HD end joints

[highup]

Carpet One asked me to look at a flooring complaint.
It was 30 miles from town. Here's what I saw. This home is used as a weekly rental. Property manager said when no one is there the heat is turned down to 50.
Call 729 the entire downstairs of the home has this LVP click flooring. there's a very large entry area in the home and a bedroom to the left and right of it. Walking through the entry area, you walk straight through the house towards the sliding glass doors on the far side of the home. On the far side of the home, there is a bedroom to the right and a kitchen to the left. The areas that have separation are in front of the refrigerator. One small joint problem next to the dishwasher, and the sliding glass door area for the first 5 feet out, and on the opposite side of the house by the front door there are also the same issues. In the middle of the house the wide entryway that leads to the back door there are no end joint problems whatsoever.
I texted a photo of the material to the warehouse guy at carpet one asking him if he had a scrap of it somewhere around.
He said he's never seen the product and never had it in the warehouse.
I showed these images to the owner of carpet one. She fiddled with the computer for a minute and said: "that's a home Depot product"

 

[highup]

I looked up a video on how to install this product.
It's one of those floors will you lock in the length and lay the end joint together, then gently tap it straight down. It's not the kind of flooring that you lay down and then tap the end joints toward each other.
I'm just going to say end joint failure.
Stepping on the floor near these problem areas, I felt no flexing at all and the floor seemed very flat.
Looks like carpet one has nothing whatsoever to do with this job. Waste of time on their part to have me go look at it. How strange that people don't remember that they bought a product from home Depot. The nearest one is 120 miles away from here.

 

[Dan]

End joint failure? Why? What caused it?

 

[highup]

I wouldn't begin to guess why.
Okay I will guess. Somebody tapped the end joints together during installation instead of just laying the plank into its groove. Tapping the end joints sideways like you would do with cortec, would snap the locking mechanism off.
But that just doesn't make sense. The locking groove on these boards are obviously different when you look at them. This is the entire downstairs of the house. There is one plank that has broken joints and separation at each end of the plank...... close to a 1/8 inch Gap at each end of the board. That's the photo with the tape measure. There are a lot of joints in that area to have come apart.
It's like five or six rows of material are trying to move towards the bedroom doorway. I didn't bring in a straight edge to check for flatness but I didn't notice anything unusual when walking on the floor. I even bounced up and down a couple of times to see if the boards moved or flexed. They didn't move at all.

 

[Dan]

You didn't see them moving, while you were moving. Could make it kind of difficult.

I wasn't there, so I don't know, just trying to get you and others to thinking.

 

[highup]

Trust me I was thinking. The light shining on that floor by the window was very hard light. I weigh about 215. With that kind of lighting, and the shine on the floor, you have to trust me. It didn't move at all. It's a wooden structure, not a concrete floor.
I've seen an end joint separate because of improper floor prep. I have seen an end-joint gap caused because the floor didn't fully engage at the end joint and issues with sliding glass doors facing south and having long periods of direct sunlight on them during the day. I've seen a lot of issues of usually there's something that waves are red flag.
Nothing's waving at me this time.
Like I said it's a home Depot problem not mine and not the carpet one dealer's. I just thought I'd throw it out to see if anybody had any flags to wave.

 

[Dan]

Let me ask this one............

Why were the end joint failures near the sliding door and the entry? Or am I misunderstanding the failure locations? If so, would you please add a simple sketch of floor plan?

 

[Dan]

Let me add, I'm sure most of ya'll know I know wood inside and out. Other types of flooring, not so much. I know if carpet isn't installed fuzzy side up there might could be an issue.

Ya'll jump in.

 

[highup]

Let me add, I'm sure most of ya'll know I know wood inside and out. Other types of flooring, not so much. I know if carpet isn't installed fuzzy side up there might could be an issue.

Ya'll jump in.

Okay I have a thought. Maybe the foundation in the middle of the house broke and the house is starting to splitting in half moving to the left and right from center where most of these end joints are separating.

 

[highup]

Let me ask this one............

Why were the end joint failures near the sliding door and the entry? Or am I misunderstanding the failure locations? If so, would you please add a simple sketch of floor plan?

The front entry gets zero direct sunlight because of the trees and the driveway and front porch overhang.
The back, or opposite side of the house by the sliding glass doors also has some tall trees not too far away from the deck. Probably get some limited afternoon sunshine but most of the splits or gaps are a few feet to the right of the glass door so they don't really receive any sunlight. There are a couple of 8-in gaps into the bedrooms.
I think if an inspector came and looked at the job, he might already know that the product had issues with that joint design or the material the joint is made of. No I'm not an inspector I have seen joint separation before and usually is pretty obvious. Either a joint wasn't fully tapped together to begin with is it on the floor have noticeable movement weakening the joint over time. This one....... I don't have a real clue. Well actually just looked at at some point I would like to know what the problem was but since it's not a carpet one product I'm never going to find out.

 

[Dan]

Okay I have a thought. Maybe the foundation in the middle of the house broke and the house is starting to splitting in half moving to the left and right from center where most of these end joints are separating.

I have actually seen and documented this exact thing on an engineered wood floor with end gaps. I got lucky enough to even catch Google maps street view pictures of the lot before construction began. The home was built on fill and was cracking apart right down the middle.

Driveway cracks, foundation and brick cracks, cracks in sheetrock, gaps in mouldings, etc I couldn't believe nobody else could see all this.

 

[highup]

Darn now I wished I would have looked closer? It has a gravel driveway. if anything major was going on with the drywall I would have noticed it, but then again they would have fixed that so I wouldn't have seen anything.

 

[C.J.]

Allure was pre Lifeproof. Back in the earlier days of LVP. The industry still had a few things to learn. It had a high content of recycled material which made it dimensionally unstable. It could, and did, bubble up in sunlight and shrink and gap if the heat was turned down. I hated installing that junk back then. Remember Grip Strip? That was another Allure/ Traffic Master product.

Now what you have there is Allure Ultra. It wasn’t too bad. I think it was just regular ol Allure with some fiberglass in the core. Whatever it was it was enough to keep the floor from losing its mind. I didn’t get call backs on that stuff like I did on the other crap.

Anyway $5 says the floor got enough sunlight to cause it to expand. When it cooled down it shrunk and gapped at the butt joints. That’s why the gaps are in front of the slider. Turning the heat down just made the heat differential that much greater between where the sun shone and the rest of the floor.

 

[highup]

Where's my $10?
Gaps also by the fridge and front entry... zero sunlight... OK, it entered the room but didn't hit the floor.
Correct by the slider. It may receive 1 or 2 hours of direct sunlight as I am trying to recall how tall the trees are just outside the windows. Those do face westerly but has a full treeline not far from the house.
Ended up the carpet one store that sent me down to inspect the failure didn't even sell the product. Customer bought it at a box store.
It was 45 miles south of town, so a nice drive.

 

[C.J.]

Interesting. Could you see the butt joints where they separated? We’re they broken or just pulled apart. I don’t recall having problems with that specific product myself but since it is a HD product that means it was likely either a DIY or HD did the install.

Another possibility is a heavy (rolling) load. Front door and slider are entry points where a loaded hand truck would pivot while bringing stuff in and out. Fridge too.

Wonder if foot traffic would do that especially if the heat was just turned on/ off and somebody is packing/ unpacking for the season.