Quote:
Originally Posted by flaming_potato
How long have the gaps been appearing? Depending on where you or the installer started from my first recommendation would be to carefully work backwards and take the floor apart piece by piece to where the trouble area is. At that point you can see weather it is a few bad planks that got installed with broken click joints or an uneven sub-floor.
If that is out of the question for you then you could try to glue the "butt ends" and slide the pieces back together using a rubber mallet to try to shift the pieces back in place. This way has the potential to do some damage to the floor but if you are careful it can be done. Is there a lot of dirt build up in the gaps? Changes in weather and humidity will cause expansion and contraction of the floor which is normal but its should all move as one with the type of material you have. Do you have a humidifier in the house?
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Thanks. They have been appearing yearly since the flooring was first installed about 5 years ago. Initially it was just a gap between two boards, and it would close up, but not entirely over the spring/summer months. The next year the gap would get even wider, and more boards are showing the symptoms to a similar extent. There is no dirt inside the gaps. We don't go downstairs that often, so there is not a lot of dirt or wear on the floor.
We did have a problem during the initial install when the installer failed to do any levelling of the concrete subfloor, so we disassembled the whole floor and re-used the pieces that were not damaged when they were taken up, once the subfloor was properly prepared.
I was hoping I could apply enough of a force to move the pieces by hand, but they're really tight together, and I don't see anything that would suggest that me trying to push them with my hands is working. I am also a bit nervous about disassembling parts of the floor in case they don't go back together. It's definitely one of those situations where I am worried about messing something up, and then not being able to find the same flooring material to replace it.
We do have a humidifier, but don't keep it on, because our upstairs space is already pretty humid. If we did get the humidity increased in the basement, how long would it take to see an effect on the floor? A couple of days or weeks if it is a problem with the humidity?
Something I noticed while looking at the floor, is that the transition seems to be glued down or something, maybe preventing the boards from floating at the edges of the room and instead separating in other locations? Is that possible, or should any movement be enough to break a seal made by glue?