Every year around late October to mid December, my phone starts to ring with flooring failures, specifically in new construction in the builder market. It is not a shock that this happens; I have come to expect it on a yearly basis.

So why does it happen around the same time every year? It is quite simple. The new home building has become so fast track; the houses have no time to dry out before we put the flooring into them. The subfloor decks are exposed to wet conditions constantly. Builders refuse to turn the heat on, or if they do the heat is temporary and it is turned off at night. This temporary heat is usually propane. For every pound of propane heat you burn you actually put about a pound of water back into the air. They just keep pumping these houses full of moisture, just setting them up for flooring failures. After the installation, these homes can sit for a period of time, continuing to see cold and damp conditions. After they are sold, the new home owner comes in and turns on the heat or even the air conditioning which starts the excessive drying out period. Then the phone starts to ring.

The flooring products we are installing are very sensitive to temperature change and moisture, two things we constantly have in the Builder Market. There is a reason the manufacturers ask for the permanent heat and air conditioning is up and running prior to the flooring installation. It is to stable the environment. We are installing moisture sensitive products such as Hardwood, Laminate, and Cork flooring in these damp, wet homes. Vinyl flooring is installed at low temperatures. Vinyl contracts when cold and expands when warm….just asking for problems.

Everyone wants to blame the flooring manufacturer about the products being defective. The environment we are installing them in is the defective mechanism and no one wants to fix it. Let’s look at various flooring structures and how they are affected by Builder Market conditions we have already talked about.

Vinyl Flooring
I will break the vinyl flooring category down into two parts, Loose-Lay and Fully Adhered.

Loose Lay flooring in the builder market is extremely sensitive. You must be aware of how wet the subfloor is. The heat should be up and running. Cabinets, trim work, and carpeting should be complete. The vinyl flooring should be the last part of the home installation. These products generally don’t fail because of installer error; there is usually an outside factor. There are three failures I constantly hear about; vinyl is growing, the material was fine until the heat was turned on and now it is buckled, island and cabinets were installed over the Loose Lay Vinyl.

These Loose Lay structures can only accommodate so much subfloor shrinkage before they start to buckle. In new housing, the subfloor deck gets rained on for weeks. There is so muck wet work in new construction, the subflooring does not dry out. The vinyl flooring is installed in a new home full of moisture. Everything is fine until the heat is turned on for the first heating season. The call comes in, the flooring has buckled. The vinyl flooring has not grown, the house is finally drying out from the new construction phase. There is dimensional change with the housing structure. The subfloor is shrinking, causing pinch points and now it looks like low tide is in Mrs. Jones kitchen. The house was to wet and the subfloor had to much excessive shrinkage for the Loose Lay flooring to accommodate. Armstrong StrataMax can go over a single layer subfloor, as long as that single layer subfloor is less than 13% moisture. Problem is, no one is measuring the subfloor for moisture, or if they do, the builder is screaming for you to install the flooring.

Scenario #2. I get the call, the Loose Lay flooring was cut away from all vertical objects the first day and the next day it is tight and buckled. The problem is we take the flooring out to the job and install it right away, regardless if the heat is on (temporary or permanent). We take acclimated vinyl flooring from a conditioned warehouse to an unstable new construction site and install it. Or, the vinyl flooring sits in a cold truck all day and night and is taken to a conditioned house. Vinyl will change with temperature. It shrinks when it is cold and grows when it is warm. Proper temperature conditions and acclimation are huge when installing Loose Lay flooring.

Scenario #3. Other trades have not yet come to the realization that running nails, staples and screws in to this flooring will cause it to buckle at some point because they have now created a pinch point. This is why the flooring installer should be the last trade on the job site, not the first.

Full Spread Vinyl. Biggest complaint on full spread vinyl is underlayment joint show through. This is not a tough one to figure out. We take a dry acclimated underlayment panel and install it on top of a wet subfloor. The dry underlayment panel is like a wick. It wicks up moisture out of the subfloor and it expands. We also flash patch every joint in the underlayment adding even more moisture to this dry panel. The underlayment panel board expands and swells and all the joints show through the vinyl. This may go away with time as the heat and air conditioning dries things out, but this is a tough sell to the consumer. Acclimate the underlayment boards. Make sure the heat is up and running which will start drying out the house.

Hardwood/Laminate/Cork
These products are greatly affected by subfloor moisture. These products love moisture and will gladly suck up any excessive moisture in sight. We have the same condition issues with Hardwood as we do with Vinyl Flooring. The subfloorsare excessively wet and we are installing these products right over them. Very few installers are taking subfloor moisture readings or are using the required 6 mil poly, 15-lb. felt paper, or the AquaBar “B” to help offset the high subfloor moisture conditions. Crawl spaces aren’t being checked for proper ventilation and vapor barrier placement.

Hardwood needs to acclimate to the conditions. Take a dry board and install on a wet subfloor, you have cupping in no time. There are more and more wider planks available to the homeowner which can lead to cupping a lot easier.

Subfloors are not being checked for flatness. We are just installing over these subfloors. Joist spacing gets wider and wider and the subfloors thinner and thinner.

There are temperature and subfloor requirements for the products listed above, but we don’t take the time to find out what they are. Instead we want to blame the product for the failure, not the scenario. These products are sensitive to temperature and moisture change. Control the environment and you control your flooring issues.

Generally, floors due to fail….we fail the floors by putting them in places where they have no chance to succeed.

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