The material
The material, in principle and in section.
What it is, how it behaves in a home, and what it asks of the building. The drawings on this page are ours. The measured detail behind them exists in full — and is issued to architects, specifiers and contractors on request.
WARM · CAPRI 747
Three of the eighteen — the real décor at macro scale. Nothing beautified; what you see is the surface you walk on.
A mineral core, and three things laid over it.
A CARETTA floor is an engineered surface built around a rigid mineral core. The core is what gives the plank its stillness. Measured dimensional change is −0.08% to −0.10% at 82°C (limit ±0.2%), on three models of the family — which is why it holds its shape in damp air and after a hot afternoon. It tolerates a subfloor that is not perfect, within the flatness tolerance stated in the installation guide.
Over it sits the image of the material — a décor whose colour we hold and verify ourselves rather than accept. Over that, a clear layer that takes the wear instead of the picture. Beneath, a bonded layer that takes the sound.
The joint is milled, not built.
A floating floor is not held down. What holds it is the profile cut into all four edges of every plank, and the accuracy of that cutting. It is the one part of the floor that is machined rather than assembled, and it is where a poorly cut board tends to give itself away — in use, not in the showroom.
Every board also carries a micro-bevel on all four sides. The eye reads a floor of separate boards; a bare foot never finds a lip. This is a manufactured floor and the joint says so. It is not an imitation of solid-timber joinery, and it is not asked to be.
Two ranges. One thickness.
Navigation and Deep Sea are built on the same principle and finish at the same height. They differ in how the core is built and in the pad beneath it: one is a single rigid mass, the other wraps that same rigid core in two resilient layers; one pad is softer, one denser.
Denser is not lesser. A firmer pad gives the joint more support under a point load; a softer one absorbs more impact sound — the acoustic reports are issued to specifiers on request. Neither of them is the premium one.
Two builds, exploded.
It floats. That is the whole installation.
No adhesive and no fixings. The boards lock to one another and rest as one continuous field, held clear of the walls so the floor can move with the seasons. Skirting fixes to the wall, never to the floor, and nothing is built on top of the floor to pin it.
A flat, dry, sound subfloor is the one thing the system genuinely demands — and it is the thing most often skipped.
What it is not.
It is not a waterproofing system.
The core is water-resistant for everyday use — a damp cloth, a glass that goes over, wet feet at the door. It is not a flood-proof claim, and no floating floor is.
It is not wood.
It is an image of wood beneath a clear layer. That is a legitimate way to build a floor and not a legitimate thing to blur. It also means the surface cannot be sanded back and refinished.
It is not non-combustible.
It carries a European reaction-to-fire classification appropriate to a floor covering of this kind. A project that specifies a non-combustible floor is specifying something else — and we would rather say so at the enquiry than at the submittal.
Tested to European standards.
| Wear | EN 13329 — report on request |
|---|---|
| Reaction to fire | EN 13501-1 — report on request |
| Formaldehyde | EN 717-1 — 0.006 mg HCHO/m³ measured |
The reports themselves, with their scope and their dates, travel with the technical dossier — not with the marketing.
On request
The full technical dossier.
Everything these sheets leave out is in it: the same drawings fully dimensioned, the test reports with their scope, the installation documents, and the measured colour of every model.
It is issued to architects, specifiers and contractors on request — the reports themselves, not a summary of them.