Joining carpets/rugs without tack strips

[Stephen Tashiro]

Is there a good way to join two pieces of carpet at their edges without using tack strips after the are pieces are already set on the floor?

I'd like to replace a carpet in a room. The carpet is over carpet pad, but it's hemmed at the edges and sits like a rug. No tack strips hold it. This arrangement has worked well, but the carpet is dingy and needs replacing. From the point of fiew of moving furniture, it would be nice to replace the carpet with two smaller pieces so the furniture wouldn't all have to be moved out into the hall at one time. After the two pieces are down, it would be nice to join the edges in some neat and durable way.

[Mike Henderson]

Maybe I don't understand what you need to do, but carpet people join carpet all the time, and do it so you can't see the joint. The use a heating device and a wide heat activated tape. I've watched them do it many times but have never done it myself. The equipment is special so you'd do best to hire a carpet person to do it.

Mike

[I watched a guy assemble a "throw" type rug one time, with a center field of one carpet, a border of another carpet, and then he bound the edges with a special sewing machine and edging tape.]

[Mel Miller]

Carpet layers use a special iron that melts the glue on carpet tape. Not that hard to do, and you can rent the iron. But - it would be much easier to lay the carpet in one piece rather than splicing it. You're going to have to move all the furniture anyway.

[Roger Nair]

Generic mass market carpet is joined by a thermo plastic tape that is heated by a specialty iron, ask at any carpet store, they should have the tape and irons for rent.

[Jay Jolliffe]

Heated carpet tape. They join rugs together to make a larger piece with a tape that gets heated & stuck together under the carpet pieces..It's like hot glue on a flat tape.

[Tom Stenzel]

At our old house in Detroit the installers had to put a seam in the hallway using the tape and heater system. When they were done you wouldn't have noticed it unless it was pointed out. No, I doubt that I could do it as well on the first try.

Is it possible to put the carpet in as a roll at one side of the room and move the furniture onto it as it was unrolled? Just asking.

-Tom

[Myk Rian]

Carpet tape iron at HF. $45.
304007

[Brian Elfert]

I would just bite the bullet and move everything out if it were me. You will almost certainly have an obvious joint if you don't use seam tape. If you switch to wall to wall carpet that needs stretching you won't be able to stretch it with anything in the room.

[Charlie Velasquez]

Almost all the carpet laid in our school district the last few years have been of the carpet tile variety. I watched several installations. Seemed pretty straight forward. I am sure it looked so easy because they were experienced, but after a while I am sure you'd get the hang of it. Our maintenance staff and teachers like them because if you get a stain, you can easily remove the offending tiles. Our custodians do the repairs, so it doesn't need certified installers to make the fix.

lots of design latitude, also.

[John Goodin]

The big boxes also sell self sealing tape for DIYers. A roll costs about 6 bucks if I remember correctly. No iron needed.

[Stephen Tashiro]

I looked at some carpet seam sealing YouTube videos. The intimidating thing is not the tools and materials - it's how slowly you must work!