Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2024-08-22 Origin: Site
In current society, more and more people prefer to keep a pet as their hobby and relaxing way instead of parenting a kid due to too much stress. Pets are similar to kids, thus how to select construction materials to decorate home become a urgent requirement for those pet lovers. As we know, pets are always energetic and are fond of walking and jumping everywhere at home. Therefore, a good quality flooring is necessary, which will determine both pet health and flooring lifespan. Here i will give you a guide to buying pet-friendly flooring.
Most pet lovers will worry about how to give pets a better environment and do cleaning work everyday. They will pay more attention to below three points when choosing flooring.
1. If the flooring is not eco-friendly and pet-friendly, much toxic emission will affect pets health a lot and make them sick easily. What’s more, like formaldehyde emission, it will affect kids health as well.
2. Pets will always make garbage and stain everywhere at home. They will poop and pee at many places just like a naughty kid. Thus one kind of flooring that can be easily to clean stain and waterproof is necessary.
3. Pets are fond of scratching on sofa, bed, chair, flooring and so on. Pets lover will prefer to choose those better scratch resistant flooring.
In total, a pet-friendly flooring is very important and necessary for pet lovers who keep cats or dogs at home. There are various kinds of flooring in the market after many years development, how to choose a suitable one has become a big problem for residential customers.
As we know, till now there are three mainstream flooring in the market, which are solid wood flooring, engineered flooring and vinyl flooring. On one hand, the first two flooring both consists of real wood content while the third flooring does not. This makes vinyl flooring much cheaper than solid wood and engineered flooring. On the other hand, vinyl as a new generation of flooring since the start of 21st century, has many advantages in stability and durability, which is becoming a wiser choice for more and more people.
There are three main kinds of vinyl flooring during the development, which are LVT, WPC and SPC. All of them are mainly made of PVC resin and limestone powder. The difference is its raw materials ratio, which determines their different characteristics and usage. Here let me tell you the difference among them and how to choose for domestic use.
LVT is made of about 50% PVC and 50% stone powder. It is soft and can provide a more comfortable foot feeling. Commonly most pets prefer to soft flooring. LVT has no affinity to water because there is no wood fiber inside, which makes it 100% waterproof. What’s more, LVT also has excellent stain resistance due to its UV coating overlay. If your pet poops or pees on it, it will be easier to clean up.
WPC is similar to LVT with same ratio raw materials, but it will be added foaming agent, which makes the whole substrate become thicker and more soft. However, it should not be ignored that too complex producing procedure will cause extra cost and make it expensive as well.
SPC is made of about 25% PVC and 75% stone powder. This combination will make the entire flooring become more stable and durable. However, due to its hard structure, the feel underfoot is slightly inferior to other types of floors.
A good pet-friendly flooring should have many excellent physical performance such as scratch resistance, stain resistance, impact resistance and so on. It is very significant for flooring as it will influence the flooring using lifespan a lot. A pet-friendly flooring will not only benefit pets but also benefit pets lovers based on its unique characteristics.
Cats are always fond of scratch the flooring by its paws. Better scratch resistance can help reduce damage from pets and expand the flooring lifespan. From the regular vinyl flooring structure, we can find that UV coating is the overlay layer, which will mainly provide scratch resistance. Protex insists on ensuring the scratch resistance of the floor, and here is a related test to show its characteristic.
Specimen: 1220x178mm SPC flooring, 5.5mm thickness+1.5mm IXPE
Environment: Normal room temperature & humidity
Apparatus: Scratch Test Device
Steps:
Firstly laboratory personnel will put one specimen on the device and then add weight to it. Commonly 2400g will be added.
1) If the overlay UV coating has been broken, reduce the weight with 10g per time until there is no scratch. Then mark this weight as the first scratch critical data.
2) If the overlay UV coating does not break, continue to add weight with 10g per time until the scratch occurs and mark the previous weight data as the first scratch critical data. For example, if 2400g does not break but when add to 2410g it has been broken, mark 2400g as test result.
3) Repeat these steps on this specimen different areas for three times, then mark the second and third scratch critical data as well.
Results:
From the above three test points results, calculate the average data and the final scratch resistant critical data is about 2340g, which means it can withstand 2340g heavy weight to scratch on its overlay without damage. It is a good test result, and if you want a better one, Protex can provide as well. In this year Protex has started to develop one kind of flooring called super-scratch flooring, whose test result can reach up to 2800g.
If you have pets, you know that accidents can happen, and they don't always occur in designated areas. Over time, you might notice that your floors are starting to show signs of wear and tear, with some stains becoming difficult to remove. While regular cleaning can help, persistent stains may sometimes require professional cleaning to fully restore the appearance of your floors.
Thus a better stain resistant flooring is necessary for pet lovers. Protex flooring has excellent stain resistant performance and can pass EN ISO 26987.
Here let me simply introduce EN ISO 26987 test. Laboratory personnel will pour different test substances on one specimen, then stand for 2 hours. Next use different cleaning methods to try to remove the stain. Finally evaluate the overlay appearance changing after cleaning.
Results:
From the sheet we can find that only few kinds of liquid or solid substance are hard to clean and remove after even 24h such as concentrated sulfuric acid and KMnO4. It showcases very outstanding stain resistant performance to face with various liquid and solid stain.
A pet-friendly flooring should also have better impact resistant because pets are always fond of jumping from the sofa or chair and bumping on the flooring. Dent resistant is not like this, the former evaluates the withstand ability to static heavy weight such as table or fridge, while the latter evaluates the withstand ability to dynamic impact such as pets or other dropping things. Actually wear resistant will also be used together to assess flooring durability. Here is a sheet based on level of use for your reference.
Protex can provide at most AC5 wear resistance and IC3 impact resistance flooring. It can be used to heavy commercial use for about 10 years. Thus for domestic use, it is durable enough and can last the lifespan to about 20 years.
Cats and dogs like peeing everywhere when they want. Therefore whether flooring has better water resistant performance should be considered more. Here i will introduce a concept called swelling rate firstly. It is a test result data that evaluates the size deformation extend after soaking in water for specified time. From the sheet it is obviously that SPC and LVT has brilliant water resistance, which can be described nearly as 100% waterproof.
Pets especially large dogs will make much noise when running on the flooring. In addition, they will bark when meet strange people or feel danger. In order to avoid disturbing neighbour and other people, the ability to reduce sound is also an important index to evaluate pet-friendly flooring. Firstly let me explain what will influence sound during spreading.
1) Distance
The volume of sound depends on sound energy. Sound energy will be consumed and reduce when travelling a long distance. For example, if your friend talk with you face-to-face, you will hear what he said very easily and clearly. However, if your friend stand somewhere far away from you, even he speak very loudly to try to talk with you, you can hardly hear it clearly, just feel like a whisper. Meanwhile, thickness will also affect sound energy as it is similar to distance principle.
2) Density
When sound travel through barrier, its density will affect sound energy as well. high density such as concrete will make nearly all sound reflect, while low density such as sponge will let nearly all sound pass. Medium and suitable density will absorb a lot sound energy.
3) Porosity
Sound will reflect and change forward direction frequently when travelling through obstacle that has many holes inside. Then sound energy will reduce again and again and finally only few sound energy penetrate the obstacle.
For flooring, there are two main layer that will influence sound resistant performance, which are substrate and underlay. In theory, WPC flooring will have better sound resistance than LVT and SPC flooring due to its inner foaming structure. Underlay such as EVA or IXPE is mainly used to insulate wet moisture from the ground and insulate sound from people and pets. So which one is the most important factor to reduce sound energy? Here i will show you some test reports to see which one is better.
There are three main test methods to evaluate sound reduction ability, STC, IIC and ΔIIC. STC assess spread sound reduction, IIC assess impact sound reduction and NRC assess obstacle sound absorption. STC and IIC both test based on flooring+concrete while ΔIIC test flooring itself. Therefore, here i will use ΔIIC to showcase different materials underlay performance according to EN ISO 717-2.
From the sheet, we can find that when the underlay thickness keep the same, substrate affects a little from 5mm SPC changing to 5.5mm SPC. What’s more, IXPE has better sound resistance than EVA as well. It is because IXPE has been added foaming agent and its porosity has become very high.
Except physical and chemical performance of flooring, many pet lovers will also concern about some other points such as maintenance, safety and aesthetic feeling. They prefer to choose flooring that is easy to clean because pets are always creating garbage every day. This makes pet lovers have to schedule a daily cleaning plan. When doing cleaning, they will mop the flooring and then dry it, repeat these steps for many times. This require the flooring keep stable during wet and dry environment for a long time.
Safety is also an significant factor should be considered. Some toxic such as VOC and formaldehyde will release slowly and influence people’s and pets health slowly. In addition, some heavy metal will do harm to health deeply. After some years using, this will cause sick or even cancer. Protex always pay much attention to this point and select specimen regularly to do toxic emission test. The harmful volatile mainly comes from overlay UV coating and substrate. Here are the toxic lists and results that protex is always caring about and testing.
Flooring texture and patterns will influence and determine the whole home style. Commonly wood and stone texture are popular, and patterns with Oak, hickory and marble are popular as well. Protex can provide over 1000 colors and patterns for you to choose. Every year Protex will investigate different markets and develop hundreds of patterns to meet customers’ requirement.
If you choose LVT as pet-friendly flooring, dry back(glue down) is the most regular installing method. You should lay the glue to cover the ground firstly. Then install LVT planks or tiles on the glue. Installing them column by column until all is finished. This installing method is the cheapest compared with other methods.
Loose lay LVT do not need glue, and you only need to do self-leveling before installing is ok. This method is very easy to install whereas it is much expensive than dry back LVT of course, which is a high-end choice and suitable for matching specified decoration.
If you choose SPC, click locking will be used during installation. It is easy to install as well, while sometimes there will cause some deformation and curling without glue under high temperature and humidity environment for too long time. By the way, WPC installing method is same with SPC.
Here is the summary and comparison for these installation:
In all, how to choose a suitable flooring for pet-friendly need to consider many factors. Not only performance, durability and price, but also installation and long-term influence. Protex provides various kinds of flooring to reach customers’ different requirement for their home decoration and pet-friendly use. Professional advice and guide will always showcase after following Protex. Not only excellent performance, but also all-round service, this is what an one-stop reliable supplier should seek and reach.
