Customer complaint of Smell/Off-gassing from Environ Easy Mats

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Customer complains of smell coming from an EV EASY MAT (Not Flex roll)

We have not had problems before with smell from our heating panels, but anything with a natural or synthetic rubber content can be a problem, eg the rubber backing sometimes used on coir or sisal carpets.

Our heating panels are made up of three main parts, ie the heating wires themselves, the foil sheets that form the ‘body’ of the heater, and the adhesive that holds the product together.

The adhesive is a water-based permanent tack adhesive manufactured by the German company Henkel. Although this was not a requirement for us, the adhesive happens to be rated as “food grade” by the FDA, and since it is water based rather than solvent based there are no strong chemical smells.

The foil sheets are a lamination of aluminum foil, kraft paper and fiberglass scrim, bonded together with PE (polyethylene) in a heat and pressure process. The manufacturing process involves temperatures a lot higher than our normal operating temperature so I very much doubt we would have any softening or melting of the PE layer during normal operation and hence unlikely to cause any smell.

The heating wires are insulated with hard, RoHS compliant, lead-free PVC, rated for continuous operation at 105degC. The PVC is extruded at temperatures way higher than 105degC, which itself is considerably higher than our operating temperature, so also unlikely to be causing any smell.

First suspects would be: the secondary backing on the carpet and / or the underlayment pad, especially if any rubber content as mentioned above.

Written by Scott Rosenbaum
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