We had a beautiful Lauzon engineered wood floor installed in the living room (slab on grade) of the house we just bought. When we moved in we found that the living room floor has a valley in it about an inch deep and 3'-4' wide about half the length of the room (it gradually tapers away). This makes half the room almost unusable for setting furniture. The depression is so deep you can feel it just walking across it. (Lauzon's installation guide specs no more than 3/16" variation over an 8' span. We must be 5-6 times that, which probably voids Lauzon's warranty.)
I called the contractor on it and he said he could have filled the depression with patch material, but his experience is that eventually (after a year or two) the wood would release from the patch material resulting in a crunchy "popcorn" sound when walking over that area. He felt the better solution was to live with the valley (would have been nice if he'd asked me first). The wood runs with the valley, so I think it will stay glued down. He's willing to fix it (i.e., rip the floor up, patch, and install new wood), but he thinks we'll regret it.
I'll have him rip out the wood and install carpet (which is what we replaced) before I'll pay $10k for a warped wood floor, but I don't want the floor to release from the patch material either. Lauzon requires a vinyl mat to be laid between the wood and the slab as a moisture barrier. I suggested that he could build up layers of vinyl glued together to fill the depression without the risk of the wood coming loose, but I think that area of the floor will sound/feel dead compared to the rest of the room. Any experience/recommendations on this?
Thanks,
Robert