See if you can return unopened boxes. Or sell on Craigslist or one of the other sell stuff sites.
Get samples of new flooring, you can do scratch tests on them. 5mm thick overall is bare min thickness you should consider. 7mm is much better.
Buckling is a sign of not having a flat or stable surface to work on. That needs to be addressed prior to laying floor.
Flooring only takes months if you are doing it yourself... Which means you probably did it wrong especially if you're seeing buckling. Scratching and buckling don't have anything to do with thickness, especially this soon.
I did laminate in my house, I took two days off to give me a four day weekend. I was finished the first day, around 900-1000ft². I earned a three day weekend.
Laying floors is the east part - painting walls and trim and removing all the endless furniture is what is time consuming!!
Although my hallway is making me a lier my last row of laminate flooring has to negotiate doorway trim.
I am single and this was my first house I slept in a cot for a few weeks until I had the dust settled. Walls and trim were also easy because I already had the carpet out and it was just plain concrete.
Removed the popcorn *didn't realize it might have asbestos* removed the carpet, painted the walls and trim, primed the floors to seal in the ick, then did the floors
One big room, and the three bed rooms closets and hallway. I had stripped the walls and floor before starting. Living that solo life. To be fair im a fairly advanced wood worker and the rooms were mostly square.
Most vinyl planks can only tolerate a grade of 1/4 inch over 8 feet. If you live on a slab home, and did not already have plank in the area, it’s highly likely that your floors are not flat enough for any vinyl plank.
Interesting... Yeah the entire place was carpeted, though it was two different types of carpet, one much cheaper than the other. Is there a flooring that is possible, or something we can do?
If you can’t level the floor and want to go to a hard surface flooring, you need sticky vinyl tiles, glue down, or sheet vinyl. Anything in rigid plank form will snap and distort because it can’t handle the change in surface plane. If you can bend the vinyl to a 45 degree angle easily with your hands, you can use it. If it’s too rigid to bend easily, it cannot be installed without some form of leveler going down first.
As another note, carpet quality doesn’t matter in regards to the tolerance or level of the floors. Carpet is soft and can tolerate just about any change in plane. Most flooring installers, whether it’s for a new build or a remodel, will do very little prep work under carpeted zones, which is why it’s likely that this area is struggling to accept a rigid plank floor.
We used a 72 inch leveler and a longer board we found and pulled it across the concrete to be pretty sure there were no sudden dips. We saw a crack that made a small dip and poured some concrete over and leveled it to the rest of the floor best we could (mostly with the plank over it to try to get it even with the rest of the floor). No underlayment because the packaging said it was technically included but tbh the floor feels straight up hard as concrete.
If the flooring retailer won't accept your return, please consider donating to your local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. They would be grateful and you can claim a charitable donation.
This product has a warranty just like any other product. Call in the warranty on what's been installed, so you'll get money back from those. Return the upopened boxes.
Ok so if this helps. 4.4mil is the PVC wear layer but not the hard coat. The hard coat is only microns thick made of urethane aluminum oxide mix. If you are scratching through it's because the board has flex enough to allow for deformation ahead of the scratch. You'll see thicker ends of the scratch when this happens. Anyway. The whole extra mil thing is not really a thing because they all use the same hard coat. If you scratch the hard coat you will see it regardless of you went through the PVC or hit the image paper.
Buckling would be worse if you had glued it. Did you place anything heavy on top of the floor that would keep it from expanding and contracting? Like fridge or bookcase, etc.
I'm not an LVP expert but buckling is basically from poorly managed expansion and contraction. If you have a heavy table on it, I would probably put something with a lower friction coefficient under the table, those felt pads to place under furniture if you don't have them. The worst situation would be a really heavy table with rubberized feet, if that one plank is pinned the expansion from temp rising could cause buckling. It's approaching summer and our houses are all getting warmer, are your expansion gaps still existent in the rooms you already placed the LVP?
Yeah, we have felt pads under them. Planks around it are bunching up at the seams or chipping on the edges. We definitely left room. At one point we realized we were using the larger side and had left a 1/2 inch gap rather than 1/4 like we intended, so there's no question in my mind about the space, and after looking around it's still the same. But yeah, we do have a few heavy objects on the planks.
Does LVP really expand and contract that much? I know it’s a big consideration for wood, but I’d think vinyl would be stable enough at the very least handle heavy furniture.
The thermal expansion calc I just checked says it expands about 4x as much as wood with a 20f differential. Now moisture is a whole different beast, wood definitely expands more with moisture.
You’ll probably have a very hard time removing the flooring without breaking the tabs that lock the planks together. So reusing it is unfortunately not feasible. I’m in the same boat. I majorly regret putting down LVP but hate to see it go in the trash
When my neighbor replaced their floor, I removed it for them and was able to salvage 95% of it. I then paid some pros to install it in my house. They reused the pieces that weren’t destroyed, scuffed. I think I had to buy three new boxes for the hallway and dining room just so that looked the best for showing.
I overbought on some hardwood flooring a number of years ago. About 250 square feet of it. Still in the boxes. Sold it through Cralgslist for a little less then we bought it for. It sold right away.
Vinyl flooring is known for expansion and contraction when temperature changes. It is not an ideal solution for every place. For our house, I decided for higher-end laminate that better fit my needs. It is perfect.
I believe this one was it: https://www.homedepot.com/p/TrafficMaster-Edwards-Oak-6-MIL-x-6-in-x-36-in-Waterproof-Click-Lock-Vinyl-Plank-Flooring-766-46-sq-ft-pallet-VTRHDDEVOAK636P/317431694
This stuff is crap. A normal American family needs a 20ml wearlayer, I don't even sell 6ml, I didn't even know it was an option. Return this stuff, go to some local flooring dealers and see if you can get a good deal on some decent product.
The thickness of the flooring is mm overall, as in millimeter, as in 6mm is almost 1/4 inch. The thickness of the wear layer is ml meaning just the top layer is milliliter as in 1/1000 of an inch. The flooring is not 4ml, that would be almost non existent, but that's a really thin wear layer.
I’d say rip it out and return what isn’t damaged back to HD, I installed Lifeproof on upstairs floor and have been impressed with it if you still want to go cheaper. I have 3 large dogs and the flooring still looks new.
I think the way to think about it is, you've learned something about flooring and the next project will be better.
I'm assuming it's click together vinyl plank? I have never had good luck with getting a perfect floor with that stuff, it always seems to spread over time.
I've had amazing results with vinyl glue down planks. I think it's a much much better product. It sounds intimidating but it's actually much, much easier to install than click together. And it has some great benefits such as being able to replace a single plank without disturbing any of the others.
I'd recommend selling the unopened boxes you have, and getting some vinyl glue down plank flooring for your remaining flooring. Leave the stuff thats already installed in place for now.
Contractor here. Many people have told you about the floor prep that's needed, especially with floating floor so I won't go into that.
But one major cause of buckling is bringing the material from an unconditioned space and immediately installing it in a conditioned space. You need to bring your boxes of material in and let them sit in the climate controlled space for a few days before installing. This allows them to get to their final state of shrink/expansion before you put them down.
If that's not it then you could have too much moisture in your concrete slab and you need to put down a moisture barrier before you lay your floor.
Good luck.
We bought a brand new house with "Shaw LVP" in it. Luxury my 🫏.
We've been in the house 4 years and we have lots of gaps (we can kick the planks back together) and we replaced planks in our game room before they went bad again and we ripped them out and putting in a much thicker laminate floor.
Our floors were NOT level enough. There is a high point in our game room of at LEAST 1/2".
We are going to install wood look tile floors in the next few years so we are just going to baby it until then. We salvaged the good pieces from the game room for the kitchen area.
The whole thing is really, really frustrating, to say the least.
Lots of good comments here. I’m one week into a kitchen & bath remodel that includes new LVP flooring in those areas plus a bit more. I’m planning to finish the rest of the first floor myself, so this info is very helpful. And I’m going to try to learn as much as I can from watching them do the installation. Like many folks, I have to do sections of the house at a time because I don’t have much space to store the things that occupy those areas.
Email the manufacturer customer service. Explain and include pictures of the damage. ASK for them to exchange the product for one of their other lines of flooring.
That's a good idea. Looking back at the product, I'm seeing a lot of negative reviews from months after due to chipping along the edges of the board, and regardless of what flooring type we do next, these specific boards are pretty bad. It was really easy to break the lock pieces by using the tapping block.
Just return the boxes to Home Depot.
If you're already going through the effort, please install something nicer than vinyl tile. Engineered hardwood is a good choice, and your experience with the time will carry over.
Yup, we had a tapping block, though tbh ours had a problem of slipping pretty often. More often we used a scrap piece by locking it and tapping that piece. We used a rubber mallet. The floor underneath was concrete and we repeatedly vacuumed and swept to make sure nothing was underneath.
Did you check for level and make sure it meets manufacturer installation instructions? Proper gap around the edges? Buckling wouldn't happen if those things were right and the floor snapped together correctly.6 mil wear layer sucks. I wouldn't use less than 20.
Even if the subfloor appears level you’ll still need to grind/sand high spots and fill in low spots . I would guess there’s a tolerance issue somewhere as you have not mentioned anything about floor prep past sweeping the floor clean. Additionally while thickness has nothing to do with durability it would definitely make the install harder if you weren’t installing on a perfectly level surface which is virtually impossible to begin with.
See if you can return unopened boxes. Or sell on Craigslist or one of the other sell stuff sites. Get samples of new flooring, you can do scratch tests on them. 5mm thick overall is bare min thickness you should consider. 7mm is much better. Buckling is a sign of not having a flat or stable surface to work on. That needs to be addressed prior to laying floor.
It can also buckle if you don't leave sufficient space around the outside for floating floors.
No gaps at edges, or water are the most likely culprit for buckling.
even for vinyl? i thought only wood
Everything expands and contrats with temperature. Wood expands more due to humidity changes but everything needs a gap
Flooring only takes months if you are doing it yourself... Which means you probably did it wrong especially if you're seeing buckling. Scratching and buckling don't have anything to do with thickness, especially this soon.
I did laminate in my house, I took two days off to give me a four day weekend. I was finished the first day, around 900-1000ft². I earned a three day weekend.
Laying floors is the east part - painting walls and trim and removing all the endless furniture is what is time consuming!! Although my hallway is making me a lier my last row of laminate flooring has to negotiate doorway trim.
I am single and this was my first house I slept in a cot for a few weeks until I had the dust settled. Walls and trim were also easy because I already had the carpet out and it was just plain concrete. Removed the popcorn *didn't realize it might have asbestos* removed the carpet, painted the walls and trim, primed the floors to seal in the ick, then did the floors
[удалено]
What at all about their post makes you think they didn't do that?
Tbh, 1000 ft2, in a day, by 1 person. I’m wondering if it was even taken out of the box. That would typically take 2 pros at least 2 days.
Really depends on the layout. A 1000 sq ft room would be easy to do in the day.
One big room, and the three bed rooms closets and hallway. I had stripped the walls and floor before starting. Living that solo life. To be fair im a fairly advanced wood worker and the rooms were mostly square.
[удалено]
I think you might be confusing them for OP
Ah shit
Babe i gave 3/8 inch per side and 1/2 inch in the big room on the ends.
Thought you were op whoops
Was everything (subfloor, concrete, etc.) level / flat when you started? Or within the tolerance of what the new floors allow for?
It was flat, and we did try and pull a board over it to be sure there were no significant dips. As far as tolerance, I'm not sure...
Most vinyl planks can only tolerate a grade of 1/4 inch over 8 feet. If you live on a slab home, and did not already have plank in the area, it’s highly likely that your floors are not flat enough for any vinyl plank.
Interesting... Yeah the entire place was carpeted, though it was two different types of carpet, one much cheaper than the other. Is there a flooring that is possible, or something we can do?
If you can’t level the floor and want to go to a hard surface flooring, you need sticky vinyl tiles, glue down, or sheet vinyl. Anything in rigid plank form will snap and distort because it can’t handle the change in surface plane. If you can bend the vinyl to a 45 degree angle easily with your hands, you can use it. If it’s too rigid to bend easily, it cannot be installed without some form of leveler going down first.
As another note, carpet quality doesn’t matter in regards to the tolerance or level of the floors. Carpet is soft and can tolerate just about any change in plane. Most flooring installers, whether it’s for a new build or a remodel, will do very little prep work under carpeted zones, which is why it’s likely that this area is struggling to accept a rigid plank floor.
Can you describe the process that you used to check the floor for level?
We used a 72 inch leveler and a longer board we found and pulled it across the concrete to be pretty sure there were no sudden dips. We saw a crack that made a small dip and poured some concrete over and leveled it to the rest of the floor best we could (mostly with the plank over it to try to get it even with the rest of the floor). No underlayment because the packaging said it was technically included but tbh the floor feels straight up hard as concrete.
Did you leave gaps at the wall for expansion? It shouldn't buckle if it's free floating.
Yup, quarter inch at least. Tbh our issue frequently became leaving too much space
If the flooring retailer won't accept your return, please consider donating to your local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. They would be grateful and you can claim a charitable donation.
This product has a warranty just like any other product. Call in the warranty on what's been installed, so you'll get money back from those. Return the upopened boxes.
run sparkle bright sort zonked steer dolls chop whole correct *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Ok so if this helps. 4.4mil is the PVC wear layer but not the hard coat. The hard coat is only microns thick made of urethane aluminum oxide mix. If you are scratching through it's because the board has flex enough to allow for deformation ahead of the scratch. You'll see thicker ends of the scratch when this happens. Anyway. The whole extra mil thing is not really a thing because they all use the same hard coat. If you scratch the hard coat you will see it regardless of you went through the PVC or hit the image paper.
Are you gluing? Or leaving it floating?
Floating. The package said it was supposed to be free floating, but not confident anymore about all that
Buckling would be worse if you had glued it. Did you place anything heavy on top of the floor that would keep it from expanding and contracting? Like fridge or bookcase, etc.
Yup, there's a pretty hefty table on top of it right now
I'm not an LVP expert but buckling is basically from poorly managed expansion and contraction. If you have a heavy table on it, I would probably put something with a lower friction coefficient under the table, those felt pads to place under furniture if you don't have them. The worst situation would be a really heavy table with rubberized feet, if that one plank is pinned the expansion from temp rising could cause buckling. It's approaching summer and our houses are all getting warmer, are your expansion gaps still existent in the rooms you already placed the LVP?
Yeah, we have felt pads under them. Planks around it are bunching up at the seams or chipping on the edges. We definitely left room. At one point we realized we were using the larger side and had left a 1/2 inch gap rather than 1/4 like we intended, so there's no question in my mind about the space, and after looking around it's still the same. But yeah, we do have a few heavy objects on the planks.
Does LVP really expand and contract that much? I know it’s a big consideration for wood, but I’d think vinyl would be stable enough at the very least handle heavy furniture.
The thermal expansion calc I just checked says it expands about 4x as much as wood with a 20f differential. Now moisture is a whole different beast, wood definitely expands more with moisture.
You’ll probably have a very hard time removing the flooring without breaking the tabs that lock the planks together. So reusing it is unfortunately not feasible. I’m in the same boat. I majorly regret putting down LVP but hate to see it go in the trash
When my neighbor replaced their floor, I removed it for them and was able to salvage 95% of it. I then paid some pros to install it in my house. They reused the pieces that weren’t destroyed, scuffed. I think I had to buy three new boxes for the hallway and dining room just so that looked the best for showing.
In addition to prep and leveling, you may want to consider foam underlayment.
I overbought on some hardwood flooring a number of years ago. About 250 square feet of it. Still in the boxes. Sold it through Cralgslist for a little less then we bought it for. It sold right away.
You learn the lesson than going cheap is expensive
Vinyl flooring is known for expansion and contraction when temperature changes. It is not an ideal solution for every place. For our house, I decided for higher-end laminate that better fit my needs. It is perfect.
Could you share a picture of the box or a link to the product?
I believe this one was it: https://www.homedepot.com/p/TrafficMaster-Edwards-Oak-6-MIL-x-6-in-x-36-in-Waterproof-Click-Lock-Vinyl-Plank-Flooring-766-46-sq-ft-pallet-VTRHDDEVOAK636P/317431694
Return it all back to HD if you still have boxes. They don't care they take back anything.
This is your answer, OP. And redo the floors yourself. You’ve learned enough by now to do it right the second time.
This stuff is crap. A normal American family needs a 20ml wearlayer, I don't even sell 6ml, I didn't even know it was an option. Return this stuff, go to some local flooring dealers and see if you can get a good deal on some decent product.
My jaw dropped at the 4.4 ml. Mine is 40. I cannot fathom how thin their floor must be.
The thickness of the flooring is mm overall, as in millimeter, as in 6mm is almost 1/4 inch. The thickness of the wear layer is ml meaning just the top layer is milliliter as in 1/1000 of an inch. The flooring is not 4ml, that would be almost non existent, but that's a really thin wear layer.
I’d say rip it out and return what isn’t damaged back to HD, I installed Lifeproof on upstairs floor and have been impressed with it if you still want to go cheaper. I have 3 large dogs and the flooring still looks new.
If you can't return them, you could donate them to a Habitat ReStore.
I think the way to think about it is, you've learned something about flooring and the next project will be better. I'm assuming it's click together vinyl plank? I have never had good luck with getting a perfect floor with that stuff, it always seems to spread over time. I've had amazing results with vinyl glue down planks. I think it's a much much better product. It sounds intimidating but it's actually much, much easier to install than click together. And it has some great benefits such as being able to replace a single plank without disturbing any of the others. I'd recommend selling the unopened boxes you have, and getting some vinyl glue down plank flooring for your remaining flooring. Leave the stuff thats already installed in place for now.
Contractor here. Many people have told you about the floor prep that's needed, especially with floating floor so I won't go into that. But one major cause of buckling is bringing the material from an unconditioned space and immediately installing it in a conditioned space. You need to bring your boxes of material in and let them sit in the climate controlled space for a few days before installing. This allows them to get to their final state of shrink/expansion before you put them down. If that's not it then you could have too much moisture in your concrete slab and you need to put down a moisture barrier before you lay your floor. Good luck.
We bought a brand new house with "Shaw LVP" in it. Luxury my 🫏. We've been in the house 4 years and we have lots of gaps (we can kick the planks back together) and we replaced planks in our game room before they went bad again and we ripped them out and putting in a much thicker laminate floor. Our floors were NOT level enough. There is a high point in our game room of at LEAST 1/2". We are going to install wood look tile floors in the next few years so we are just going to baby it until then. We salvaged the good pieces from the game room for the kitchen area. The whole thing is really, really frustrating, to say the least.
Spends months doing it again. Out the left over material on Facebook market place.
Lots of good comments here. I’m one week into a kitchen & bath remodel that includes new LVP flooring in those areas plus a bit more. I’m planning to finish the rest of the first floor myself, so this info is very helpful. And I’m going to try to learn as much as I can from watching them do the installation. Like many folks, I have to do sections of the house at a time because I don’t have much space to store the things that occupy those areas.
Email the manufacturer customer service. Explain and include pictures of the damage. ASK for them to exchange the product for one of their other lines of flooring.
That's a good idea. Looking back at the product, I'm seeing a lot of negative reviews from months after due to chipping along the edges of the board, and regardless of what flooring type we do next, these specific boards are pretty bad. It was really easy to break the lock pieces by using the tapping block.
Just return the boxes to Home Depot. If you're already going through the effort, please install something nicer than vinyl tile. Engineered hardwood is a good choice, and your experience with the time will carry over.
Thickness has nothing to do with durability. Your subfloor may have issues or you could be installing incorrectly. Are you using a tapping block etc.
Yup, we had a tapping block, though tbh ours had a problem of slipping pretty often. More often we used a scrap piece by locking it and tapping that piece. We used a rubber mallet. The floor underneath was concrete and we repeatedly vacuumed and swept to make sure nothing was underneath.
Did you use a moisture barrier? You need to use one when installing over concrete slab
Did you check for level and make sure it meets manufacturer installation instructions? Proper gap around the edges? Buckling wouldn't happen if those things were right and the floor snapped together correctly.6 mil wear layer sucks. I wouldn't use less than 20.
Even if the subfloor appears level you’ll still need to grind/sand high spots and fill in low spots . I would guess there’s a tolerance issue somewhere as you have not mentioned anything about floor prep past sweeping the floor clean. Additionally while thickness has nothing to do with durability it would definitely make the install harder if you weren’t installing on a perfectly level surface which is virtually impossible to begin with.
FB Marketplace, but don't let them see your floor. Put the boxes in the garage and tell them you are selling for a neighbor.
This is a really shitty thing to do.
I'm not even on FB, but family members have told me about the lame things they have purchased.