We had a party for our daughter yesterday. The high heels of one her friends did serious damage to our 3-week-old engineered wood floors. Is this normal? Seems like high heels should be taken into account. Some areas look like they took a BB gun to it.
That's because there's an incredible amount of force generated by the tiny contact area - on the order of thousands of pounds per square inch, and your daughter's friends heels were worn down so that the metal support rod was exposed. The manufacturer of that engineered floor does take high heeled shoes into account - read the manual/ installation instructions and you will see the disclaimer.
Too bad about the floor. You'll notice those marks less over time as the floor exhibits its inevitable wear over time. It's like the first ding in a new car door - it really hurts.
R
Warranty claim...
Nope. I installed some of that flooring. The instructions clearly say keep off it with spike heels.
So far Armstrong is suggesting that is normal wear and tear.
An elephant or a clydesdale will exert less stress on a floor than a
100 lb girl wearing stiletto heels.JoeG
That's probably true since they have big feet. My cousin has a horse that occasionally sneaks in the house but I don't recall any floor damage.
We had a party for our daughter yesterday. The high heels of one her friends did serious damage to our 3-week-old engineered wood floors. Is this normal? Seems like high heels should be taken into account. Some areas look like they took a BB gun to it. =========
Spike heel caps need to be constantly monitored for wear, they never last long. Otherwise the nail head is going to cause damage. Sorry to hear.
Spike heels are (were) well known to damage floors. They've been out of style for so long that everyone has forgotten....the heels are so small that all the weight is concentrated in a small area...pretty much like pounding in a spike.
Kurt-
That is truly a bummer. :(
The problem is..... high heels are the bane of wood flooring.
As Rico posted the force of a person's weight applied over tiny area of a high heel tip generates very high contact stress.
My mom (may she rest in peace) was a high heel wearer nearly her entire life. She would come home from work & cook dinner in high heels on the solid oak floor. There were many small about 3/8" diameter but very shallow indents.
Here is a link to cross grain compression of various wood species... these numbers are at the "elastic limit", meaning stresses above this will generate permanent impressions.
I measured the diameter of various heel tips.
.625 x .625 (round) >>>> not a high heel .31 sq in .375 x .625 (oval) >>>> semi high heel .24 sq in
"high" high heel (best guess at a worst case tip size) .375 x .375 (round) .11 sq in
put a 100 pound girl on a single heel tip (don't even consider dynamic effect due to dancing) and you get these contact stress
~325 psi ~420 psi ~900 psi
so the smaller diameter heel tips are getting close to the "damage limit".
Put a heavier girl (120? 150?) in the shoes and the stress goes higher. Someone on poorly a maintained heel, as Rico pointed out, is way over the limit. :(
Going down to the diameter of a BB (~.18) and now you're at 3,600 psi .......... even a 1/4" diameter giv you 2,000 psi. :(
I don't know the compressive capacity of engineered wood floor product but I assume its in the same ball park as real wood. Even if the substrate has better compression properties than real wood, the face ply is still real wood.
How about a sign?
"Fat people, please dance barefooted" or "Check your hooves & shoes"
cheers Bob
I'd almost bet there's a disclaimer in the literature somewhere that explicitly covers it...uncle was Armstrong distributor/dealer/installer for years; it was a specific area of emphasis.
Kurt-
That is truly a bummer. :(
The problem is..... high heels are the bane of wood flooring.
As Rico posted the force of a person's weight applied over tiny area of a high heel tip generates very high contact stress.
My mom (may she rest in peace) was a high heel wearer nearly her entire life. She would come home from work & cook dinner in high heels on the solid oak floor. There were many small about 3/8" diameter but very shallow indents.
Here is a link to cross grain compression of various wood species... these numbers are at the "elastic limit", meaning stresses above this will generate permanent impressions.
I measured the diameter of various heel tips.
.625 x .625 (round) >>>> not a high heel .31 sq in .375 x .625 (oval) >>>> semi high heel .24 sq in
"high" high heel (best guess at a worst case tip size) .375 x .375 (round) .11 sq in
put a 100 pound girl on a single heel tip (don't even consider dynamic effect due to dancing) and you get these contact stress
~325 psi ~420 psi ~900 psi
so the smaller diameter heel tips are getting close to the "damage limit".
Put a heavier girl in the shoes or someone on poorly maintained heel (as Rico pointed out) and you're over the limit. :(
Going down to the diameter of a BB (~.18) and now you're at 3,600 psi .......... even a 1/4" diameter give you 2,000 psi
I don't know the compressive capacity of engineered wood floor product but I assume its in the same ball park.
Kurt Ullman wrote the following:
Many years ago, a woman with high heels attended a party at our house and after she left, there was a lot of small dents in our wood floor. It appeared that one, or both of her heels had lost the small rubber soles (?) on the heels and all that was left were the heads of the small nails that hold the rubber soles on. The floor was 6" x 6" engineered parquet oak veneer tiles. If your flooring has real wood veneer, you might try some lemon oil to raise the grain in those dents. It helped somewhat on our floor.
Andy Capp opined that men like to look at women's legs and high heels give them a longer look.
It's said that Marilyn Monroe cut 1/4" off one heel of her shoes so she could get a more natural "wiggle."
It also changes the woman's posture. The pubic region pushes out a bit too. Maybe it stimulates them a bit?
Nah, I think it is just the constant brainwashing most of them get as kids, from older females and the mass media. 'Dressing up' = heels. Feeling sexy when playing dressup is also learned behavior. Western equivalent of the foot binding the Chinese used to practice. IIRC, it started in Old Europe, for both sexes, to make the wearers look taller and more important.
The historical reasons don't really matter at this point. They are dumb, and lead to all sorts of medical problems, including increased risk of immediate injury if circumstances call for moving fast. Women should tell the old-school men and fashion designers to eff off, and refuse to wear them. Here is a clue, ladies- if they make your feet hurt, they are BAD for you.
If the shoes fit properly they shouldn't be painful.
They make the leg and butt muscles more defined.
Women dress for women, not men. If they dressed for men, they wouldn't. ;-)
Pretty drastic penalty for scratching the floors, no? ;-)
Or a contractor's kid using a piece of cardboard and 5-gal can as a merry-go-round while dad is tearing out a wall. :-(
Grease does wonders for the paint job, too.
A steam iron might work, too.
I don't think is it possible for high heels to not be painful, for more than a few minutes at a time. It is a totally un-natural position for the squeezed toes, arch, and ankle to be in. Women may build up a tolerance (much like ballet dancers do), but extended wearing can't help but do damage to the feet. Look under the desks in any office building- almost all the women keep a second set of shoes to actually wear during the day, or don't wear heels (even medium-height ones) at all. And 'these heels are killing me' is a standard refrain at parties, right before they find a couch to sit on and kick the silly things off as they tuck their legs up under them.
Hey, I'm not a foot fetishist or anything- I have 5 sisters, and I've heard it all. They all went through their fashionista phase, but thankfully outgrew it.
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