Wool loop carpet

Give Jo K as much advice as you can Ash, she lives a long way out of towns that have information for her.

Hi Jo,

Is it possible for you to post a floorplan, showing the areas to be carpeted. This can help me to see how the carpets may be used.

Feltex carpets made from NZ wool is good. Cavalier Bremworth is another name worth looking at.

In my home, I have tufted carpets in 2 rooms, by Cavalier Bremworth, and woven carpets made by Feltex of new Zealand in other rooms.

OK here's a little lesson.....

There are various methods of contructing a carpet. Most common is TUFTING, there are also WOVEN carpets, FUSION BONDED, NEEDLEPUNCH and FLOCKED. These are all different types of carpet construction.

TUFTED CARPETS: These are mass produced at high volume. They begin as a primary backing (usually a woven clear or white polypropylene) that is fed through a machine with needle bars in it. Its like a big sewing machine with hundreds of needles with yarn being fed to each needle. The yarn is stitched into the primary backing. Depending on the carpet style, the yarn may be cut as it is stitched in, or left as a loop pile. The yarn stitched into the primary backing is known as the face yarn or pile. Later, it passes along a conveyer belt, where latex glue is spread over the primary backing, and a secondary backing is glued to the underside. Most carpets made in Australia have a jute secondary backing, although some carpets have a polypropylene secondary backing instead. The secondary backing gives the carpet firmness and dimensional stability. Tufted carpets may be made with different types of face yarn... wool, wool mix, different types of nylon, polypropylene, acrylic or polyester. There are also some other less common yarns used.

WOVEN CARPETS: These are traditional carpets constructed on various types of looms. It uses much slower technology, but the finished products are usually of far superior quality. Yarns (including face yarns, warp and weft backing yarns) are all fed into the loom, and the carpet is contructed one row at a time. Common woven carpets are Axminsters and Wiltons. Wiltons may be cut or loop or a combination, and usually have only a few colours in them. Axminsters though, are cut pile, and can have many colours and elaborate designs if desired. Mills that produce woven carpets are usually very selective, and use highest quality yarns. Most commonly wool or 80/20 wool nylon.

Other types of construction are not commonly used in domestic flooring.

More later.


Ash.

The average carpet store sells very little woven carpets here in Oz.

Almost all domestic carpet that is sold is tufted. Feltex probably referred to it in their site as 'tufted' because Feltex also produce woven carpets (or used to until their NZ mill closed down about 18 months ago.

Woven carpets tend to be much more costly, but are magnificent carpets, and last many years. Many designs today feature smaller geometric patterns, or delicate designs that are not as gawdy as those older designs.

There are some beautiful tufted carpets too. Its just that the finest tufted carpets are around the price of the most basic woven carpets.

Cool Nice looking place!

I am going to throw some of my own ideas around here. Its your place so you get to choose (obviously) but I'd like to give you some food for thought....

The timber floors you've chosen will carry through most of the central areas of the home, unifying the different zones of your home. That's great, because it allows you to decorate other rooms individually. I like this, and its what I've done with my home. Each room can have its own character, theme or colour scheme. Personally (although I can see why it appeals to some) I find homes with one decorating theme throughout the home BORING!!!

When it comes to carpets, you often can pick up real bargains, by buying remnant stock. If you have a different carpet in each bedroom, you can buy fine quality carpet at about half price, compared to buying a houseful of sales lines of carpet. So, you might find a beautiful wool carpet in a certain colour, and paint/decorate that bedroom to match, and so on with other rooms.

Back to carpet choices...

You like loop pile... fine! Choose extra heavy duty fine loop pile instead of the larger chunky type of loop piles. Here are a few things about loop piled carpets. If the carpet fits in a room in one piece, that's good. If a room is larger, and requires seaming, some loop pile carpets don't disguise seam lines so well. The joins might show, so having a very good layer is critical. So, with your home, loop pile in other rooms is fine, but the loungeroom might be nicer having a cut or twist pile. Especially as you have a diagonal cut doorway, and loop pile carpet can look a bit ratty after a while if cut on the diagonal. Loop pile is not so prone to showing shading or foot-marks, which is a plus. It tends not to feel as luxurious and soft under foot though.

Here's another thing...

I suggest a totally different type of carpet in the study. Wheelie chairs rolling around on carpets in these areas are very damaging of normal domestic carpets. Heavy duty commercial carpets are better suited to this area. Some that would work well are modular carpet tiles from Interface, or fusion-bonded commercial carpets. These are designed to withstand the rolling compressive wear of office chairs. (And there are some that are attractive, if you look for them). These carpets are stuck directly to the concrete floor. Check this out... http://www.interfaceflor.com.au/

Another thing, I'd terminate your floor-boards near the back of the front door and fit carpet to act as a sacrificial soil collection zone from the doors. Carpet should be carefully chosen, mid tone, to hide soil. An option is to have sections of the floor-boards cut out and carpet inserted as doormats. They should be at least as wide as the doorways, and a decent size to be effective.

Ash.

As per usual you are a wealth of knowledge Ash.



By this do you mean a tight level loop, rather than multi level - & what are your thoughts on sisal?



Our family room area is similar in dimentions to the loungeroom & will also have a diagonal cut - doesn't show up very well on plan I posted but we were thinking to cut on the diagonal for a walkway from the back door around to the kitchen/dine area.

The loungeroom will be mainly used by the kids so a twist pile sounds good for them as they like laying on the carpet to watch TV etc & it sounds like that would be even more comfy! The family room area is where we will do all our TV watching & is also what everyone that comes into the house will see & I will be hoping to still use a loop pile here, but sounds like I will have to choose carefully as far as join & diagonal cut goes



OK. Hadn't thought of that. Changed from the floorboards as I thought it would be a bit noisy.



Something else to think about! You do realise that I already think too much....



Ash, is this carpet what you would condsider a fine loop pile?? Not sure how much it would cost (to know if it is even an option).

Once again thanks for your help
Jo

Doing a very rough guestimate (I'm not sure of room sizes) I'd say budget around $10k for a carpet to suit your requirements.

It comes down to how many lineal metres you require, plus underlay, plus laying. I may have slightly over-estimated. I'd think at least $8k though, and probably around $9.5k.

My thought is….you have expensive taste Jo K

It’s a good quality carpet…..Ash is good isn’t he???

Thanks Michelle & Ash - good to have approval from the experts!!

I know!! I keep justifying everything by telling myself how much we are saving by doing so much ourselves - Mike keeps saying that we could just save that money instead of spending it somewhere else

And yes, Ash has been excellent - has made the whole process much easier.

Jo

OK, I know there another thread in this forum about negative comments, but showed my mum the samples of the carpet I like & she was quick to let me know that she didn't like them. Said that they would show everything because the carpet is the one colour & would be better if it had a "fleck"through it!

I've done my best to choose a good quality carpet in a style I like which should be durable & a colour that should be serviceable, and I'm not changing my mind!!!

Besides, as I said to her, you haven't really liked any of my choices so far, so why should this be any different