Damaged laminate flooring over underfloor heating

You can have an ok real circular saw for that much, Aldi or machine mart.

NT

Sure, but the smallness and manoeuverability of a battery plunge saw appeals to me for this particular job.

Unless you pack the void so that the replacement board is better supported.

Most of the laminate floor instructions will include details of the maximum level of unevenness they will tolerate

Its one option, but it strikes me as a bit of a bodge! ;-)

Its not too difficult to lose half an inch or so of height difference at a threshold I found. I had a similar problem when I fitted and engineered wood floor and needed to match the different level into the room. I made up a custom threshold strip to do it:

What is the subfloor made from? Also why is it so uneven?

If it were a solid floor, then a coat of self levelling compound would do the trick nicely before relaying whatever finish on to.

If its a susspended floor, could you fix it just by identifying the bad bits and adding packers between the joists and the floor boards?

You need something basically flat before you start if going that route.

Yes, me too. But I appreciate your thoughts about making a custom threshold.

Conventional t&g floorboards on joists.

A good question; I don't know. (But is it? See below...)

Very likely, if it weren't for the unfortunate fact that the underfloor heating is in the way. A bit of a complication, that. Actually, I suppose it's possible that the unevenness is a problem with the moulded pipe housing rather than the floorboards: if I succeed in removing the damaged plank without flooding the kitchen I'll be able to see.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Good point, thanks.

We don't yet know if the underfloor heating pipes are retained in EPS with no overboarding other than the laminate. Bert might be able to discover this by looking elsewhere. Threshold strip?

This sort of stuff.

Umm.. Is there no way of discovering the floor make up without damage? If you dig around the floor heating suppliers for advice, I doubt you will find any recommendation for click laminate directly on the insulation systems.

There are other stronger systems which you may have.

The system used is by Maincor:

As far as I recall, all that's between the moulded boards which hold the pipework and the laminate is a fairly thin underlay (a type recommended by the laminate supplier).

But one plank is already damaged and will (presumably) have to come out and be replaced. Apart from drilling though it and injecting something to fill the gap (which obviously won't be effective if it's the underlying structure that's dropping) I can't think of any way of examining and hopefully fixing the problem without destroying at least one plank.

OK Bert. I've caught up:-)

Assuming they didn't run pipes under the kitchen units, you will have a return board where you stand to do the washing up. These look to be less supportive than the straight runs.

You could find the pipes by use of an infra red thermometer. It might be better to inject a cement slurry rather than an expanding foam.

Well, that didn't last long. My new (and admittedly, budget) plunge saw arrived and seemed perfectly well made and robust. I charged the battery and tried a few test cuts on scrap to get the feel of the tool, then with a deep breath decided to tackle the broken plank.

I almost finished one complete lengthwise cut when the saw stopped: it didn't have enough power to get through the laminate. The battery indicator wasn't at empty but neither was it at full, so I charged it again. The next cut managed about three inches before the saw stopped for a second time.

Back to the charger. The charging light flashed once and then remained resolutely off. So - a faulty Lithium-ion battery? Whether that's it or not, it has to go back.

I suppose "buy locally" is the moral.

over temperature cutout?

Thanks for the thought. I did try again after a lengthy interval and the charging light did come back on. But when the charger showed the battery as completely full, the battery's own indicator didn't. And again I only got a minute of so of use before the tool died again.

Currently, after another (cooling down?) period the battery is charging again. It will be interesting to see what happens this time.

Well, after some stop-and-go cutting with the plunge saw I've managed to remove the suspect plank (and without flooding the kitchen):

(Short version:

My initial reaction was that I was surprised to see those particular UFH housing-boards: I expected to find the ones for straight pipe runs, which would surely give slightly more support. Of course I don't know what's happening at either side of the exposed section: I suppose the pipes might well be turning back on themselves there. You can see that the pipework runs in two different directions and the two runs at the bottom of the image do indeed turn through 180 degrees so the layout isn't as straightforward as I would have thought.

The next thing I noticed - annoyingly - is that the plank I removed, the one which dropped when weight was put on it - doesn't have a damaged edge. And bafflingly, neither does the one next to it. Not only can I see no reason why the depression was happening, I can't see *how* it was happening.

More investigation tomorrow...

You might only get deflection of the tongue when there is force applied...

If you get a long straight edge, you should be able to see if there is a low spot somewhere there.

Yes, thanks, that's the first thing to try tomorrow, I think. Though a slightly half-hearted bit of foot-pressure on the exposed UFH system (I'm still a bit wary of damaging those pipes) didn't move it downwards at all, so quite where the plank went to when it moved remains a bit of a mystery. Perhaps I just need to be bolder.

If the problem was the left hand edge in your picture, the board has less support there because it coincides with a pipe run. Now you have it exposed, I wonder if some sheet aluminium could be inserted as additional support.

Chances are there is a dip either visible at the top of the UFH panels, or under them such that they can push down a bit when loaded.