Vive La Difference

Part of my role in Altro’s Technical services department is to carry out open sessions or training schools for flooring contractors and other parties.

They are often done at the request of the contractor who has a team (more than one) of floorlayers in need of a bit of tuition. The sessions have been held in such far flung places as Manchester, Nottingham, down south, up north, back east and out west, and indeed anywhere in the world where there’s a floor!

We recently carried out such a training school in a hotel in Paris.

French floorlayers began to arrive at the hotel and take up their positions around the edge of the room, where they warily eyed each other up as they waited for the proceedings to begin.  The French distributor opened the session, welcoming everyone to our humble gathering.

Then it was our turn. One of my colleagues, a fluent French speaker, reiterated the welcome and outlined the events that were going to take place during the day, then handed our audience over to me. Remembering which country I was in, I searched my memory bank for some witty French one liner but unfortunately my French education had ended 40 years earlier, had lasted only 12 months and consisted of listening to and repeating a series of questions and answers which would be no use to man nor beast unless they happened to be chain smoking alcoholics addicted to visiting churches and bakeries, so I was always going to be struggling.

Anyway, the day went well, with most of the discussions and demonstrations concentrating on the various methods used by both English and French floorlayers for coving and forming mitres, internal and external.

The majority of installations in France are coved without the use of cove former, which makes wrapping the flooring around angles much easier than if a cove former was used. A complication, though, is that on many installations, particularly in hospitals, vertical welds on the mitre are not permitted.

Altro’s preferred method is always to use a former when coving the flooring (the bigger the better) so methods were adapted and amalgamated for the purpose of the session.

In the case of the external angle, the material was cut short of the angle by 30/40 mm and a shield shaped piece rounded at the bottom was moulded down onto the cove former and round the angle. There are several variations on this theme but the outcome is a strong detail which takes the weld away from the vulnerable position on the angle.

Internal mitres are easier, as you have surplus material to work with and the product can be bent round the angle and welded up from the top of the cove former to the full height of the skirting at an approximate angle of 45 degrees.

Most of the floorlayers at the Paris session adapted to the new Anglo French coving system with ease and an enjoyable day ended all too soon as once again I demonstrated my grasp of the French language by bidding them “hello” as I waved them off into the sunset.

Sacre Bleu! Make mine a double.

This article first appeared in the September 2006 edition of the CFJ.