• Make driveway available for cutting of the carpet. 
• Clear all areas of furniture unless installers are providing basic furniture moving.
• If you are painting walls and baseboards prior to carpet installation, make sure you paint all the way down the baseboard below the level of the new carpet. 

If installers are providing basic furniture moving services, the customer must still:

• Disconnect wiring and cables from electronic equipment. 
• Remove small items from  the tops of furniture to be moved, and place them out of the installation area, i.e. ash trays, books and magazines, plants and other small items. 
• Empty china cabinets, hutches, bookcases and remove glass shelves..  
• Installers will not move "objects of art" or non-replaceable "heirloom items", it is up to the customer to move these prior to installation.
• Clear closet floors of shoes, clothing and other items.
• Remove sheets from beds.  Drain and dismantle water beds (installers will move the disassembled pieces).
• Installers will not disassemble or assemble furniture. Examples of assembly furniture are anchored or joined wall units, pier units, waterbeds, Murphy beds, and some oversized desks and workstations. On a case by case basis, installers may, on occasion, move assembled furniture, pianos and pool tables depending on size, weight, and location, but tuning of pianos and leveling of pool tables is not guaranteed and not the responsibility of the installers.
• Restrict pets and animals to areas other than work areas.

At time of installation:

• Do a walk-through with the installer prior to installation. If you have any concerns or questions regarding installation, discuss it with the installers at the very beginning. Notify the installer of any under-carpet wires for alarms, speakers, phones, etc.
• Minor foundation cracks and expansion joints are common in concrete slabs and unless the crack is severe, will not effect the proper installation or wear of new carpet. Severe cracks that are not level may create a wear area and will be felt through the carpet and pad. Severe cracks that are not level should be beveled with floor fill to eliminate the sharp edge of the high side of the crack. The rise will most likely still be felt through the carpet and pad but the sharp edge will be eliminated. This is at additional cost to the customer depending on severity of crack and amount of time and fill required. Most severe cracks are already known to the homeowner, as they can be felt through the existing flooring. Customers may also opt to fill minor cracks at additional cost, though it generally is not necessary.
• Tack strips are only replaced when necessary i.e. will not hold the new stretch. The installers will decide which tack strips to replace, reinforce with nails, or back up with new strips.
• A Note about your new carpet when initially rolled out for cutting prior to placement in house. Because the carpet is highly, highly compressed on the roll for shipping, it will look both thinner and different in color than the sample you viewed.  When the carpet is inside, stretched and vacuumed, its appearance will be similar to the sample you viewed. 

After the installation:

• Normal installation methods may lightly scuff baseboards and walls. The installers will use extreme care to minimize these occurrences.
• Seam appearance generally improves with vacuuming and traffic. See "will I see seams " in general questions page.
• Shedding and fuzzing are a common occurrence on all staple cut pile carpets and may fill up vacuum cleaner bags quickly and sometimes even clog the vacuum cleaner. What appears to be a lot of fiber loss is actually a minute percentage of the carpet weight. The amount of fiber ends released will diminish with time and vacuuming.
• Shading, foot printing, and vacuum tracking are common, to varying degrees, with all cut pile carpets.
• If you fill tacks or nails at flooring transitions areas (where carpet meets vinyl or tile). Lightly tap them down with a hammer. Tack strips are used to hold the stretch at most flooring edge transitions, the installer taps the nails down during installation but may occasionally miss some. 
• Roll Crush and nap reversal occurs in portions of the carpet roll, where pile yarn has been flattened, do to the weight of the carpet roll itself. These areas of flattened yarn usually appear as widthwise bands of lighter or darker color, although the color is not different. Roll crush is not a manufacturing defect and most roll crush will disappear after the yarn has been allowed sufficient time to blossom. Stubborn crush marks are removed with steam.