manufacturers

have gone down to that fine notch trial for just about everything because you know you're especially at a hospital

you're looking down the hallway what's clean. Shiny's clean. So the floor's got to be shiny and you see every tri going

across there. The bigger the trial the the easier it is going to it is going to be for them to see it. So you know we've

all gone down to the fine notch trial. But if you do that over something that's really absorptive, you're more than

likely going to have a failure no matter what glue it is. Been there.

Yep. And that's where primers come into play around primers. You know, if you have a dusty slab or a really absorbent

slab, you know, get a couple of pales of primer and prime it. You're going to save yourself a lot of headache. Well, I

mean, even on this this same project, right after we installed the underllayment,

manufacturer says, "Oh, if you're using this adhesive, prime it first." So, that's what we had to do. And it's like,

we have to do all these extra steps. Why does it cost so much? Well,

yeah, that's it. Well, I mean, when you're traveling that glue out and you're on the ground, you're traveling,

you're tri going back and forth and all of a sudden you got a bunch of built up on the ed edge of your

adhesive. That's a problem. You need a primer. Pick it all up, go back and prime it. You know, that means it's

overabsorptive. It's dusty. It's not going to hold the adhesive, right? The adhesive is going to coagulate on those

piles of dust that that are sitting on the surface. It's not going to it's not going to dry and and on the flooring

itself or the substrate. Right. So, there's a reason when you pull that up and you see all that dust and making a

mess, that's the reason you need to use a PR. You mean you just don't clean the the notches out every four feet?

Yeah, just scoop it up, throw it out, put it back in the bucket. That stuff will kill the mold.

Well, we definitely appreciate your time today, Sunny. I know um just like every time we talk, I learned a little bit and

I hope the the audience did, too. I I don't think that there's an issue with that. I mean, we we dug pretty deep

today and like you said, like we can go off on tangents on all these things like we can do an entire episode on primer

next time and right an entire episode on absorbent concrete.

Yeah, I have I have an idea. I'll say it later.

Do what? I have an idea, but I have to wait. I have to save it.

So, action items. Understand the flooring you're working with. I don't care if it's the same adhesive or the

same flooring system you've installed for 5 years. Go back and check that data sheet. Go back and check the label.

Chances are something has changed. Have changed the trial size that they recommend. Especially if it's new stuff,

take the minute and go take a minute and read the label, go through, write stuff. You know, when I go to a job site and

they hold up, they go, "This is my trial. This is my resilient trial. My wood trials in the back." That's not how

it works. Make sure you get the right tri, you change it at the proper times, you know, starts wearing down and just

follows on the pale. It's gonna it's gonna minimize a lot of liability.

Absolutely. People would be look at us crazy if I told them the amount of money we spent on notches.

Yeah, that's right. Way less money than what we would have spent on replacing and repairing or

renewing. But yeah, it's it's it people think that

stuff um uh you know that that it's same for every job that you do and everyone's

different, right? You just got to make sure you got the right stuff and do it right. Sounds simple enough.

That's why you got to get trained and that's why we have uh you know that

we're thankful that NFCT is a sponsor. So, we appreciate you for that. And we

got to get more people funneled in, get them trained, so that way uh we can talk about the labor shortage

because we talk about it all the time, but it's not necessarily a labor shortage. It's a qualified labor

shortage. We need more qualified people out there and that's where, you know, the audience

comes in. floor substrate class is it doesn't matter if you're a salesperson,

a project manager, an installer. You take that class, you're going to understand what needs to be done a lot

better, right? You're not going to find yourself in a problem because, you know, we go deep into the weeds in the

concrete. We go deep in the weeds underwood substrates. So, there's a lot of lot of useful information in there.

We had a lot of great minds put that together. Oh, yeah. 100%. I learned more about underllayment than I probably need to

know. That's right. Thanks, Sunny. And uh we we look forward

to the next time you're on. Yes, sir. Anytime, guys. Thanks for having me.

Give us a like and give us a like and subscribe. Get go over there to, you know, NFCT and Divergent. Give them a

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they listen to it. All right, guys. We'll see you next week.

All right. Thanks everybody.