Wickes' Kiln Dried T+G flooring

[Richard Savage]

Brother-in-Law has installed a floor using Wickes' Kiln Dried Tongue and Groove flooring. He used a secret nailing machine to nail through the tongues and a strap thing to compress the boards. Neil was afraid that, being kiln dried, the boards would swell. But a number of the boards have shrunk and split. Wickes' sent a bod to inspect the floor and told Neil that the boards must be fixed with nails through the face of each board into the joists and are refusing to replace it. And they say that the packet states this. Unfortunately Neil has chucked the wrappings but when he went to check in a Wickes' he noticed that the labels are a different colour (red rather than yellow or vice versa) and do say that you must nail through the face. Neil's observation (minus expletives) is what is the point of fixing T+G with visible nails? Wickes' declined to comment.

Any views? Neil's customer is, not unreasonably, refusing to pay the £1000 for the floor.

TIA

Richard

[Cicero]

=================== There's nothing unusual about fixing T&G flooring with visible nails if you consider 'cut' nails as visible. In fact I would guess that nailing through the face of the timber is by far the most common method of nailing flooring.

Having said that my experience of timber from Wickes is that it's rather inferior quality compared with what I buy from a proper timber merchant. I would suggest that your brother-in-law points out to his customer that timber is a natural material with a natural tendency to split and he's got the job / materials he specified and should pay up.

What size is this floor? £1000-00 seems a lot of money for a softwood floor. I did two rooms and a hallway in my 'semi' for about £250-00 but of course that doesn't include labour.

Cic.

[stuart noble]

The method of fixing isn't going to make much difference if the material is too wet or too dry for the location. IME, if you nail through the faces, you get more splitting. "Kiln dried" implies less than 15% moisture content, but how much less is never specified. A first floor would probably shrink, whereas a ground floor covered in vinyl would be more likely to swell because the timber would be more attuned to outdoor conditions.

[Al Reynolds]

Barn door and all, but how long where the boards left in the room before they were laid? All my bad experiences with laying wood on floors were when I didn't give it enough time to acclimatise to the room in which it was to be laid.

Al

[Richard Savage]

Thanks All,

In no particular order:

I did ask Neil about acclimatisation and he grunted!

I suspect that the £1000 was for 'supply and fit', as to the area; I've no idea.

As to the % moisture etc well, I expect that Neil will put it down to experience!

Cheers Richard