FLOORING: THE WET SLAB
Moisture in the concrete substrate is the dominant commercial flooring failure mode. Adhesives break down under slab alkalinity (water-based adhesives distress at pH 10+), floors bubble and delaminate, and the replacement bill reaches six and seven figures.
This page covers one problem. The other places this trade loses margin are on the flooring operating system page.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES.
Moisture in the concrete substrate is the dominant commercial flooring failure mode. Adhesives break down under slab alkalinity (water-based adhesives distress at pH 10+), floors bubble and delaminate, and the replacement bill reaches six and seven figures. Industry-wide, moisture failures have cost hundreds of millions of dollars in flooring replacements.
THE COST, SOURCED.
Navigators v. Moorefield. On a Best Buy build, the GC knew from tests the slab was emitting moisture above the spec threshold. It went ahead anyway and gave the flooring sub a liability waiver. The floor failed and the settlement reached $1.3 million. The court held the deliberate installation wasn't a covered "occurrence" under the CGL policy. The waiver saved the sub. A sub who installs on a known-wet slab without one owns the failure.
"Curing and drying aren't the same thing." Concrete reaches strength at 28 days and can still be far too wet to floor; older uncovered slabs often have no vapor retarder at all. (Spartan Surfaces)
THE NUMBER TO MEASURE IT AGAINST.
Flooring contractors have about 5% net profit at $1M to $5M, rising to roughly 8% at $5M to $10M. The CFOS net profit target is 10% before taxes at $1M to $5M, the trade's average plus 3.5 points, never below 10%. You find a problem like this in the distance between those two figures. One bad job won't tell you.
Gross margin over the same bands is 19% to 21%,against CFOS targets of 23% and 23.5%.
THE SYSTEM THAT FIXES THIS.
Cost codes built against the estimate, so a job can be read while it is open.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
