We are looking to place carpet in some areas of our basement concrete floor which has tubes in for radiant heat. One installer is leery of nailing the tack strip because of liability if a tube is damaged (along the walls we should be ok since the tubes were installed about 5" away from the walls) but in areas where the carpet transitions to bare concrete, there's definitely a possibility of puncture. The slab is 4" thick and the tubes are at the bottom, but the concern is if anything "floated" upwards during concrete placement, etc. etc.
This installer suggests gluing the carpet strips, he has done that in basements, but he has never done carpet over a radiant floor, and could not answer my questions as far as issues with the glue and the heating cycle. He thinks liquid nails ought to be enough.
I just have this picture in my head of tension of the carpet stretching and that glue coming undone after a couple of years. I really have no idea if heating of the glue would be an issue.
What I do want to know is if there's a product that would work for gluing tack strip over radiant concrete floors, or if liquid nails would be enough?
In areas where we can nail the tack strip, should we require that the installer drill the concrete and use tapcons? I know from framing the basement that when the framer tried a couple of nails, the concrete just shattered and created little pits because it is 4000 psi concrete and very brittle, so he went ahead and glued the walls in addition to using tapcons.
We asked at Lowe's to see if their "crew" has ever installed over a radiant slab, and the guy didn't know, but he said that to do carpets in basements what they do is to drill a hole, glue in a dowel rod, then nail the tack strip to that dowel with very good results. My thinking is that if they are going to be drilling anyway, why not just use a small tapcons. I'm assuming that an issue would be price, since tapcons are a lot more than nails.
Any advise is well appreciated. Thanks!
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