Hello! I have a serious noise problem with a new, floating, ‘click’ engineered wood floor. The ‘ribbed’ underlay is 2.3mm thick low-density polyethylene (LDPE) foam with a high-density membrane. The sub-floor is concrete and contains underfloor heating. The installer/supplier recommended that I wait for another ‘heating cycle’ and then if the problem persists, they will re-lay the floor with glue to improve the stability. The implication is that the problem might improve during the winter with the heat from the underfloor heating. However, we are almost half-way through the winter and so far, there is no improvement whatsoever. Can anyone explain why several months of heat would help with this problem, or why the installer may have suggested it? Many thanks in advance for your help!
Anything that is a ‘click’ system is prone to expansion and contraction. Could be that that’s causing your noise problem..... is it a squeak noise
Thanks for your reply. I would not describe it as a ‘squeak’. The most suitable description I have found is ‘snap, crackle and pop’. The frequency, volume and intensity of the noise is extreme, and the original installer has acknowledged that it is not normal. However, my specific question was not about the cause, but about why the original installer would think that several months of heat during the winter from the underfloor heating could cure such an extreme problem?
Thanks for the reply. I never saw the concrete surface because the property is a new build and the floor was already installed before I bought it. However, I do know that the underlay is specified to compensate for 1mm in the concrete surface. The gaps between the mouldings and the floors are also visibly ‘wavy’. While I do not have the right tool to measure it accurately, and do not know if it is a fair reflection of the concrete surface, when I place a 200cm metal spirit level at various places on the wood surface, the gaps underneath look more than 1mm. Again, it is difficult to be sure, but I don’t remember these gaps being so large when I moved in about a year ago. Similarly, the noise was initially only in a couple small areas but spread to almost the entire property in the course of the year.
New property means the concrete may not have been dry. The subfloor may not have been flat. It may have expanded due to moisture intake and the installer might hope the heating will dry it out or shrink it. A lot of clic systems are poor imo and a wood floor should always be stuck down. Again without temperature control all year round to keep the floor at a contestant you can get all sorts of problems. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks again. Moisture in the concrete had not occurred to me. It is always difficult to know how much detail to put in a post. However, since this is this is the 2nd winter I have lived in the flat, and there was possibly a 3rd before that because the flat was empty for a while, maybe this is not such a good candidate? My favourite, from someone who knows almost nothing about flooring, is that an uneven concrete surface is the root cause, possibly aggravated by fluctuating humidity (<30% to more than 60%) and fairly low-quality engineered boards that have mysteriously been cut approximately in half in many places, even where there is plenty of space for full length. I have quite a substantial follow up question triggered by many of your comments. I have been trained on other forums not to bury useful content in the depths of long threads, so I am going to raise a separate post. However, I would welcome your further input on the new post.
Let me very politely say that this had momentarily crossed my mind!! However, I have given them the benefit of the doubt while I try to form my own opinion from some independent research. In the meantime, I regularly check for any sign of removal vans in front of their office!
