The Philadelphia Flyers have had quite a few victories since the club’s inception in 1967. However, one recent win for the team took place in the offseason—and off the ice.
Avalon Carpet Tile & Flooring recently kicked off a retiling project for the Philadelphia Flyers’ locker rooms, showers and coaches’ bathrooms at the Virtua Flyers Skate Zone in Voorhees, N.J. The ice arena is home to the Flyers’ training camp, so the job had a hard completion timeframe of just 28 days. The project had to be finished before the players gathered for informal workouts prior to the start of training camp.
The Avalon team chose various types of tile from Daltile for the locker room floors, walls and ceiling in orange, black and white—the Philadelphia Flyers’ team colors. They specifed several TEC products for the tile installation, including TEC 3N1 Performance Mortar, TEC HydraFlex Waterproofing Crack Isolation Membrane and TEC Power Grout Ultimate Performance Grout.
Upon removal of the original tile and backer board, the Avalon team discovered that the framing had rusted throughout the locker room as a result of a failure of the previous waterproofing system. Correcting this issue required gutting and rebuilding the entire room, which posed a serious issue with the short window of time before the deadline.
“We used Power Grout to give us the ability to get the Philadelphia Flyers shower facilities up and running without delay,” states Robert Showers, project manager for Avalon Carpet Tile & Flooring. “We also wanted to provide stain protection and liked the idea of better color consistency.”
Because this was the installers’ first experience with Power Grout, Showers wanted to ensure that they were able to mix to the appropriate consistency. First, he asked them to mix a batch without measuring out the water to see a “real world” application, and then a “by the book” batch with the exact measurements specified in the instructions.
“I was amazed to discover that the second batch mirrored the first in terms of consistency and joint appearance, which proves that TEC has created a product that accurately mimics how grout is mixed on job sites,” Showers notes. “The installers said the grout was easy to work with and the color consistency the next day was right on.”
The job was completed on-time and the entire Flyers organization is extremely pleased with the new team locker rooms. In fact, the Virtua Flyers Skate Zone is now considering retiling a second locker room, which was previously used for the Flyers’ minor league affiliate, the Philadelphia Phantoms.