By Mark Tranter, Airport Sector Manager, Brintons Limited, Brintons Carpets Limited
SubscribeBrintons Axminster, Tufted & Printed Considerations. There is no doubt that any specifier of airport floorcoverings have come under increasing budgetary pressures in recent years and are duty bound to ensure that all purchases are appropriate, whilst offering the best value for money in not only the aesthetic of the interior but also durability, maintenance, safety and practicality.
At first sight, one of the obvious areas for potential cost savings would be the floor covering where there are several options available, ranging from hard flooring such as marble, stone, terrazzo or vinyl through to soft carpet finishes such as bonded fibre, tufted nylon/wool, wool-rich woven Axminsters or tiles. With such a wide and varied choice the specification should be made by taking the area conditions and requirements into account and by considering the overall properties of the product and not just the initial main characteristic.
Although product resilience makes a hard floor surface appear to be the most cost-effective covering solution, research and life cycle costing has shown this not to be the case. The high initial purchase cost, installation charges, maintenance requirements and associated cost, plus the cost of cleaning chemicals must be factored in to the total life span of the product. In fact, hard floor cleaning costs alone can be as much as 2.5 times the cost of a carpet, and the need for regular maintenance is detrimental to a high volume traffic throughput of passengers where 24-7 operation is required.
A carpet has lower initial purchase and installation costs, requires less intensive maintenance and is conducive to underfoot comfort of passengers embarking or disembarking flights. Carpets can come in many forms and constructions, so making the right selection of product can also add complication, but an understanding of the main differences between each of the three main carpet types, Tufted, Printed and Axminsters, should ensure that the right product is selected.
In determining whether the correct product has been specified, we must first take into consideration the needs and requirements of each of the following key stakeholders: -
- The Airport Owner / Operators
- The Designer
- The Specifier
- The Contractor
- The Airport Management Team
- The Passengers
The Airport Owner/Operator needs to attract customers and ensure that all concession area revenue is maximised, provide an environment that is comfortable, stylish, well designed and functional whilst staying within the budgetary constraints.
The Designer/Architect wants to achieve a certain individual style to reflect the class and ambience of the whole interior. The designer needs complete freedom of choice to specify any materials, colour combination or type of design to achieve the requirements of the brief set by the owners.
The Specifiers brief will have been to meet the aesthetic requirements of the designer/architect and owners within the allowed budget. He will be concerned to ensure that the fitted products live up to the expectation of the owner for planned refurbishment and maintenance. The Specifier will want to work with manufacturers who can be relied on to deliver a product able of withstanding the required wear life. He will not want to be seen to specify a product which "uglies out" after only half its expected life, necessitating a very costly uplift and replacement causing major disruption to day-to-day operations.
The Contractors requirements are somewhat different. He will be committed to getting the floor covering fitted correctly in the shortest possible time. He will be concerned with ease of fitting, associated fitting costs and ensuring that the final product is acceptable to the owners and/or specifiers. He will expect to receive a product from the manufacturer that he can install with minimum problems.
The Airport Management Team will also want to see the floor-covering product installed as quickly as possible with minimal disruption to standard operations. Their requirements are for a good-looking, durable product requiring the minimum amount of maintenance and care. They will not be willing to suffer disruption to passenger throughput whilst major cleaning and restoration work or replacement takes place.
The Passengers expect a comfortable environment for departure/arrival of their vacation or business trip. The cleanliness and aesthetic appeal of the airport must match or exceed their expectations, providing good facilities and comfortable surroundings whilst waiting to board the aircraft. The property, regardless of age, needs to look modern, be easy to move around in and provide a safe, stress free environment.
The Axminster weave
Out of all this we can identify the key criteria for airport floorcoverings and offer comparative advantages of Woven Axminster, Print, Tapistron and Colortec for these criteria:
- Construction
- Representation of the design concept
- Availability and security of delivery
- Ease of installation
- Long term appearance retention
- Cost of ownership
1 Construction
The Axminster structure is completely integrated and 3 dimensional. The pile and backing is woven together with 12 backing yarns supporting each individual tuft, helping to retain them in a more upright position and increasing their resistance to flattening. A woven carpet will therefore absorb considerable stresses and strains during use, which is a very important consideration for heavily trafficked areas.
All of the three other technologies are tufted carpets, though all sorts of trade names often deliberately obscure this fact. Punching yarn through a thin fabric produces tufted products. The tufts are held in place only by latex adhesive. The construction is therefore only two-dimensional and virtually no support is given to the tuft by the backing construction. This factor has tremendous implications for many of the products characteristics.
2 Representation of the design concept
Woven Axminster –
Designers working on Brintons woven Axminster products have the freedom of expression to produce exuberant designs to compliment the décor of any prestigious installation. Choice of colour is unlimited as the yarn is produced specifically for each job and can be matched exactly. Multiple colours can be used in any combination, with no restriction on placement. Each individual tuft is placed precisely in the woven matrix, allowing perfect rendition of even the most intricate designs. Each individual tuft is distinct and completely dyed giving a crispness and vibrancy to the design.
Print –
One would assume that the printed process allows total freedom of expression – we all recognise the flexibility of our digital printers in the office. However, printing onto carpet is quite different to paper. The need to achieve penetration down the length of the tuft means that colour spread also occurs laterally giving colour bleed. In effect, a third colour appears at the boundary between every change. By limiting design and colour selection, this effect is minimised by the manufacturer but by default limits the choice of the designer. Complete fibre penetration cannot be achieved during the process leaving a washed out, chalky appearance to each colour lacking the richness of pre-dyed tufts.
Changi Airport, Singapore
Tapistron –
Flexibility of design and colour is limited in three ways. Firstly, Tapistron technology tends to favour producer dyed yarns. While this may be seen as a benefit in specific circumstances, the colour choice is severely limited by the yarn manufacturer’s stocked colour palette. Secondly, the construction is limited to 6 colours. Thirdly, whilst in theory the design capability is unlimited, in practice, the tuft placement is very inaccurate which rules out detailed designs or intricate repeats. This also makes edge matching difficult.
Colortec –
Colortec is normally produced with yarn dyed colours but shares the six-colour limitation and the design inaccuracy of Tapistron.
3 Availability and Security of Delivery
Delivery is key to the smooth operation of refurbishment. We can all make promises of short lead times but the reality is often quite different. The significant demands of any airport can drain the capacity from smaller companies or where only limited industry capacity is available. This is certainly the experience with Tapistron and Colortec. One must remember that whilst the technology is tufted, the productivity of each machine is far less than the tufted norm and relatively few machines have been purchased.
4 Ease of Installation
Axminster –
Good and timely installation is dependent on dimensional accuracy, edge match, product flexibility and minimal on-site correction. The woven product is inherently stable as manufactured so that good pattern match, straightness and dimensional accuracy are built into the product. During the finishing processes only minor adjustments are necessary to achieve the perfect result. The woven selvedges require no cut back and give perfect match from edge to edge. On site any adjustment necessary to straighten or match are easily achieved due to the natural elasticity and flexibility of the woven construction. Ask any installer which patterned product they prefer.
Printed –
Installation has always been a weakness of printed products. In effect the design is applied at a point where the substrate is unstable. By the time some stability is introduced the pattern match and dimensional variation is inherent. Edge to edge match is also less easy as the two carpets are overlaid and cut through to achieve the join. This naturally gives only approximate match. The heavy application of latex is required to adhere the tufts into the structure and to fix the secondary back, make the products stiff and inflexible. The installer on site can do little to overcome the variations.
Colortec and Tapistron –
Because both are tufted products, they suffer the same variation in straightness, length and edge match as printed. Stiffness is even greater as the amount of yarn on the back requires higher amounts of filled latex. The products tend to focus on corridors (wrongly perceived as less of an issue) and designs where mismatch is less visible.
5 Long Term Appearance Retention
If there is one factor that defines the value and suitability of a carpet product it is the long-term appearance of the product. Airport management, like many other businesses, is in a very competitive arena. With passengers having a greater choice of departure point and time they allow to spend in the terminal building choice will be affected by the overall general ambience. Carpet has a large part to play in setting the tone of the décor, mainly because it is the largest landscape that will impact on them. It is therefore vital that the original concept remains in good condition for the longest period and with limited maintenance.
Very few carpets wear out in practice. Most are replaced because they have “uglied out”. That is, they have ceased to add to the prestige of the property and are now looking old, tired and dirty. They can also present safety hazards due to fraying or tears. In carpet performance terms this depends on appearance retention, structural integrity, ease of maintenance and ease of repair.
Axminster – Marriott have in the past carried out extensive research into the appearance retention of various products and their own evidence clearly showed Woven Axminster to be superior in maintaining appearance. Woven carpets retain their appearance longer than the equivalent tufted products when compared on a like-for-like basis. The structure is 3 dimensional and as many as 12 backing yarns support each individual tuft helping to retain them in a more upright position and increasing their resistance to flattening.
Stansted Airport
A woven carpet will therefore absorb considerable stresses and strains during use, which is a very important consideration for heavily trafficked areas especially when considering the use of bags, trolleys and mechanical people movers. Woven Axminster carpets generally have a higher proportion of the pile weight above the backing (EPW) compared to patterned tufted carpets and this gives the woven carpets a longer life expectancy.
Woven products cannot delaminate in use and the integral structure will resist tuft loss at edges or in the body of the carpet. The strong integral structure will resist fraying or tearing; particularly an issue with tufted products where they have been cut to make joins. The colour and pattern definition in an Axminster carpet will be retained right to the base of the tufts whilst printed designs will appear chalkier and more washed initially and also even more so out as they begin to wear. Axminster carpets bear the disturbance of interim or intensive cleaning without losing tuft definition or colour quality. The greater dimensional stability of a woven product in both wet and dry conditions, in areas of heavy-wheeled traffic and when the carpet is cleaned gives them a clear lead over their tufted rivals.
Printed –
Printed carpet has been repeatedly shown to have poorer long-term appearance. This is a result of two fundamental weaknesses – the tufted carpet base and the printing process used to apply the design. Tufted carpets do not have the three-dimensional support structure. The tufts alone have to try to withstand the continual impact and distortion of foot and wheeled traffic. They are not as resilient and show early signs of appearance loss.
As the structure is essentially held together by latex adhesive it frequently breaks down with obvious results. The carpet stretches under impact conditions, which causes rucking or looseness, which are both unattractive, and a safety hazard. This is often followed by delamination, where the secondary back completely separates from the pile layer. At this point the carpet becomes unacceptable and must be replaced for safety reasons, if not for aesthetic considerations. Despite the heavy latex application, the carpet is prone to tears and fraying at cut edges. In fact the higher the specification, the less strong the backing will become. The colour is only applied to the surface of the carpet.
As the carpet wears and flattens, the colour will become chalky as the undyed fibres are revealed. Printed manufacturers have a very restricted choice of dyestuffs in an attempt to reduce dye dispersion. This leaves the pile looking chalky due to poor fibre penetration and poor fastness to wet treatments. You will often see severe bleeding of one colour into another or loss of colour wherever wet conditions have occurred. Wet cleaning exacerbates all these weaknesses.
Tapistron –
Here again the product is tufted, so that all the inherent performance and structural weaknesses of the printed product are just as relevant. In fact, they are worse. The needle used to insert the tufts is hollow and large. This rips through the primary backing fabric, causing holes that weaken the back significantly and provides even less support for the tufts even with the addition of the latex adhesive. The wear layer of a Tapistron carpet is significantly less due to the high proportion of yarn on the back of the carpet which is wasted and adds nothing to the performance and wear life. In fact this additional yarn makes it harder for the penetration of the latex weakening the structure and making delamination even more likely.
This can also be misleading when comparing yarn pile weights between Tapistron and woven products – the surface pile weight is much more relevant as this is the only section that comes into contact with the various traffic. The solution dyed nylon used in Tapistron products is often held up as the ultimate in terms of stain resistance and ease of maintenance. The facts tell another story. The oils used in yarn preparation are not washed off. They stay in the carpet free to attract other oily dirt and soil particles. Manufacturers often try to disguise this characteristic by applying “anti-soil” finishes but these wear off in a very short period and can lead to differential soiling patterns.
Colortec –
Again a tufted carpet, again suffering from extraordinary amounts of yarn on the back of the carpet. In particular, inconsistent tuft anchorage can allow tuft loss in heavy wear areas. The yarn on the back also gives fundamental unevenness, which can show in early wear points, as abrasion is heavier where the back is lumpy.
6 Life Cycle Costs
With carpet as with any thing else "You get what you pay for" and it is a well-known fact that many apparently cheaper carpets "ugly out" long before they wear out. This is generally because the carpet pile does not recover sufficiently from the heavy traffic imposed on it on a day-to-day basis and/or does not respond well to the regular cleaning and maintenance required by the cleaning management. A carpet, which "uglies out" will need to be replaced long before its predicted life span. Work carried out in the USA on life cycle costing, clearly showed that better quality carpets worked out more cost effective over the long run than cheaper products.
This is because the life cycle costing includes the actual life span of the carpet as well as the cost of replacement underlays, associated costs such as adhesives or other fittings, labour costs for fitting new, and uplifting the old product and predicted cleaning and maintenance costs. An Axminster carpet lasts longer than a tufted product and, because it is more stable to cleaning and cleans more easily, it costs less to maintain over a period of time. When considering the costs of carpeting, we normally only think about the initial headline prices of the products. Some aspects are difficult to measure.
For instance, we recognise that the carpet contributes to the attractiveness and overall look of the property. In the competitive environment of airport terminals differentiation and perceived value is key. How much positive effect this has on concessionary spend and repeat visits can only be a point of speculation, but poor carpet appearance will certainly be a negative factor.
Carpet refurbishment will certainly affect the ability to generate income. A carpet with a longer wear life will need replacing less often and will cause less operational downtime. However, even focussing on the more measurable areas of cost proves the case that a carpet requiring less maintenance and less frequent replacement will cost less in the long term. This is even where the initial purchase price is higher.
