Nowadays People have many options when choosing home decorative materials. You can see various kinds of flooring in the market. Most time it is hard to say which one is the best, and actually each flooring has its unique characteristics and using scenarios.
During the flooring development history, vinyl flooring as an excellent innovation, has many pros compared with original solid wood flooring and engineered wood flooring. Vinyl flooring has overcome solid wood flooring's biggest disadvantage of water resistance.
When producing vinyl flooring, manufacture will add different materials and some other agents. By controlling its rate, manufacture can produce many types of vinyl flooring such as LVT, WPC and SPC. LVT is the first generation of vinyl flooring, has many pros such as 100% waterproof and flexible, and its thickness ranges from 1.5mm to 5mm. LVT has 4 installing methods, self-adhensive, dry back, click lock and loose lay. Self-adhensive and dry back common thickness is from 1.5mm to 3mm, which is very cost-effective and cheap for many customers such as renters. Click lock is the main choice people will choose, in this method, people do not need to use glue or other ground structure, instead of that, they can install and combine each piece flooring very easily. Sometimes only the hammer is required as an extra tool. Loose lay is an expensive choice, though it is very convenient to install, it may not suitable for most customers.
LVT has 5 layers, UV coating, wear layer, color film, LVT middle core and LVT bottom core. Underlay such as IXPE or EVA is an additional option. UV coating provides the flooring with scratch resistance and controls overlay glossiness. Wear layer is mainly made of PVC resin, can protect the flooring from wear and tear in residential or commercial area. Color film gives a realistic texture like solid wood, makes the home look more aesthetic and elegant. LVT middle core and bottom core is mainly made of PVC resin and stone powder, with the rate of PVC resin to stone powder as 1:1. Underlay will be included based on customer’s requirement, which can reduce the moisture from ground to the greatest extent. This can also adjust some uneven ground without self-level.
WPC is the second generation of vinyl flooring, here i will give you a brief introduction to WPC. It is very similar to LVT, and the only difference is its WPC core, which has been added foaming agent. This will make the flooring thicker but lighter. During production, manufacture will replace the LVT bottom core with WPC core, then combine them by glue under pressing machine. However, WPC will require many operations and labour, this will increase the producing cost and make it expensive than LVT. Thus SPC has been created and appeared in public sight.
The full name of SPC is ‘Stone Plastic Composite’. As its name shows, SPC is mainly made of PVC resin and stone powder as well but with different rate. Stone powder occupies about 75% and PVC resin occupies about 23%, the left 2% are some other chemical agents.
SPC is the third generation of vinyl flooring. It has similar structure with LVT, with same UV coating, wear layer and color film. SPC core will have more stone powder than LVT, which will make the flooring very stable and stiff. Therefore SPC has another name called RVP (Rigid Vinyl Plank). SPC is not only 100% waterproofing, but also stable in various environments due to its stone crystal frame. It has been popular since 2016 and got widespread use in many countries all around the world based on its outstanding stability and durability.
Now more and more people start to choose SPC than solid wood. This phenomenon is mainly related to its extremely good characteristic.
SPC core inner PVC resin and stone powder substances integrate with each other very closely by using stabilizer
The overlay UV coating can provide a protection for scratching from knife or other sharp items.
The wear layer’s thickness determines its wear resistant performance, it is made of melamine resin polymer. Commonly the thickness is 0.3mm or 0.5mm, 0.3mm is used for residential or light commercial use, while 0.5mm is used for heavy commercial use.
This performance is a significant index to measure flooring’s durability. In the laboratory, experimenters will test it by using sand paper to scratch the surface. Based on different standard and test methods, abrasion test will get different results. Commonly experimenters will follow EN 13329, and the result will be divided into 5 levels from AC1~AC5.
The whole flooring can hold heavy things such as tables or sofas. This is entirely thanks to its more stone powder ingredients.
SPC is very easy to clean and maintain during daily life. You only need to mop it once a week without any worry about its deformation in humid environment.
It has an outstanding stability based on its tight and stable substances. It can adjust different temperature environment.
Because these vinyl flooring consists of different rate raw materials and different structure, they shows unique characteristics and performance.
LSPC is called as ‘Lighter SPC’, it has same structure with SPC, and the only difference is that workshop will add foaming agents to its raw materials mixing drum. This will let LSPC very similar to WPC, become thicker but lighter. It should be noticed that LSPC does not add same dose foaming agents with WPC, it keeps the balance between SPC and WPC. Under these ingredients rate, LSPC will not only has all SPC advantages but also it can provide a more comfortable foot feeling. The most outstanding pros is that it can help reduce about 30% weight in containers during shipment because its density is only 1700kg/m3.
ESPC is called as ‘Engineered SPC’, it combines LVT and SPC as its core, from the top to bottom is LVT-SPC-LVT, this is also defined as ABA structure. Like a sandwich, LVT wraps SPC so that it can both provide soft feeling and stable core. Manufacture will combine them by hot pressing, so they will integrate closely and become very stable.
HSPC is called as ‘Hot Pressing SPC’, as its name shows, the producing technology is not extrusion but hot pressing. Commonly when using extrusion, decor layer will be influenced and expand under large pulling strength from roller. HSPC entirely solve and avoid this problem. Correspondingly, this will cause more machine labour cost.
SLVT is called as ‘Stable LVT’, it has been added fiber glass to the middle of LVT middle core and LVT bottom core, which will make SLVT more stable and less size deformation.
There are also many other new or under testing flooring such as VSPC, Acoustic flooring. Overall, though people will have difficulty in making choice among so many types flooring, they will have more options to compare and suit various using scenarios. The market competition will become increasingly fierce, and Protex Flooring will always seek high quality and best service to become one-stop reliable supplier and occupy position in the future.
