I'm helping my church out with some pro bono renovations, but am coming up short against my lack of experience in church / institutional work.
We need to replace the flooring in the sanctuary space, and I find that all my usual "go-to" products maybe aren't applicable here.
Are there particular manufacturers / types of carpet that are good for churches? I would guess I need a good, long-lasting, loop-pile broadloom that isn't too expensive but IS very durable.
Also, we have some existing 8x8 tile under the pews. We want to cover it up (it's some type of vinyl, probably containing asbestos in the tile or the mastic), either with new linoleum (ugh) or with some other durable and easy-to-clean material. I've floated the possibility of pouring an epoxy floor over the top of the tile. Someone also suggested wood. We're not sure what works well for churches.
Is anyone willing to share their experience & tips on this? Thanks in advance!
Does the church have a pipe organ or place a heavy emphasis on traditional music? If so, then I'd avoid any type of carpet like the plague. Churches with a strong musical/choral tradition and big pipe organs generally want to have lots of reverb, which means lots of hard surfaces. For churches where the primary emphasis is on spoken word or contemporary music, then carpet shouldn't be a problem.
Well as you probably know my default flooring these days is cork. Cork planks could work under the pews - they could cover the 8x8, they click together, you'd just need transitions at the pathways (I'm assuming you have patches of hard surface under the pews bordered by carpet in the circulation paths - I've seen a lot of churches with flooring arrangements like this.)
On the other hand, cork everywhere could look great but! I'd worry about the reverb issue that LiG brings up. Though definitely cork would reflect better than carpet. The nice thing with cork is it's softer than wood, so when people arrive late during the service their feet don't click as loudly as on wood, but would be nosier than carpet.
My best experience with sanctuary carpet was actually some I was replacing - it was wool and had been in place looking essentially like new for 30 years. But it was BRIGHT orange (installed in the 60s)and they wanted to change the color scheme, so they put in a lower quality but quieter color artificial fibers carpet. That was a very, very quiet room, with no emphasis on music during services.
what is your subfloor/framing structure like? that's going to go a long ways in determining what you can put down.
if you have a 'solid' floor (concrete of some sort, either on grade or on decking), you might be able to consider a 3" topping of terrazzo. yes, it's expensive up front, but from a durability standpoint, it can't be beat. the floors in my own church were put down in 1920. aside from stress cracks, it looks brand new each time they polish it. biggest issue with the terrazzo is cleaning between the pews (very hard to do). you could also consider a polished concrete with some kind of integral coloration. probably should bump up the height to 4" just to be safe, but it's very similar durability wise.
if you can only put down a sheet good or something thinner, i'd consider true hardwood flooring (solid, not engineered). you could supplement it with carpet in the transitions (as noted above). we did that for a church we just finished renovating. the only real concern long term is how to refinish the wood once it gets to that point (you'd have to take the pews out and refinish it in sections). you could use pavers of various sorts (thin stone, brick, etc.); i'd make sure you have a great isolation pad and appropriate control joints built into it. those could also last a very, very long time and could look interesting with just some minimal patterning/color variation. you could mix that with some carpets that could be removed for cleaning if need be (do some custom patterning with that as well. or, for a cleaner look, embed the carpet in the flooring pattern - meaning keep a recess in the flooring surface that's equal to the carpet/pad thickness, put a metal edge around it, and put a custom patterned carpet inside that. the upcharge on the custom might not be too much.
if you're on a tight budget and it's between linoleum or vinyl tile, got to go with lino...
i'd personally stay away from epoxy no matter what - i've seen very little applications where it wears well over time. much better suited for applications where the visual appearance isn't as critical.
: you are correct, the existing configuration is broadloom throughout EXCEPT for rectangular "islands" of 8x8 tile beneath the two sets of pews only. There's a central aisle and two side aisles bordering two sets of pews.
everyone : interesting comments, thanks so far!
I think I need to give a little more info so we can flesh this out further.
Acoustics : We do have an organ (a full pipe -- it's fantastic) but the room already has carpeting - I'm not clear on whether we are happy with the acoustics or not -- I've had mixed reviews, and I don't have the experience to tell myself. I suppose we could get an acoustics guy in? We are thinking of adding a butt pad (for lack of a better word) to the seats, which may impact the acoustics further.
Floor const : I believe that the existing broadloom and 8x8 tiles are glued down directly to the slab. My existing set (from 1950s) is really thin on details. I will try to pull up a corner of the carpet to check.
Thickness : we have little room to move here -- if everything existing is directly glued down as I believe, I will only have up to 3/8" probably to play with material thickness.
Desired effect : here is where I am at a loss. I feel like it would be "nice" to have hardwood flooring throughout, with inset carpets at the aisles only. The church janitor is concerned about the durability of hardwood at the pew locations, where people sit for an hour while their boots drip snow and ice into sitting puddles under the pews, where it's hard to get to.
Does anyone have experience with the durability of some kind of wood product in a similar situation?
Thanks for the info on the epoxy, outed -- that's a shame.
Cork might be a good idea -- would it hold up under conditions described above?
I like the idea of terrazzo but I don't have the depth.
Someone else on our facility team mentioned a two-tone carpet - one for the aisles and one (maybe even squares) under the pews. I am kind of against this but I don't know why.
They are indeed concerned about the sound of heels clicking on hardwood, for all the latecomers. I'm not sure how to address that concern. Cork might be a good option.
Can anyone give me specific product manufacturers to check out? All I know are Interface, Shaw, Armstrong, etc. -- am at a total loss for institutional.
Thanks for all your help! Please keep it coming!!!
How large is the sanctuary? High ceilings? Is it an older building or a new building, and do the celebrations or masses usually involve more heavy organ playing and old school large choral music, or is it more like acoustic guitar / modern band singing kind of music? Is it a radial plan? Or rectangular? Or cross shaped, and what are the surrounding building materials of ceiling and walls?
A 1950's church? Sort of modernist? Is the feeling of the space more towards "warm family, homey" community church environment or more of a "poetic, volumous, inspriing" spiritual space?
I would just say get rid of the pews, toss some butt pads on a new cork floor and call it a day! Oh ya design in an area where people can take their shoes off before entering the sanctuary.....then you should be able to tell who the Holee (Y) people are.
It's a very clean, simple, and cheap rectalinear box from the 50s. I will try to put up a picture tonight -- that will help everyone out. Watch this space tonight!
musicwise -- we have a blend, some organ music w/ piano accompaniment, some plugged & unplugged guitar, bass, and a muted drum kit. The music is on the simplistic side -- not too rock&roll, not too heavy churchy organ. It's a Swedish church, so you can kind of imagine the simplicity of the service. It's more spare than anything, and the entire congregation sings (often in parts / rounds) so they like the singing to stand out.
The only thing that worries me about using a stone tile is that I think it would be better to have a more simple, monothilic looking material, especially if we end up with two materials (one for the aisles, one for under the pews). Stone tile often ends up with a sort of a criss-crossed pattern look simply due to the grout.
And since this will be seriously on the cheap, I doubt I'll be able to spec and enforce credit-card joints between tiles.
myriam, I think you might be able to use terrazzo @ 3/8" if it's insitu but that wouldn't be cost effective unless it was a very large area. The only other thing I think you could use to retain the 5 to 8 sec reverb that you'd need to maintain for the pipe organ would be slate or possibly even porcelain - the latter was used by our parish (ha like I've even been their for the last year)
You might consider a "wood-look-a-like" vinyl product. Its glue down, thin, and pretty cheap. It also is pretty durable. It comes in 3" wide pieces, not 12 X 12. Flexco makes a line with a variety of different species patterns
If its a rectangular space, an orthogonal continuous tiled floor application might work well, stone even, since you won't have to change directions at odd angles...? If there are concerns with acoustics, sounds of people walking up the aisles etc. maybe its nicer to have either all carpet (or cork), or separate carpet runners along the circulation spaces laid on top of the floor finish... I'm not a big fan of changing up the floor finish (zones of different carpet butting one another)... I think simpler continuous flooring or a pattern or separating out zones by laying down runners is a bit nicer IMHO... One thought re: the seating versus aisles zones and different carpet patterns is, your pews sort of already create distinct zones in the pattern or rows, wood, etc. so having a continuous surface at the floor is a bit cleaner (i.e. you won't run into weird conditions or slivers of color if the pews laid over the carpet changes don't perfectly line up or if spacing turns out odd)...? Not sure...
OK, finally had time to put up a few pics. Thanks for your patience. There are a few in this set, and here is one:
that kind of shows the room.
Unfortunately I don't have any that show the floor area specifically. I was able to check out the existing flooring, and from what I can tell it's simply 8x8 tile glued directly down to the slab, and a broadloom carpet adjacent, put down over a thin pad.
We are redoing the chancel area, which is currently carpeted, and ripping out the existing stepped choir seating and replacing it all with a level wood floor. So that's kind of leading me toward wood as a possible flooring material for under the pews, so that we can minimize the number of flooring materials in this small sanctuary.
Does anyone know if I can glue down 3/8" engineered solid-wood planks right over the existing 8x8 tile?
Does anyone have experience with 3/8" engineered solid-wood T&G plank product in moderately trafficked areas? We may have small puddles of water tracked in during the snowy months. Anyone know how that might hold up? What's the maintenance like on a product like that?
If the real stuff doesn't cut it, I may go the fake-wood-patterned linoleum that someone mentioned upthread. I've seen some samples of that recently that looked surprisingly decent, although I'm concerned about how it would mix in the same room with actual sold wood flooring (at the chancel). Any experience using the wood lino?
I've been a church organist and pianist for about 20 years and I'd like to say I'm glad to see you are asking around before you make this important decision. I have been through 2 church renovations and about to go through another. In the previous two I was very disappointed at the choice of flooring, which was wall-to-wall carpeting on everything and fully padded pews. I tried and tried to convince the committee to refinish the old hardwood floors on the stage under the choir and instruments... and even one of the professionals suggested it too. But they wouldn't hear any of it. Carpet RUINS the acoustics of a church. The organ and piano sound abrupt and the singing is muffled. I saw pics of your church and I would say, at the very least, put a hard surface under the choir and on the stage and under the piano. That alone will amplify the music and send it out into the sanctuary.
Flooring for a church sanctuary?
Hi all,
I'm helping my church out with some pro bono renovations, but am coming up short against my lack of experience in church / institutional work.
We need to replace the flooring in the sanctuary space, and I find that all my usual "go-to" products maybe aren't applicable here.
Are there particular manufacturers / types of carpet that are good for churches? I would guess I need a good, long-lasting, loop-pile broadloom that isn't too expensive but IS very durable.
Also, we have some existing 8x8 tile under the pews. We want to cover it up (it's some type of vinyl, probably containing asbestos in the tile or the mastic), either with new linoleum (ugh) or with some other durable and easy-to-clean material. I've floated the possibility of pouring an epoxy floor over the top of the tile. Someone also suggested wood. We're not sure what works well for churches.
Is anyone willing to share their experience & tips on this? Thanks in advance!
Does the church have a pipe organ or place a heavy emphasis on traditional music? If so, then I'd avoid any type of carpet like the plague. Churches with a strong musical/choral tradition and big pipe organs generally want to have lots of reverb, which means lots of hard surfaces. For churches where the primary emphasis is on spoken word or contemporary music, then carpet shouldn't be a problem.
Well as you probably know my default flooring these days is cork. Cork planks could work under the pews - they could cover the 8x8, they click together, you'd just need transitions at the pathways (I'm assuming you have patches of hard surface under the pews bordered by carpet in the circulation paths - I've seen a lot of churches with flooring arrangements like this.)
On the other hand, cork everywhere could look great but! I'd worry about the reverb issue that LiG brings up. Though definitely cork would reflect better than carpet. The nice thing with cork is it's softer than wood, so when people arrive late during the service their feet don't click as loudly as on wood, but would be nosier than carpet.
My best experience with sanctuary carpet was actually some I was replacing - it was wool and had been in place looking essentially like new for 30 years. But it was BRIGHT orange (installed in the 60s)and they wanted to change the color scheme, so they put in a lower quality but quieter color artificial fibers carpet. That was a very, very quiet room, with no emphasis on music during services.
when working on a church, look to Sigurd Lewerentz.
myriam,
what is your subfloor/framing structure like? that's going to go a long ways in determining what you can put down.
if you have a 'solid' floor (concrete of some sort, either on grade or on decking), you might be able to consider a 3" topping of terrazzo. yes, it's expensive up front, but from a durability standpoint, it can't be beat. the floors in my own church were put down in 1920. aside from stress cracks, it looks brand new each time they polish it. biggest issue with the terrazzo is cleaning between the pews (very hard to do). you could also consider a polished concrete with some kind of integral coloration. probably should bump up the height to 4" just to be safe, but it's very similar durability wise.
if you can only put down a sheet good or something thinner, i'd consider true hardwood flooring (solid, not engineered). you could supplement it with carpet in the transitions (as noted above). we did that for a church we just finished renovating. the only real concern long term is how to refinish the wood once it gets to that point (you'd have to take the pews out and refinish it in sections). you could use pavers of various sorts (thin stone, brick, etc.); i'd make sure you have a great isolation pad and appropriate control joints built into it. those could also last a very, very long time and could look interesting with just some minimal patterning/color variation. you could mix that with some carpets that could be removed for cleaning if need be (do some custom patterning with that as well. or, for a cleaner look, embed the carpet in the flooring pattern - meaning keep a recess in the flooring surface that's equal to the carpet/pad thickness, put a metal edge around it, and put a custom patterned carpet inside that. the upcharge on the custom might not be too much.
if you're on a tight budget and it's between linoleum or vinyl tile, got to go with lino...
i'd personally stay away from epoxy no matter what - i've seen very little applications where it wears well over time. much better suited for applications where the visual appearance isn't as critical.
: you are correct, the existing configuration is broadloom throughout EXCEPT for rectangular "islands" of 8x8 tile beneath the two sets of pews only. There's a central aisle and two side aisles bordering two sets of pews.
everyone : interesting comments, thanks so far!
I think I need to give a little more info so we can flesh this out further.
Acoustics : We do have an organ (a full pipe -- it's fantastic) but the room already has carpeting - I'm not clear on whether we are happy with the acoustics or not -- I've had mixed reviews, and I don't have the experience to tell myself. I suppose we could get an acoustics guy in? We are thinking of adding a butt pad (for lack of a better word) to the seats, which may impact the acoustics further.
Floor const : I believe that the existing broadloom and 8x8 tiles are glued down directly to the slab. My existing set (from 1950s) is really thin on details. I will try to pull up a corner of the carpet to check.
Thickness : we have little room to move here -- if everything existing is directly glued down as I believe, I will only have up to 3/8" probably to play with material thickness.
Desired effect : here is where I am at a loss. I feel like it would be "nice" to have hardwood flooring throughout, with inset carpets at the aisles only. The church janitor is concerned about the durability of hardwood at the pew locations, where people sit for an hour while their boots drip snow and ice into sitting puddles under the pews, where it's hard to get to.
Does anyone have experience with the durability of some kind of wood product in a similar situation?
Thanks for the info on the epoxy, outed -- that's a shame.
Cork might be a good idea -- would it hold up under conditions described above?
I like the idea of terrazzo but I don't have the depth.
Someone else on our facility team mentioned a two-tone carpet - one for the aisles and one (maybe even squares) under the pews. I am kind of against this but I don't know why.
They are indeed concerned about the sound of heels clicking on hardwood, for all the latecomers. I'm not sure how to address that concern. Cork might be a good option.
Can anyone give me specific product manufacturers to check out? All I know are Interface, Shaw, Armstrong, etc. -- am at a total loss for institutional.
Thanks for all your help! Please keep it coming!!!
How large is the sanctuary? High ceilings? Is it an older building or a new building, and do the celebrations or masses usually involve more heavy organ playing and old school large choral music, or is it more like acoustic guitar / modern band singing kind of music? Is it a radial plan? Or rectangular? Or cross shaped, and what are the surrounding building materials of ceiling and walls?
A 1950's church? Sort of modernist? Is the feeling of the space more towards "warm family, homey" community church environment or more of a "poetic, volumous, inspriing" spiritual space?
myriam - we don't have the same snow issues here, so that is definitely a factor for wood (and cork for that matter).
as for the 'clicking', i find there's a nice self-policing effect with that. you kind of want to make sure you're not the one coming in late...
Granite tile is beautiful and lasts for a good part of eternity. Used and approved.
I would just say get rid of the pews, toss some butt pads on a new cork floor and call it a day! Oh ya design in an area where people can take their shoes off before entering the sanctuary.....then you should be able to tell who the Holee (Y) people are.
ha ha, awesome, snook.
It's a very clean, simple, and cheap rectalinear box from the 50s. I will try to put up a picture tonight -- that will help everyone out. Watch this space tonight!
musicwise -- we have a blend, some organ music w/ piano accompaniment, some plugged & unplugged guitar, bass, and a muted drum kit. The music is on the simplistic side -- not too rock&roll, not too heavy churchy organ. It's a Swedish church, so you can kind of imagine the simplicity of the service. It's more spare than anything, and the entire congregation sings (often in parts / rounds) so they like the singing to stand out.
The only thing that worries me about using a stone tile is that I think it would be better to have a more simple, monothilic looking material, especially if we end up with two materials (one for the aisles, one for under the pews). Stone tile often ends up with a sort of a criss-crossed pattern look simply due to the grout.
And since this will be seriously on the cheap, I doubt I'll be able to spec and enforce credit-card joints between tiles.
myriam, I think you might be able to use terrazzo @ 3/8" if it's insitu but that wouldn't be cost effective unless it was a very large area. The only other thing I think you could use to retain the 5 to 8 sec reverb that you'd need to maintain for the pipe organ would be slate or possibly even porcelain - the latter was used by our parish (ha like I've even been their for the last year)
You might consider a "wood-look-a-like" vinyl product. Its glue down, thin, and pretty cheap. It also is pretty durable. It comes in 3" wide pieces, not 12 X 12. Flexco makes a line with a variety of different species patterns
If its a rectangular space, an orthogonal continuous tiled floor application might work well, stone even, since you won't have to change directions at odd angles...? If there are concerns with acoustics, sounds of people walking up the aisles etc. maybe its nicer to have either all carpet (or cork), or separate carpet runners along the circulation spaces laid on top of the floor finish... I'm not a big fan of changing up the floor finish (zones of different carpet butting one another)... I think simpler continuous flooring or a pattern or separating out zones by laying down runners is a bit nicer IMHO... One thought re: the seating versus aisles zones and different carpet patterns is, your pews sort of already create distinct zones in the pattern or rows, wood, etc. so having a continuous surface at the floor is a bit cleaner (i.e. you won't run into weird conditions or slivers of color if the pews laid over the carpet changes don't perfectly line up or if spacing turns out odd)...? Not sure...
Terrazzo would be nice, but not cheap...
There's also rubber flooring products made from recycled materials which are pretty durable and various patterns or colors...
http://recycledrubberfloors.com/
http://www.ecosurfaces.com/greysuite.php
Would be cool to see the photos.
Or what about... polished concrete w/ carpet runners? depending on the character of the space...
OK, finally had time to put up a few pics. Thanks for your patience. There are a few in this set, and here is one:
that kind of shows the room.
Unfortunately I don't have any that show the floor area specifically. I was able to check out the existing flooring, and from what I can tell it's simply 8x8 tile glued directly down to the slab, and a broadloom carpet adjacent, put down over a thin pad.
We are redoing the chancel area, which is currently carpeted, and ripping out the existing stepped choir seating and replacing it all with a level wood floor. So that's kind of leading me toward wood as a possible flooring material for under the pews, so that we can minimize the number of flooring materials in this small sanctuary.
Does anyone know if I can glue down 3/8" engineered solid-wood planks right over the existing 8x8 tile?
Does anyone have experience with 3/8" engineered solid-wood T&G plank product in moderately trafficked areas? We may have small puddles of water tracked in during the snowy months. Anyone know how that might hold up? What's the maintenance like on a product like that?
If the real stuff doesn't cut it, I may go the fake-wood-patterned linoleum that someone mentioned upthread. I've seen some samples of that recently that looked surprisingly decent, although I'm concerned about how it would mix in the same room with actual sold wood flooring (at the chancel). Any experience using the wood lino?
Thanks again, all!
LB's the bomb isn't she.
You wanna see her student crit pic, very nice.
Wow.. Lots of ideas here! I was going to suggest the flooring we used but half way through there was a google ad for bamboo flooring that looks great!
I wish I had found that late last year when we were picking flooring!!
They are using really smart/eco friendly sources and the results look very good!
Thanks for the thread/posts! Love this site. ;)
I've been a church organist and pianist for about 20 years and I'd like to say I'm glad to see you are asking around before you make this important decision. I have been through 2 church renovations and about to go through another. In the previous two I was very disappointed at the choice of flooring, which was wall-to-wall carpeting on everything and fully padded pews. I tried and tried to convince the committee to refinish the old hardwood floors on the stage under the choir and instruments... and even one of the professionals suggested it too. But they wouldn't hear any of it. Carpet RUINS the acoustics of a church. The organ and piano sound abrupt and the singing is muffled. I saw pics of your church and I would say, at the very least, put a hard surface under the choir and on the stage and under the piano. That alone will amplify the music and send it out into the sanctuary.
Really nice work guys.
really a great design and learning about good design, appreciate your creativity and overall projection of ideas.
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