Press Release June 1, 2007
Inventor aims to take the pain from the carpet installation profession
A new line of air powered carpet install tools offers a glimmer of hope for an injury prone profession
100 Mile House, BC, June 1, 2007: Lee Peters of 100 Mile House, British Columbia is the inventor of an entire line of air powered carpet installation tools aimed at preventing debilitating knee injury in carpet installation professionals.
Since a 1990 report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) indicated that an alarming “6.2% of all workers’ compensation claims for traumatic knee injury”(NIOSH 90-104) were made by carpet layers it has been openly recognized that carpet installation poses serous health risks to the tradesman. Chief among the causes of knee injury is the impact generated by workers striking the knee kicker with the area just above the kneecap.
Knee injury is a serious challenge to the health and livelihoods of carpet installation professionals. While other trades, such as carpentry, have seen steady streams of tool advancement the carpet installation process has remained virtually unchanged for the past 50 years. Mr. Peters, who will soon turn 65 years old, and who has been a career carpet installer for half a century, has endured this lack of technological advancement for his entire career. In that time he has seen countless tradesmen fall from debilitating knee injury. Mr. Peters stated “All the guys I began installing carpet with 50 years ago were out of the trade within 10 years.” Despite this Peters continues to ply his trade, but with injury prevention foremost in his mind.
Mr. Peters is featured on several short videos hosted on youtube.com and his company website, carpetairkicker.com. In the videos Peters shows the entire process of carpet stretching from setting nudge walls and power stretching to stretching stairs all using his patented line of air tools. Nudge walls are set with the Air Stretcher, a knee kicker replacement that functions primarily as a placement tool. Power stretching is accomplished by either the Remote Controlled Air Power Stretcher (Senior) or the manually operated Air Power Stretcher (Junior). Both of these tools easily accomplish Carpet and Rug Institute stretch specifications of 1 to 1.5% of total length and width. Perhaps the most injurious process in carpet installation is the kicking of stairs. Kicking stairs requires the worker to strike the kicker with his kneecap and often leads to serious injury. On the company website Mr. Peters demonstrates the smallest of his line of tools, the Air Stair Stretcher which takes all of the danger and difficulty out of stretching carpet onto stairs.
In May of 2007 Mr. Peters was approached by the Project Manager of the Knee Disorders and Occupational Biomechanical Risks at the University of Massachusetts Lowell about the possiblility of including his tools in the study. The tools, along with the study conducted at UML could be the first step towards a comprehensive solution to the problem of knee injury in carpet installation professionals.