Poor installation to blame for flooring problems
Q: A laminate floor in a friend's house seems to be possessed. Overnight, gaps appear in the floor where one piece butts up against another. With some effort, you can slide them back tight again. When you walk across the floor in places, it snaps and makes cracking sounds. What's going on, and can the floor be made to look and sound normal?
A: The root cause is a failure to follow the written installation instructions provided by the manufacturer. Keep in mind that most laminate floors are floating floors that are meant to expand and contract with changes in humidity and temperature. $ "' ! ' %
The laminate flooring in my office is installed over an electric radiant floor heating mat. Radiant heating can cause gaps to appear. It's imperative that you read the instructions to see the maximum recommended temperature of the subfloor.
Heat causes laminate flooring to expand. This expansion is responsible for the gapping, as the pieces of flooring expand at slightly different rates. When the radiant heat turns off because the room is warm enough, the flooring contracts as it cools. This backand-forth movement can wreak havoc on a floating floor if it's not installed correctly.
The snapping sounds are almost always traced to an uneven subfloor. Laminate flooring materials don't tolerate humpy and bumpy subfloors. Subfloors need to be flat. Flat doesn't necessarily mean level. You %% ( " * can have a flat subfloor that's not level. The installation instructions include how flat a subfloor must be.
Laminate flooring will snap and pop as you walk on it if it's bridging across hollow spots. Your weight stresses the interlocking tongues and grooves in the flooring, 6 &33 ( ( 0 causing the noise. It's nearly impossible to stop this noise after a laminate floor is installed. You might have to start over to cure this defect.
Q: I almost had a real mess on my hands. I couldn't get a basement toilet to flush correctly and then heard bubbling and gurgling sounds in a shower stall next to the toilet. When I opened the shower door, the basin was filled with disgusting-colored water. A neighbor had a metal drain-cleaning flexible wire and was able to help me clear the line. What might have caused this wretched clog, and how can I prevent them in the future?
A: A year ago, the same thing happened at my home. A year before, I had remodeled a basement bathroom and installed a very expensive brandname toilet. It turns out that this toilet has two flushing settings, depending on how long you hold down the flush handle. If there's just liquid waste in the toilet, you don't need as much water for the flush.
My son, who was using this bathroom, wasn't holding down the handle long enough for the times when solid waste was in the toilet bowl.
I have a personal beef with modern toilets, as in many cases, that small amount of water being released can't always carry the waste and toilet paper all the way to the septic tank or city sewer connection.
I now prevent unwanted clogs by rapidly pouring two 5-gallon buckets of water down a secondfloor toilet once a week. I have a helper, and we pour the water into the toilet at the same time, making sure it doesn't overflow the bowl. This massive amount of water creates a huge slug of energy and water in the building drain, forcing solids out into my septic tank.
Tim Carter writes for the Tribune Content Agency. You can visit his website (www.askthebuilder.com) for more information on home projects.