I was tarting up one of the spare bedrooms over the weekend and put in a laminate floor using Wickes cheapy oak stuff. Not bad in terms of overall finish but I came across a defect I haven't seen before (and I've done a few floors). Laying one row of boards, one of the joints wouldn't sit properly - the joint across the row between the two boards opened up (around 1mm at one end) when the row was clicked in. After a lot of brute force and ignorance, then some head scratching and more ignorance, I found that one pack was out of square along the ends: Although they were parallel, they weren't at right angles with the sides. Assembling two boards from the same pack was fine because the deviation was cancelled but joining one with a board from another pack made a deflection of about 5mm along a board's length. Clearly, when aligned to the previous straight row, this was too much for the joint to hold. No point in taking it back and arguing (only 4 quid a metre anyway and I could sort it out) but I thought I would post as a tip for anyone who has the same problem. It's very easy to spot: When opening a new pack, stand the first board and one from the previous pack up on a flat surface. If they're both the same shape they will align and if not, the difference will be obvious. Once you spot the problem, it's easy to deal with, but it did get me wondering how they could generate a fault like that......
- posted
13 years ago