The $20 knee kicker I swore by for 8 years finally let me down

I always thought fancy power stretchers were a waste of money. My old manual kicker got me through hundreds of jobs, no problem. Then last month I took on a 1200 square foot commercial carpet job in downtown Austin, and the seams kept puckering no matter how hard I kicked. I borrowed my buddy's power stretcher after the third try and it laid flat like butter. Has anyone else held onto an old tool way too long before upgrading?

3 comments

3 Comments

julia_anderson23d ago

laid flat like butter" is exactly what I'm chasing right now. I gotta ask though - when you say you borrowed your buddy's power stretcher, did you just use it once and that was it? Or did you actually take the time to figure out how to set the tension right and all that? Cause I tried a power stretcher on a small hall carpet last year and it felt way too aggressive, like I was gonna rip the carpet. I ended up going back to my knee kicker for that job. But maybe I just didn't give it enough of a chance or had the settings wrong. I'm genuinely curious if you had to adjust how you worked with it or if it just clicked for you.

drew_reed6223d ago

Took me a minute to get it dialed in, honestly. I started with it set on the lowest tension and worked my way up (which felt safer than ripping the carpet on the first try). The big thing I found was that you gotta hold it at a lower angle than a knee kicker, almost like you're pushing it into the floor instead of just pulling back. Once I got that, it stopped feeling like I was gonna tear the carpet and started feeling more like a controlled stretch. totally get why you stuck with the knee kicker for that hall job though, sometimes the smaller spaces just don't give you enough room to get the power stretcher set right.

ericj4523d ago

You mess with the tension setting at all? I had a buddy who swore his power stretcher was garbage till he realized it was cranked way too tight from the factory. He backed it off a notch and said it made all the difference on his next job.