How to reliably glue joints on linoleum?

Linoleum is rightfully considered the most popular flooring. The impressive variety of colors and sizes, practicality and quite affordable cost of this material make it indispensable for finishing private apartments and public spaces. You don’t have to be a specialist to install the coating at home. It’s enough just to do the work carefully and know how to glue linoleum so that the joints are strong and invisible. The use of hot or cold welding will ensure a reliable and beautiful connection between the material sheets.

When is it necessary to glue linoleum?

Linoleum is a finishing material made from natural or polymer fibers. Laying such a floor covering will not be difficult if you only know how to glue linoleum end-to-end at home.

The fact is that this finishing material comes on sale in the form of rolls 2 or 5 meters wide. There are no other options. If the room in which renovation is planned has a small area and you can cover the entire floor with a single piece, there will be no difficulties.

But much more often the rooms do not have the correct shape or the width of the room is more than 5 meters. In such cases, you have to cut out and lay several pieces of linoleum, which then need to be securely and discreetly fastened together.If this work is carried out poorly, water will penetrate into the joints, dirt will become clogged, and after a while the edges of the canvases will bend and twist.

It is necessary to glue linoleum in doorways and when replacing a damaged piece with new material. If the floor covering has a pronounced pattern or the designers decided to decorate the floors with colorful appliqué, it is also impossible to do without gluing the joints.

How can you connect linoleum at the joints?

To connect two or more pieces of linoleum into one, you can use the following methods.

• Pasting double-sided tape. This option is more suitable for creating a temporary coupling, and its main advantage is the speed of the work. The resulting seam will soon come apart and debris and dust will get into it.
• Installation of aluminum or plastic threshold. A good way to create a high-quality connection, but it is only appropriate to use it in doorways.
• Hot welding. Bonding parts of linoleum by hot welding is used when laying industrial flooring in public spaces. This method requires professional equipment and skills, so it is not suitable for connecting household coatings at home.
• Cold welding. To connect the canvases and create a sealed seam, a special glue called cold welding is used.

In everyday life, the latter method of gluing linoleum is mainly used.

Hot welding method

Hot welding is most often used when laying industrial linoleum, which differs from household finishing material in thickness, strength, and wear resistance.Such flooring is laid in schools and hospitals, offices and industrial premises, that is, where there is intense mechanical impact on the floors.

To get a high-quality and aesthetic seam, before gluing the linoleum together, you need to glue the PVC coating to the floor. Sealing of joints can begin no earlier than one day after gluing.

Hot welding is almost never used for gluing ordinary linoleum. The fact is that the usual coating has a small thickness and does not withstand the temperatures that are used for joining by heating. In addition, to carry out hot welding, you must have professional equipment and certain skills.

To carry out joining by hot welding, the following materials and devices are required:

• special gun-hairdryer;
• cord made of linoleum;
• sharp knife or flat chisel.

To create a strong and reliable seam, you need to perform the following steps.

1. Along the entire length of the joint (the sheets should be laid with a minimum gap and tightly glued to the base), a groove is cut with a chisel into which the cord will later be placed.
2. The docking area is cleaned of dust using a vacuum cleaner.
3. A linoleum cord is threaded into the holder of a welding gun, which is plugged into the network. The connecting cord can be purchased together with the floor covering.
4. Under the influence of air heated to 400°C, the edges of the linoleum along with the cord melt and join. The result is a durable and almost invisible seam.
5. The part of the cord that rises above the joint can be cut off with a sharp knife.

At first glance, the hot welding procedure seems very simple, but in reality it is not so.When performing such work, professional skills are required; in addition, high-temperature welding poses a danger to the life and health of an inexperienced repairman.

Features of cold welding

To glue the coating at home, reactive adhesive compositions are used, which are otherwise called “cold welding”. They contain polyurethane and epoxy resin, have a very pungent odor and are highly flammable.

Reactive adhesive reacts chemically with the PVC material from which the flooring is made. The edges of the joints soften and dissolve into each other, resulting in a thin but strong seam that resembles real welding in appearance. This adhesive is especially important when laying foam-based coatings, since hot welding is not recommended for such materials.

Cold welding is sold in tubes equipped with a special needle attachment, with the help of which the adhesive reaches the most inaccessible places and allows you to firmly glue linoleum joints.

Cold welding has many advantages.

• Any novice craftsman can handle the work of laying flooring using cold welding, since the method does not require skills or abilities.
• Ideal not only for laying new linoleum, but also for repairing old coverings.
• No special equipment is required, which significantly reduces the cost of finishing work.
• The seam obtained using cold welding is distinguished by its solidity, accuracy and strength.

Gluing floor covering joints using cold welding does not require physical effort.

Types of glue

There are several types of adhesive used for cold welding. The choice of suitable adhesive depends on the composition and type of finishing material, as well as on the nature of the work being carried out.

• Type A

When laying new linoleum, type A cold welding adhesive is used. Due to the high solvent content, this adhesive has the thinnest consistency compared to other similar compositions, so it is advisable to use it to create seams no more than 2 mm wide. The main advantage of A-type glue is that the resulting seam is almost invisible and at the same time incredibly durable. The adhesive is best suited for hard linoleum with perfectly straight edges.

• Type C

This adhesive composition has a fairly dense consistency and is used for sealing seams 3–4 mm wide. Type C glue is used to glue the old coverings that have separated from each other. Type C cold welding not only glues the sheets together, but also fills the gap, as if creating an intermediate strip of linoleum.

• Type T

This type of adhesive is used extremely rarely by amateurs. However, professionals use it to join PVC and polyester fabrics.

How to seal linoleum using cold welding?

The technology of joining floor coverings using cold welding is not particularly difficult. The main thing is to carefully follow the instructions and carefully perform the work at each stage. Before gluing linoleum end-to-end at home, you need to prepare type A glue, tape, a knife, and gloves.

Important!

Do not allow drops of glue to fall on the surface of the coating.

In order not to stain the linoleum with glue and not to leave a blot that will be very difficult to remove, you must always use a soft cloth.When opening and closing the tube of glue, you need to hold it over this rag, protecting the floor from falling drops. If there is still a drop of glue left on the linoleum, it is better to wait until it is completely dry and remove the dry film with a knife.

Work on gluing joints should be carried out with gloves and with the windows open, as the glue has a pungent, unpleasant odor.

1. Before sealing the joints, the first thing you should do is prepare them for joining - blot the moisture with a rag, use a vacuum cleaner to remove dust and debris accumulated in the cracks.
2. The future joint is protected with masking tape. This is necessary in order to protect the edges of the canvases from glue.
3. Using a sharp knife, cut the tape directly above the joint.
4. Place a needle attachment on a tube of glue and squeeze the composition into the gap between the sheets. You need to squeeze out enough glue so that it protrudes 4 mm above the surface of the material.
5. After 15-20 minutes, the tape is removed.
6. The finished floor covering can be used an hour after completion of work.

A perfectly flat floor is extremely rare. There will always be small bumps and dips. If you make one long seam, it will puff up in uneven places. Therefore, experts advise gluing joints in small sections up to 70 cm long. Moreover, a new section should be glued only after the previous one has dried. If you follow this technology, the seam will be smoother and more invisible.

When repairing linoleum, a thicker Type C adhesive is used, so it is not necessary to apply tape. Otherwise, the process of joining the canvases completely repeats the activities described above.

Sealing linoleum at joints at home is not particularly difficult.The cold welding method will create a tight, durable and aesthetic seam, and this will not require special equipment or professional skills. The main thing is to choose the right glue and carry out the work carefully, without deviating from the instructions.