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I this this is the one legitimate use case for white patch. It's gypsum based like the gypcrete.
We would even use the white patch for VCT/Corlon on Gyp. Just needed to really soak with primer and juice up the mix with additive and you get a decent substrate for light use applications. Almost nothing is going to hold up over Gyp with heavy duty traffic.
 
We used to use the white patch almost exclusively back in the 70s and early 80s....Doing mostly carpet then. That's what we were given... Didn't know any better. Most always used the latex additive, don't remember any problems.
 
In the '90s we were doing hundreds of thousands of square yards of carpet tile------demo existing glue down over lightweght concrete. The lightweight concrete performs similarly to Gypcrete. From doing research and discussions with experts in the field rather than these products being so much horrible and useless it's more a matter of misuse and misapplication and crappy workmanship. Certainly it had no place in walkways of commercial office space that required heavy rolling traffic for normal operations.

Some architect, designer, GC or end user envisions cost savings and very light use. In reality the actual occupants of the building are not taking off their shoes and carrying one item at a time across hundreds of feet of cubicle corridor to move furniture, deliver mail, supplies and construction activity. When we pulled up the old carpet often huge chunks of the "slab" would be stuck to the back. Also, it was a freakin' dust bowl where both the backing of the carpet and the surface of the substrate just disintegrate into powder.
To put down strip, we would nail through the 1 1/2 inches of gypcrete into the 3/4 plywood it sat on. It was originally being made here into blocks like concrete. Then they discovered that contact with dirt caused it to crumble. I think that was part of the problem with the floors, the accumulation of dirt through the years destroyed it. My uncle was manager of the plant that made it for a short time. He told me that the lifespan was only around 60 years. But it was cheaper than concrete and did not require a heavy duty structure.
But we know how things work. Berber was never meant to be installed over a pad and then some decorator got an idea.
 
We used to use the white patch almost exclusively back in the 70s and early 80s....Doing mostly carpet then. That's what we were given... Didn't know any better. Most always used the latex additive, don't remember any problems.
The problems came about with moisture or alkaline conditions------and mostly with flooring that was much less permeable/porous than carpet. We also continued to use white patch when manufacturers called out cement patch because we knew WHEN we could get away with it. But I did have a lot of conflict when I'd insist on the cement patch and some poor schmuck had to go fetch.
 
To put down strip, we would nail through the 1 1/2 inches of gypcrete into the 3/4 plywood it sat on. It was originally being made here into blocks like concrete. Then they discovered that contact with dirt caused it to crumble. I think that was part of the problem with the floors, the accumulation of dirt through the years destroyed it. My uncle was manager of the plant that made it for a short time. He told me that the lifespan was only around 60 years. But it was cheaper than concrete and did not require a heavy duty structure.
But we know how things work. Berber was never meant to be installed over a pad and then some decorator got an idea.
I never heard anything about dirt affecting Gypcrete. That's pretty crazy. I know a lot of dirt goes right through the backings of many carpets.
 
Had a few hours to spare today so I took up old, and sealed over what almost looks like the map of the USA 😜
 

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