Knee kicker vs power stretcher, 12 years late to the party

Used a knee kicker for every residential job since 2012 because my first boss said power stretchers were for mall stores and lazy hacks. Last month I finally borrowed one for a 15x20 living room in Des Moines with a nasty hump near the slider. Got the whole room flat in one pass without bruising my knee twice, so who else is still dragging their feet on upgrading?

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blair_hill595d ago

Power stretchers aren't just for big commercial jobs, that's the part your old boss got wrong. The whole point is they pull from a fixed point across the room instead of pushing down at one spot, which is why that hump near the slider laid flat in one pass. A knee kicker mainly sets the carpet onto the tack strip, it was never built to stretch a 20 foot span. Plenty of resi guys run both, kicker to hook it and stretcher to actually pull it.

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the_elizabeth5d ago

The fixed point thing is only half of it though, what really matters is having a solid anchor on the other end because if that wall plate slips even a little the whole stretch is shot. I've seen guys run a power stretcher into a weak wall plate and pop half the baseboard loose, then wonder why the carpet came back loose a month later. Kicker plus stretcher works, but only if you take five extra minutes to set up something the stretcher can actually pull against.

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