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PVC Skirting/Coving/Capping & Adhesive Failures

PVC Skirting/ Coving/Capping & Adhesive Failures
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Seamlessly joined/bonded coved skirtings are added to resilient floor coverings like PVC/Vinyl, rubber to make watertight floors to showers and wet rooms and easy-clean hygienic floors in hospitals and food preparation areas.
The use of high phthalate content as plasticising polymers in PVC sheet flooring, tile flooring, coved skirting, cove former and capping and now incompatible adhesives has lead to polymer migration between components, component shrinkage and adhesive failures.
resulting in gaps that are no longer bridgeable by the shrunk flooring, cove former and capping and non longer repairable with the surfaces coated in plasticised adhesive.
In Europe the use of coved skirtings in hospitals was abandoned some time ago

Heat is a contributing factor,
- warmer buildings are prone (e.g. hospitals)
- under floor heated buildings are prone
- hot spots near radiators (although primarily convectors some radient heat is present)
- hot spots below warm air hand driers

(NGS BRM ’11 – ’14)

Coved skirtings cover a multitude of sins including air gaps between wall linings and floor finishes which otherwise create air leaky construction; they remain leaky behind the coved skirting, but are covered up, so thermal flanking and thermal bypass, remains a problem.
With convected heat the bottom of the room is coldest and so has the greatest potential for condensation due to cold air behind the coving and wall linings or floor finishes.
Heat passing through wall linings and skirtings are then lost to airleaky construction and cold air from outside gets to the space behind the coved skirting.
Spaces behind coved skirtings provide a route for flood water to penetrate further and potentially damage more by wet and rot

(NGS BRM ’11-’15)

CI/SfB label for flooring accessories sample box

EcoShowcase Presentation Version 16 (PPT 2.9 mB)
- Attend the show to obtain the stick and this file
- Short on-line clip (45 seconds)
Failures in Capping and Coving 1 (Video WMV 244 mB)
- online file (7 minutes 37 Seconds)
Failures in Capping and Coving 2 (Video MP4 715 mB)
Gemini Video help (PDF 150 kB)
- Includes link to long version video