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Can we talk about power stretchers vs knee kickers on a cold basement job?
I picked up a used power stretcher off a guy in Toledo for $220 and finally used it on a 40 yard basement job in Sandusky last month, and I am never going back to a knee kicker as my main tool. The room was 28 feet long with a thin 8 pound pad, and my knees were wrecked from the last three jobs like this one. With the kicker I was fighting ripples near the far wall all day and going back over spots I thought were tight. The stretcher grabbed the whole width at once and the carpet locked in straight, no bounce, no waves after the pad settled. My buddy Rick has been kicking for 20 years and says a power stretcher is for guys who never learned the feel, but his seams tell a different story. I still use the kicker for stairs and closets because you need it there. So what do you all run on big open rooms with cheap pad, stretcher or kicker, and did you switch for good or just on certain jobs?
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piperr584d ago
Did you ever watch a guy try to stretch carpet in a room where the baseboard heat pipe runs right along the wall? I helped my uncle on a flip house in Findlay years ago and he kept popping the kicker off that pipe every few feet, cussing up a storm. He finally gave up and borrowed a stretcher from his brother, and the whole room went down in like twenty minutes flat. That pipe is still there and the carpet in that house STILL looks tight ten years later. Sort of the same deal you are talking about, the right tool just wins when the room is fighting you.
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