Here is another view of my day in Dalton that I spent at the lab.
Lots of cool things about how products are tested and validated for quality.
Take a peek at this video. I will try to add more notes later.
There were a couple stand out things that I took away from the visit beyond my continued respect for this very fine laboratory:
1. The CRI carpet certification program finally means something! That’s good news for consumers long term. What does it mean? You can goto CRI’s website to learn more but a couple quick facts:
a. Spot Cleaners are tested to see if they can earn the seal. Since in the past more than 50% of spot cleaners were no better than plain water cleaning up common spills, they are now held to a standard. This is good for you and your carpet.
b. Vacuums are now tested as well. You hear all kinds of claims made by companies about this or that, but now with testing the vacuums have advanced in a HUGE way over the past 5 years. Incredibly good for your carpet investment, your health and your family.
c. You must have your carpets cleaned by an accredited cleaner to hold onto your warranty. I have always preached that maintenance is probably the single largest factor to the long term durability of carpet and flooring in general and the RIGHT maintenance is even more to the point.
2. The Equipment these labs use is incredible. (In terms of costs) They really do invest a ton of $$ for a soiling machine, or a gauge, or an oven, or a piece of sandpaper. They invest to make sure their results are “LAB QUALITY”.
3. Also I shot some pictures of the carpet walking simulator there are also locations that just employ full time carpet walkers. They just walk around all day on carpet in a supervised environment to make test durability. I salute the mills and fiber companies for pushing their testing to the highest levels.
4. You can tell alot about a floor after running it through the gauntlet of tests. The fact that the tests are independent of a particular manufacturer adds to their credibility. I have seen manufacturer tests which are subject to their own disciplines that are vastly different than independent tests.
Anyway – why do I care about all this? To me it is very simple: If I am going to put my name on something I want to know in an unbiased way how it will perform. Tests are not the end all, be all. There are other aspects to performance, but testing is a way to uniformly bring comparisons to the end user.
