My flooring has been sitting inside acclimatising for 6 months, because second child came along while I was in the middle of levelling the floor. I'm finally ready to fit it. Given the extended wet weather I'm worried that it will have expanded a bit - so if I tuck it just under the skirting, then come winter it will promptly shrink back leaving a gap in the first cold spell.
Any thoughts? It's engineered wood, will be laid floating.
shrinkage will be at the very worst 1% and in my experience about 0.1%
So a 5 meter room might see worst case 5cm and more likely 0.5cm
I laid mine hard against the walls in winter,.. Had to chisel ot 1/4" in a 6 meter room to get it to go back flat in summer..:-)
IME engineered does not move *that* much.
However if you wedge it tight to the walls, it will buckle.
I recommend half under the skirting, leaving around a 9mm gap (skirting is usually around 18mm thick). That's within spec for Kahrs engineered for all but the most massive rooms - any room upto about 3m wide/long should be fine with that gap. If you go over 4m, check the datasheets or give them a ring.
You'll have more of a problem with the whole flooring creeping over the underlay if you tuck it under the skirting by a couple of mm.
By going for a gap at around half the skirting thickness, even if it moved all the way, the other end should *just* be covered.
'tis the logic I used...
Ta. Will go for that then. It's only in a hall, about 3.5m long.
My experience that that is enough even for 5-6 meter rooms.
True
Very good post. I dont have any skirting in several places and in fact a but of flexible mastic...worked for me
You CAN buy cork strip too to edge with. that squashes up.
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