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My old boss said power stretchers were for lazy hacks, I used one last Tuesday and I get it now
Back when I ran a crew in Akron, my old boss Ray would not let a power stretcher on the job. He said knee kicking was the only real way and anyone using a stretcher was cutting corners. I believed him for almost 9 years and my knees paid for it. Last Tuesday I had 1,400 square feet of berber in a rental and said forget it, rented a stretcher for $45 a day. That berber came out tight as a drum with zero wrinkles and my back did not hurt that night for the first time in a long time. I still knee kick seams and stairs, but for big open rooms the stretcher wins every time. Any of you still kick everything by hand, or did you switch like I did?
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lucasschmidt19d ago
Ray's logic has one hole in it that nobody ever brings up. A power stretcher pulls from the far wall with a tail block, so the stretch is spread over the whole field of the carpet instead of just where your knee lands. Knee kicking puts all that force into a few square inches at a time, which is exactly how you get stretched-out spots and popped seams later. I ran a 12 by 30 living room both ways once out of curiosity and the kick method left ripples at the far wall inside a month. The tool is not the shortcut, doing it by hand on big open areas is the shortcut.
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