The Installer: Best Practices for Installation, Pt. I
At the beginning, the trainee did a lot of lifting, watching, moving tools and cleaning up. Eventually, there’s an opportunity to level a seam, cut backsplash to length, and drill holes. This wasn’t a formal process, but one of gradual knowledge and trust; you learned by sweat, not by school.
Today, there are opportunities for hands-on installation training at a number of locations, as well as books, videos and annual seminars by a number of companies and trade associations. These are great advances for the stone industry, but may not work with your schedule or budget.
If you want to create more-formal training for your company internally, the most-important skills you can teach are the ones used over and over again. Proper material handling, setting, and seaming techniques are appropriate for a new employee – and reviewing these with your more-experienced installers can steer them away from getting sloppy or lazy.
To that end, I’ve compiled my “Top Ten” list of best practices to teach new installers and review with more-experienced ones. (We’ll do five this month, and five in the April 2010 Stone Business.) Understanding these basic ideas will give your installers a solid foundation of knowledge to expand upon.
1. Imagine you’re installing window -pane glass instead of stone.
This is the first thing I tell all of my installation classes. Or, to be exact, my motto for handling stone: “If you wouldn’t do it to a piece of glass, don’t do it do a stone countertop.”
I then take a piece of stone and bounce it up and down in the horizontal position. No one seems to have a problem visualizing a large pane of glass being held like this and shattering under its own weight … or moving a piece of glass in the wrong way, and causing it to flex and shatter.
Imagine each piece is made of old and brittle 1/16”-thick window glass. This is precisely the image I want in each person’s head as they handle stone countertops.
People have the preconceived notion that stone is a very durable material. While stone offers a great deal of compressive strength, a slab of granite has very little flexural strength; a countertop with an undermount sink in it has even less. In that way, it really is more like a pane of glass than a boulder.
Getting your new installers to understand they have to treat this material with kid gloves is the first step you can take toward successful installs. If a visualization exercise like this can prevent one of your more-experienced crew from making a bad decision and breaking a piece, it’s well worth a review.
2. There always needs to be a lead installer.
Your lead crew member has to guide the installation through its paces, and make sure the install crew works in unison and understands each step of the process. The lead installer is also the person responsible for gathering all the pertinent jobsite information, such as faucet drilling locations, outlet-cutout locations, etc.
Letting the homeowner or contractor show the installation crew how they want something done, and then assuming that information will be correctly conveyed, is a bad practice. The lead installer should have the experience and confidence to let the homeowner know if a request is going to be impossible. Ms. Jones might want a faucet hole drilled behind the big bowl in a 60/40 sink; your lead installer needs to tell her why this won’t work and explain her other options.
The lead installer takes an especially important role when lifting heavy pieces of stone to make sure the installers move in unison. If someone on one end of an island lifts when the person on the other end isn’t ready, there’s always the risk the surprised installer could be injured, the piece could be broken, or the floor of the house could be damaged.
In class, I teach a simple countdown method that can be used to assure each installer lifts at the same time. If you countdown from three before a lift, the timing can be exact.
The lead installer is also responsible for making sure a countertop is secured while removing the lifting handles or retrieving tools. If both install partners let go of an island to set down their lifting handles, you might have an expensive and dangerous problem falling to the floor. The lead member needs to choreograph each step of the process to avoid situations like this.
It’s also up to the lead installer to pace the install. If you’ve got two kitchens to get in that day, the lead needs a pretty good handle on efficient install practices, and the ability to motivate helpers if the mood of the crew turns ugly.
It doesn’t matter if both members of the install crew have 20 years’ experience; one of them still needs to assume the lead for an install. They can take turns being leader and helper (if they so choose) but one of them needs to lead each install and be respected by the other.
3. Never touch a countertop without verifying the fit and your transport route.
There’s no sense in moving a piece of countertop anywhere until your tape measure assures you that it will fit. Nothing makes your installers look worse than expending a lot of effort to move a piece that isn’t cut right. Teach them to check the length and width of each piece, as well as sink and cooktop centertlines, before they move it.
If a piece is too big, they can adapt it in the field. Trying to force a piece in that’s just a little long (or wide) is a great way to break stone and damage cabinetry. And the best part – you get to do more damage trying to take it back out! Check that piece before you move it, and you won’t have that problem.
Another way to look less than professional is to attempt to move a piece of countertop down a route where it won’t fit. Again, this is also a great way to break stone and damage floors and walls. Before you lift a countertop, the lead installer should walk the proposed transport route with the install helper and verify – with a tape measure – that the pieces will fit. If it’s a tight squeeze, you may want to make a Styrofoam mock-up of the piece in question and do a test run, just to make sure.
Once you get the countertop to its run of cabinets, the lead installer needs to determine how to get the top into the space where it’s supposed to fit. This means taking into account the upper cabinets, refrigerator panels, light fixtures and other possible obstacles when lifting and placing the piece. Again, make sure it can go in before you make the final lift.
4. There are only two positions to move stone: 90° and 0°.
With rare exception, stone should be carried in the vertical position (90°) from the transport truck/trailer all the way until the piece rests on the cabinet top or wall where it’s going to be installed. Once it’s resting on that place (which I call home), the stone should be tipped all the way down to the horizontal (0°) before sliding it into place.
The easiest way to break a countertop in the final phase of the setting process is to try to slide it on the cabinet top as it’s tipped toward you. The likelihood that it will catch on some point of the face frame, and apply uneven pressure to the stone, is high.
Two installers trying to slide the opposite ends of a sink cutout into place can easily move at a different pace, which can flex a countertop to the point it will break. If a sink saver isn’t being used, it’s possible the two broken halves could fall on the cabinets, the floor or the installers.
A countertop lowered to 0° before sliding it into place is much easier to handle, and will move into place at a consistent pace. It’s also much safer, since it’ll be supported by an entire plane of cabinets as opposed to a single back line.
5. Never put a countertop down on a surface you haven’t inspected.
Stone breaks when too much pressure is applied at a single point. It’s always possible in a run of cabinets or the length of a support wall to find a spot that’s higher than its surroundings. If this spot isn’t found and knocked down before countertops go on top of it, that high point has the potential to break the top.
That break could happen right way. Sometimes, it’s the next day. Then again, it may be months from now. Regardless of the timing, it’s going to be an issue.
Cabinet and wall tops need to be inspected for high spots and if they’re sitting in the same plane. This is especially true of cabinets set on the opposite sides of dishwasher or beverage refrigerator openings; if these aren’t in plane with each other, the cabinet wall of the side that’s higher can create a line of pressure on the countertop. Miss this, and you can have a broken piece.
An 8’ straight edge is a great tool for checking cabinet tops for plane and high spots. I’ve spoken with installers who swear by laser levels, which also allow you to find the high spot in the kitchen to shim up to. A long piece of ES backsplash can be used for this purpose as well.
If you’re using 2cm + 2cm laminated material, it’s also important to check the bottom side of the stone for any stray globs of glue that weren’t cleaned up. A spot of lamination glue on top of a full underlay sub-top can ruin your day in a hurry.
I’ll be back next month with the rest of the Top Ten in best practices for installation
Jason Nottestad, a 15-year veteran of the stone industry, is National Customer Service Manager for VT Stone Surfaces; he’s now on his third year of “The Installer” columns for Stone Business. He can be reached at JNottestad@vtindustries.com.
©2010 Western Business Media Inc.