Hello all, I inspected a 20 year old condo yesterday that had engineered hardwood flooring throughout.It had been installed about 2 years ago.The main floor structure of the building is concrete and they put a layer of plywood on top of that to provide nailing for the t&g flooring.It looked beautiful except for the many large gaps that had occurred in the center areas of all the rooms.I could see at some of the edges,where the transition moldings had come off,that the installers did use some type of construction adhesive.I don`t know if the floor had been installed using only glue or nails or both.By the look of the blobs of glue at the edges,it occurs to me that they probably used a tube and caulking gun and not a notched trowel to apply the glue. My question is: What did they do wrong, can this be fixed and if not what can be done to mask the gaps. Thanks in advance for any input. Clive.
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Can that flooring be put down "floating" like laminate flooring is?
The flooring is already down apparantly
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Yeah, I know that but I was wondering for future reference if it can be laid floating.
In general engineered flooring can be installed as floating, nail down, or glue down.Now all brands/series don't allow all 3 methods of installation. And it also depends on the substrate and location..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Do U have any pictures?
Welcome to the
Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime.
where ...
Excellence is its own reward!
It sounds like the flooring shrunk. I've heard that the flooring should aclimate in the dwelling for a while. That is if the dwelling is dry. Maybe the slab still has some moisture in it at the time of the flooring instalation.
The condo's been up for 20 yrs,so there should'nt be any more moisture in the slab other than there should be.It will be shrinkage but of what,the ply subfloor,the underside of the hardwood veneer,or the hardwood veneer itself ?.Could be all 3 combined or just a substandard product.Then again it might be a lousy install.
It's hard know after the fact what happened. Like you said it could be any of those things.