We have just moved into our new home and we had engineered hardwood floors installed about 1 1/2 months ago throughout the house except in the bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchen. The floors have gaps between the floor boards at the ends and some on the sides as well. The gaps are through out the house. The builder had this prefessionally installed. Is this an issue with the installer or manufacturer of the wood? I understand that there will be some gaps due to expansion and weather changes but just after 1 1/2 months? The gaps are everywhere and some of them large enough where you can see the tongue of the boards where they connect. Any advice would be appreciated.

This is an installation issue!!!! Even if the wood boards were milled badly, or kiln dried improperly, the installer chose to install it, instead of halting the job, and getting a claim filed into the manufacturer.

It is installation related, especially a gap so big, you can see the tongue on an engineered.

I have to say, Bruce is pretty bad about milling and kiln drying, and gaps will happen with that floor, but not the size your seeing. Bruce is the only one, that has "Bruce wood filler, must be used" in the installation instructions, because they know there wood sucks!!!

Lumber Liquidators, Bellawood, needs the same quote in there specs, too. Or a clause saying 30% is needed for culling.

Engineered wood has a co-efficient of .05%, meaning it will shrink and swell .05% with variation in wood moisture content.
The description given indicates the wood was installed at a higher moisture content than current levels.
The floor was fine when you moved in, then shrank in 1.5 months. This is a sure indication that the wood floor shrank due to loss of moisture.

How do you KNOW that? She did NOT say the gaps had developed 1&1/2 months AFTER she moved in. She said there were gaps throughout the floor. This could very well be an installation issue OR a milling issue. Without DOCUMENTED moisture meter readings of the product before, during, and after installation, there is NO WAY to verify that the problem is shrinkage due to moisture loss.

At a shrink swell ratio of .05% that wood would have had to be submerged in water for a week before installation, for it to have gaps described. It is not impossible.

If the majority of the gaps that means every board has end joint gaps, then Ray, is correct. But that is still, installation related.


I say the gaps have been there since they were installed. If an installer doesn't know how to work a rubber mallet on prefinished gluedown, he is going to have gaps everywhere.

None of you have any idea what the problem is. What is the RH in the house?
What were the site conditions throughout this 6 week period?

Whose wood is it? What type of adhesive was used?

Thanks for all of your replies. I had the manufacturer and the installer out to inspect the wood floors that were installed and looks like the problem was the representative from the manufacturer told the installer to use the wrong adhesive on the wood floors. They installed a water barrier prior to installing the hardwood floors but the representative gave them the wrong adhesive some how and caused all the end joints to have gaps.

All in all the manufacturer is going to correct this since it was the fault of their represntative giving out bad information. Now my new question is which method is best for repair?

They mentioned two options... one would be to sand down the existing hardwood floor, fill in all the gaps with wood putty, re-stain and re-finish. Second option would be to take out all the old flooring, take out the water barrier since they say they will not warranty it with the water barrier if they do a new install, and then install all new wood. The rep from the manufacturer says that they won't warranty the wood if a water barrier is installed instead they are recommending an adhesive that is more expensive that will do a better job than the water barrier. This is only in the case of installing it new. The resanding way they will still warranty it.

I like the sounds of installing the new wood but I wanted to get your opinions....

Meya