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Old Jan 15th, 07, 2:18 pm   #1
tundratouble
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Question Tundra fooring, installation issues, advice?

We are installing Tundra in a basement guest room. The floor area is rather large: about 14' by 22' feet (or so). I am installing over vinyl tile, the old floor is flat. Tundra was purchased 60 days ago and stored flat in our basement, 1 room away from final location. (This is a heated basement, with the vents shut... but still fairly dry) We have winter here in PA, but it has rained lately.

Here is what I have done so far:
1) Put down the plastic vapor barrier. carpet tape @leading edge to hold it down
2) Put down the foam padding layer
3) installed about half the floor (starting with the 14' side) I did all of this in one 6 hour stretch. At the end of 6 hours, I came to a board that failed to install (twice) and decided to stop for the evening.

Now we come to the sad part
I am halfway through and suddenly having difficulty getting the boards in place. When I try to snap a board in, the left and right edges have a gap of almost 1 mm. Which means I can choose to have the left or right edges snap in. And of course, I really need both to snap in. One option is lots of banging on the board - something I am not supposed to have to do. (and, this damages the leading edge, causing bigger issues with the next row) I have tried opening a new box, which worked for one or two boards, then back to the same installation issue.

Some details:
* It looks like either the "line" of the floor is slightly out, or the boards in the box are slightly warped. Or I have a single big defect somewhere in the middle of the floor.
* The Ikea plastic installation block has long ago gotten beaten to a pulp, so I am using a hardwood block.
* When I started the installation yesterday, I turned the heat on in the room I am installing in. So the room humidity should have dropped very very slightly. Does anyone (Ikea employee perhaps?) have data on product expansion vs humidity? I really don't think the tiny possible humidity drop should be enough to warp the floor and make installation impossible.

The solutions I can think of:
1) Start installing from the other side of the room - where the 2 floors meet, there will be a very ugly seam. If I do this I will never hear the end of it from my partner, since Ikea flooring was my idea.
2) Click out 4 or 5 rows of floor, to get back to a place where it was going in better. These rows would get scrapped, about $100 worth of product :-(
3) Switch to carpet halfway through the floor. Not a good idea!

Will this product assemble better with low or high humidity???

Is there some trick I am missing?

And for the record, I have lots of IKEA furniture assembly experience. I have never had a problem like this before!

- C
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Old Jan 17th, 07, 1:38 pm  
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Bump...I don't know the answer (sorry), but I'm interested because I will soon be installing the same flooring
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Old Jan 17th, 07, 2:18 pm  
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Bizzare...

I haven't installed any IKEA flooring at all, so obviously I'm speculating, but I don't think the engineered laminate flooring should be warping substantially in any reasonable environment. Have you tried taking sample boards and laying them on edge on a known flat surface? I use my tablesaw, as after all the tuning and widgeting to get the extension wings on right that bloody well BETTER be flat but you could use an existing laminate countertop or any number of things. I'd guess that you've got some misalingment due either to an unlevel floor or perhaps unsquare walls? Is the flooring touching the walls at any point? I think there's supposed to be a set gap all the way around, with our cork flooring planks it was 1/2". It doesn't have to be exact, but if the flooring is touching wall, it could be skewing the lineup?

The other thing is have you checked the floor to see if it's level? If there was an uneven slope I could see it maybe doing something like that...

Please let us know what you find out, if nothing else it'll help other folks out down the road...

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Last edited by Tigratrus; Jan 17th, 07 at 2:19 pm. Reason: typo
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Old Jan 17th, 07, 9:07 pm  
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We're getting ready to install laminate this weekend (not Ikea) and spent the last weekend making sure the floor is level (which it wasn't of course)

Our specs called for no more than 1/12" in 39" of distance - which isn't much.

Also, did you acclimate the wood before you started the install? It should have set in the room to adjust to the temperature and humidy for at least 48hrs. Those seem to be the two biggest things I've read regarding laminate install issues. Best of luck!
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