Tile Council of North America’s (TCNA) Product Performance Testing Laboratory is pleased to announce several new services, which are designed to meet the industry’s growing and ever-changing needs for relevant, up-to-date product testing.

The TCNA lab now has full ISO 13007 cementitious grout and mortar testing capabilities, allowing TCNA to provide testing services to grout and mortar customers on an international level.  For the first time, ISO 13007 testing is referenced in the TCNA Handbook for Ceramic Tile Installation (2011 version).

TCNA’s lab also currently offers modified ASTM C666: “Automated High Cycle Freeze/Thaw” stone testing, which makes it practical and cost effective to test stone to hundreds of cycles, as well as ASTM C1721: “Petrographic Analysis of Dimension Stone”, which determines a specimen’s important physical and chemical characteristics, such as mineralogy, texture, and composition.

Additionally, the TCNA Lab recently added the following capabilities to meet its customers’ green testing needs:

• Photocatalytic testing
• Antibacterial testing
• Expanded fungus and microorganism testing
• Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) testing
• Solar Reflectance Index (SRI) testing

As the largest tile and stone-only testing facility in the U.S., TCNA’s Product Performance Testing Laboratory offers confidential product and performance testing conducted in a state-of-the-art laboratory.  The TCNA lab offers a wide range of tile, dimension stone, and installation materials testing per ASTM, ANSI and ISO standards and can also provide custom testing services.  Larger-scale testing and research can be conducted via partnerships with the National Brick Research Center and Clemson University.