Installation and care
You need a rubber mallet and a knife
That is not a figure of speech: there are two tools for laying this floor, and anyone who can use them can do it. Below is the full sequence, the mistakes we see most often, and how to keep it clean afterwards.
Installation, step by step
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00
Let the tiles settle
Forty-eight hours in the room before laying, between 18 and 26 degrees, off the pallet and stacked in groups of ten. PVC arrives off the lorry cold or hot and changes size: laying it straight away means open joints or tiles in tension a week later. It is the step people skip most often, and it costs nothing.
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01
Clean the subfloor
Out with debris, dust and grease residue: the subfloor must be clean, dry and above 15 degrees. It does not need levelling, but humps over 7 millimetres across two metres should be ground down; cracks up to 4 millimetres can be left alone.
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02
Start from the ramps
The entrance ramps go down first, together with the first row of tiles: it is that row which holds them in place. Starting from the back of the room, you would end up fitting them last, from the wrong side.
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03
Lock them in, row after row
Set the tile onto the locks of the previous one and tap it home with the rubber mallet. If you have planned a colour layout, follow it from the start: redoing one row after ten is an afternoon lost.
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04
Cut along the edges
Edge tiles and those around columns and lift bases are cut with a sturdy knife or a jigsaw. Mark against a straight edge, score several times and snap: no cut-off saw needed.
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05
Leave a centimetre all round
Ten millimetres clear of walls, columns and racking, then cover it with the skirting. PVC expands in heat and contracts in cold: without that gap the floor buckles against the wall. It is the most common mistake, and it only shows in the first summer.
The mistakes we see most often
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Laying tight to the wall, without the 10 mm gap: by the first summer the floor lifts in the middle.
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Using an ordinary hammer instead of a rubber mallet: it marks the surface and ruins the locks.
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Laying straight off the pallet, without the 48 hours of acclimatisation: the tiles change size afterwards, not before.
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Ordering the exact area with no margin: between cuts and offcuts you need a few square metres more, and reordering later means waiting for another delivery — with the risk that the new batch is a shade different.
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Leaving a floor loose-laid in direct sunlight, next to an oven or under loaded racking: in those cases you fix or glue it down, and the manufacturer says so in writing.
Keeping it clean
A mop, water and an ordinary detergent: nothing else. In a workshop, where oil and grease land on it, a degreaser is fine. No waxes or mandatory treatments are needed — the anti-stain treatment, matt or gloss, is a choice, and it goes on a perfectly dry floor after a first wash.
- Routine cleaning: water and a neutral detergent, by hand or with a scrubber-dryer
- Oil and grease marks: degreaser, even days later
- Dark haloes under tyres: that is the antioxidant in the rubber reacting with the PVC. It is not dirt and washing will not shift it: where vehicles always park on the same spot, a dedicated treatment is used
- Damaged tile: it is replaced on its own, without touching the others
- Matt or gloss anti-stain treatment: optional, on a dry floor
