KNOWLEDGES

Procedure is necessary and sufficient conditions for a quality product, which are mutually attachment.

PTP’s intensive-processing product- wooden Laminate flooring: Use the integrated processes from plantation timber to finished product.

Through log collection, substrate layer press and paste (making the substrate panel), decorative layer second press, paste, about 53 rigorous processing and the standard procedures link together and match to each others.

Raw material is the premise and foundation for a final quality product, and more important to laminate flooring.

Quality raw material with dozens of process combines high grade fibers, only the qualified fiber guarantees to high quality of floor panels, a good quality of raw materials is the a core foundation and true measurement to the final quality of a finished floor.

PTP has 550,000 acres of raw material workshop–artificial timber plantation, where use a uniform cultivation standard and selective procedure to ensure good quality or raw material.

Glue executing for laminate flooring is a key, a outstanding factory is responsible to user’s safety issues.Glue for the panel cannot be controlled by own factory, then formaldehyde content is difficult to handle and easy to exceed the allowed figure.

PTP is the first one who invested 12 million RMB on its domestic glues in the field and use of the formaldehyde dissociation technology.

It is meaningless for an attractive warranty time but it cannot be carried out. PTP has totally invested more than 0.15 billion US dollars in china, so its promises from big enterprise are faithful.

There is no special time for installation, but two points need to be noted:

Before installation, floor panel package needs to be set in the room temperature for at least 24 hours, let it fits into local environment.

Finish the installation as soon as possible (better within 2 to 3 days) after open the package, otherwise the size of the connection grooves may change by moisture absorption that may affect the installation.

Yes (don’t forget use the floor pads); ensure to flat, dry and clean the ground as followed as the requirements.

Suspend installation means that is a suspend method without using a clamp board or keeling to fixing on ground, without nailing, gluing, it use it own gravitation, place evenly horizontal on the ground, fix under furniture or the plinth. It is brand-new installation with functions of detachable, replaceable, removable and changeable.

What is advantage of suspend installation?

First, suspend installation has an anti-accident function, accident means that the floor immerse into water, then the local floor can be replaced only without to bother others.

Second, if the floor is flat installed then it has features of noiseless, good foot feeling, natural wooden elasticity.

Third, this is only way that the floor panel wouldn’t be disvalued and discard after installation.

For example as a suspend floor need be reinstall after 10 years usage, it can send back to factory for refurbish. Theoretically, it may be possible completely. Such existence of the objectivity is undoubtedly on floor reusable and also save the environment.

According to suspend installation, PTP flooring flatness fits into a ground flat level, so flatting is required to the ground.

The expansion-seam under wall corner should be saved as 8-12 mm, the underneath of pipeline or doorframe should be saved as 10-12 mm.

The strip of floor included: Transition strip, Ramps strip, Stair strip, Edge strip were used in the level transition, high/low, staircase, and edge transition separately. Stripe should be placed when flooring length exceeds over 8 m in any directions.

Fresh residual glue can be wiped off by a wet cloth, or shoveled gently with a blade after dried, never rip it off by hand.

Our technician will visit and measure on the spot for your installation, the basic proportion is flowed:

Floor: pad: plinth: stripe= 1: 1: 1: 0.1

The common material includes:

• Cement Flooring: good wear-resistant, broadest usage, low sound insulation, inelasticity, high heat conductivity.
• Marble Flooring: pretty and artistic texture, suitable for public places and class-level hotels etc.
• Terrazzo floor: high wear- resistance, bright and attractive, various patterns according to design.
• Wood floor: rich elasticity, low heat conductivity, soft and warm sense, durable, designable pattern for parquet and herringbone, etc; wildly usage for stadium, rehearsal hall, stage, and banquet hall.
• Ceramic tile: high hardness, acid-/alkali-proof, wear-resistance, seep-proof, easy to clean, also suitable for indoor and outside wall decoration.

The wood floor mainly is divided into as solid wood, engineered floor, Laminate flooring (soaked paper layer pressed wooden floor), bamboo floor, cork floor, geothermic heating floor, plastic floor.

Solid wood flooring is made by a decorative lumber formed by dried natural wood. It presents nature wooden features of color, gentle, warmth texture from a log figures, simultaneously due to its feeling of warm in winter, cool in summer, good touching sense, overall that turns is as an ideal decorative material for a bed-room, living- room, study-room and so on.

The material quality of solid wood floor is quite different, such as its hardness, color and texture; roughly it is divided as below:
1. Moderate solid wood floor: teak-wood, Merbau-wood (pineapple-wood), Shorea-wood (Balau-wood), Isodon-Mastixia-wood (Rutaceae-wood)
2. Soft solid wood floor: Manchurian ash wood, white birch wood.
3. Light solid wood floor: beech tree (beech wood), white birch, mountain olive wood.
4. Soft solid wood floor: oriental white-oak-wood (oak-wood), Manchurian-ash-wood, Shorea-wood, sodon-Mastixia-wood
5. Dark color solid wood floor: teak, Merbau-wood, heavy-ant-wood, winged incense bean wood, Xylia-wood (Caddo-wood)
6. Coarse grain solid wood floor: teak, oriental white oak-wood (oak-wood), Koompassia-wood, manchurian ash wood
7. Fine grain solid wood floor: Beech-wood, white birch wood.

A solid wooden laminated floor is formed by processes as cutting high quality solid lumber into front, core and substrate panels, stacking them as three dimensional alternately as horizontal, crosswise, longitudinal directions according to mechanics principle from different variety material, then glue, paste, thermo-press it to the finished floor, anisotropy of lumber can be controlled as this method.

Due to the surface of this flooring, varnish film, gloss and artistic, wear-resistance, heat-resistance, impact-resistance, anti-flame, anti-mildew, anti-moth... it lays on ground not only causes the room more coordinated, perfect, moreover its cost is not higher than the similar solid wood floor, thus more and more consumers like to us it . At present time, solid wooden laminated floor includes: three-layer floor and multi-layer floor.

The standard name of strengthen laminated compound floor is “lignin floor laminated by soaked paper laminated into lignin floor”, that is formed by using one layer (or multi-layer) of special paper soaked into thermosetting amino resin, paving on artificial substrate panel surface of particleboard, or MDF or HDF board, adding ware-resistance layer (socked ware-resistant paper), adding balance board (socked balance paper) on the backside, thermo-pressing the matrix into finished flooring, it is also named as strengthen flooring, and early was named as: golden steel board, ship deck, outer space board, laminated wood, compound floor and so on.

Currently in the market, the types of strengthen laminated floor contains:
According to surface structure: bright surface, high bright, mat finish, clarity, relief surface, paint-poured surface
According to notch structure: normal notch (even buckle), single lock notch, double lock notch, multi-lock notch
According to application: Residential level AC2,AC3; Commercial level AC4, AC5
According to thickness: 6-15 mm
According to matrix: standard strengthened laminated floor, imitated solid wood floor

There are solid wooden floor, solid wooden laminated floor, and strength laminated floor in the current market.

• The solid wood floor:

Advantages:

（1） Natural wooden color, growth ring and grain texture, natural artistic, effect of prominent view.
（2） High elasticity, low friction factor, comfortable food feeling.
（3） Fair heat preservation, heat insulation, noise-insulation, sound absorption, insulating ability.
（4） May shave after old, paint renovate again.

Disadvantages:

（1） Dried requirement, not suit for a humidity place, easy to inflate or shrinks.
（2） Easy to chemical rusted by acid and alkali, easy to flame, low wear-resistance
（3） Inconvenience installation (it may possibly need keel, high expense, compressed space height)
（4） Destroy forest resources, un-protection of ecological environment.
（5） High price.

• The solid wooden laminated floor:

Advantages:

（1） Nature artistic wooden grain
（2） Comfortable foot feeling
（3） Voice-insulation and heat-preservation
（4） Uneasy to distort, fair moisture-resistance compeer to solid wooden floor
（5） Large dimension, convenience to install

Disadvantages:

（1） Detachment if poor gluing
（2） Thin surface layer (especially multi-layer), maintenance necessary and limited application

• The strength laminated floor (lignin floor laminated by soaked paper):

Advantages：

（1） Large dimension than traditional solid wooden floor
（2） Varieties of artificial simulated natural patterns
（3） Pretty entirety appearance after installation
（4） Good Color uniformity and visual effects
（5） High surface wear-, flame-, corrosion-resistance, anti-pressure, -impact, -shock vs. to solid wooden flooring
（6） Easy to clean and care
（7） Good dimensional stability, small flooring gap requirement for expansions, less arch and camber in usage
（8） Easy installation
（9） Reasonable prices

Disadvantage:

（1） Poor food sense due to high density vs. a solid wooden floor
（2） Poor reparability, it must be placed from damaged

• The national standard for solid wooden floor is GB/T15306-2001. Since May 1, 2002 the standards came into action and replace the original 94 standards. Solid wooden floor contains three levels: AA-grade for the highest quality, then A-grade, and B-grade. By using the solid wooden floor as a result of relevant effeminate, complex installation, especially its easy deformation after exposure or in damp, thus it is extremely important to pay attention to a quality of wood material, and installation process when select a solid wooden floor.

• The national standard for solid wooden laminated floor is GB/T18103-2000; it provides the definition, classification, technical requirements, test methods, inspection, packaging, transport and storage requirements for the solid wooden laminated floor of solid wood.

• Since May 1, 2008 the national standards for strength lamination floor was promulgated and implemented by GB/T18102-2007, the standard had been modified to the surface wear-resistant, formaldehyde emission and other important physical and chemical figures. In addition, the Standard of LY/T1700-2007 clearly defines specification for geo-thermo wooded floor.

The strength laminated floor has four-layer structure in order from top to bottom, as a wear-resistant layer, a decorative layer, a substrate layer and a balance layer, beyond the substrate layer, the other three layers are formed by three different functioned papers impregnated by melamine resin.

（1） Wear-resistant layer

The quality of wear-resistant layer is mainly depend on the mineral materials of aluminum oxide (AL2O3), silicon carbide (SiC) content in the wear-resistant paper. Al2O3 and SiC is as an wear-resistant materials (as artificial corundum with diamond hardness), in the market it is also called as ruby, sapphire, thought wear-resistant layer is costly accounted about 20-30% total of a strength laminated floor.

（2） Decorative layer (also known as the color/pattern layer)

A decorative paper for the decorative layer are formed by computer imitation with different patterns and colors, as known as color/pattern paper, that quality is based on its color pattern fidelity and discolor ability after the ultraviolet exposure, its paper’s character, ink’s quality and printing processes. The color/pattern paper is made of titanium-white paper with overspreading ability.

（3） Substrate material layer

The substrate material layer of the strength laminated flooring, which is constantly composed of high density fiberboard, is considered as the most important part of the laminated flooring. It also determines most of vital product performances of laminated flooring, accounting for approximately 60% of the total cost of the laminated flooring.

（4） Balance layer

The balance paper, which is usually made by craft paper immersed in dark phonetic resin or other resins, is used to balance the surface stress of the flooring as well as prevent the humidity comes up from the underground. The quality of balance layer depends to the highest degree on paper quality, tensile strength as well as the thickness of paper.

A new type of tri-layer laminated flooring is recently found in the market. The wear-resistance paper was replaced by wear-resistance particles adhering to the decorate layer, which could also ensure the surface clarity and wear-resisting.

Plus some of the laminated flooring is added with the fifth layer: base pad, which improve the foot sense of laminated flooring.

National standard GB/T18102－2007 has restricted the emission of formaldehyde as:

E1：≤1.5 mg/L

E0：≤0.5 mg/L

No, it is not the thicker the better. The foot sense of laminated flooring basically depends on the density of fiber, regularity, density as well as the proper balance between intensity and elasticity of substrate material. In a word it is all based on the quality of substrate material, and the choice of materials as well as processing technical shall be the key factor.

As the substrate material getting thicker, for the sake of the high expectation of pressing machine, heat pressing facilities and technique, many small and medium enterprises, which lack relevant facilities and technology, actually produce medium density substrate material. Therefore part of 12 mm laminated flooring may only provide terrible foot sense, with no eco-friendly materials, poor moisture resistance, and delimitation, because of the poor quality of substrate material, low density of core layer, asymmetry of density, or over-sizing.

In nature artificial wood flooring is just another name of laminated composite flooring. The slight differences attached below show apparent features of wood:

1. Thickness of which is more likely to be wood flooring, constantly 12 mm;
2. designs and colors of the flooring using complete mosaic method, barely using double mosaic or triple mosaic method. Styles of designs and colors are similar to that of wood flooring, such as rosewood, teakwood, Sapele, Merbau, etc;
3. Introduction of chamfer angle method, making the edge joint more likely to be natural chamfer angles of wood flooring;

The artificial wood flooring usually uses “I”-shaped pavement method. The join of shorter dimension is on the midpoint of another row’s longer dimension. The appearance of pavement method of flooring is exactly the same as that of wood flooring.

The test report of laminated wood flooring can only be considered as a reference of judging the quality of products, rather than as the foundation of purchasing, the reason of which is as followed:

The product test reports are generally divided into two categories, sampling check and submission check. Sampling check means relevant government department, such as industrial and commercial bureau or quality supervision department, directly check the quality of product right in enterprises or in premises for operation by mean of random sampling. While submission checks, also known as submitting check, refers to the manufacturer sending its own product to the quality supervision department to be tested. Since the manufacturer may specialize the product or replace defect product with good ones, then sending qualified products to be tested, therefore the test report of submission checks can only be regarded as a reference. By far, it is much more general for retailers to show the consumers the test report of submission checks.

The test reports of both sampling check and submission check give clear indication of “only being responsible for the submitted product”, which means the results of reports can only guarantee the quality of samples. Other batches of products are not included, not to mention all the products from that enterprise.

In conclusion, we can see the test report of the product as only a reference, but we cannot be superstitious about it, or considering it as the symbol of good quality.

The comprehensive quality of laminated flooring is closely related to raw materials, methods of production, equipments of production and so on. Among all of these, raw materials should be the core factor. Without superior raw materials, there’s no way you can produce superior products even with the best equipment and technology. Just like without good materials, even the best sculptor in the world could not create any good works.

Now the manufacturers with superior raw material resource are inclined to supply modern product technology as well as product equipment at the same time, in order to maintain the entire product method on a superior level.

Since the comprehensive quality of laminated flooring depends on raw material, which is generally composed of wood fiber and adhesive, we conclude that the domestic product enterprises which contain high-quality wood resource and adhesive, to a great extent determine the comprehensive quality of laminated flooring.

General speaking, there is no need to take care of the maintenance of PTP floor. But some tips shall still be noticed during regular cleaning and using:
a.Never allow the flooring to sit in water. If contact with liquid is made, immediately remove the spill and allow to air dry.
b.Heavy objects should be placed directly on the flooring to allow weight to be distributed across the contact surface. Make sure the flooring remains "floating".
c.Do not use sandpaper or apply wax or any other lacquers to the flooring.
d.To clean, use a dry mop or vacuum. Do NOT use water.
e.To remove an oil or dirt stain, use a soft cloth with a cleaning agent.

Generally such kind of black spots are not supposed to emerge on the surface of laminated flooring. One possible situation is that the surface of the flooring is full of grooves in which dirt were attached thus hard to clean. If the floorings are not paved in public area, you can try as followed: use hard hair brush and scour to clean the dirt in grooves, and keep the floor clean from time to time. It will be better if changing shoes every time you entering indoors.