My contractor had gotten about 75% done with installation of about 620 Sq. feet of 5/8" thick Shaw Bamboo Hortizontal (Carbonized) Engineered Hardwood.

The flooring itself has a beautiful & striking Color and Finish, however, there seems to be excessive gaps at many of the seams. By excessive, i mean excessive both in regard to how frequent they are throughout the entire installation and in regard to how wide/prominant many of the gaps are.

The installer blames the materials saying its just variation in width of some of the boards...however...the floor is designed to fit much tighter (tongue in groover) than many of the seams are...and it seams if there was truly that much variation in the materials they should have stopped and called attention to it before installing 3/4 of it. The manufactuer has said that the seams are intended to be tighter and that the floor thats in place is not as it is intended to be...and has said either its the materials or the installation at fault....citing that it appears the installer had gotten "out of rack". He said we really need to get an independent & licensed set of eyes on the situation so an ind. inspector is scheduled next week.

There seems to be a lot of knowledge and experience here so i thought i might post some photos here and see if anyone had opinions on the issue. I know if will be hard to tell from them whether its materials or installation at fault for the gaps....but i was hoping moreso for opinions on whether i am just being too picky or whether the installer is dead wrong in telling me these are typical and acceptable gaps for this type of flooring.

Picture 1: Gaps @ Transition Piece:



Picture 2: Gap @ end seam and wide gap between planks (note the nickel resting in side-seam (these are nailed in place):



Picture 3: Nickel resting in gap in seam



Pic 4: Alt View of Nickel in seam gap. Note this wasn't a tight fit to get nickel in seam as you can see its actually got enough room its leaning to the right:



Pic 5: Quarter in seam gap (This is within 8-10 inches of where the nickel was in the gap. It was tighter here too tight for the nickel but the quarter slipped right in)



Pic 6: This picture shows planks that have a much smaller gap between them. Hard to even tell in pic. There are seams tighter than this in parts of the floor and they were tighter on the samples we racked up without nailing.....but these are ones that in my mind are small enough to be considered acceptable variation or within industry accepted tolerance, whereas the previous ones, seemed to my inexperienced eye to be out of line with an what installer should be trying to convince me is normal and acceptable. I haven't laid hardwood myself but have seen lots of laminates, hardwoods, and engineered hardwoods in other buildings and homes and don't recall seeing the gapping issues in the first 5 pics before:



All input and recommendations welcome.

A very few gaps over the course of 600+ sq ft is normal. Sometimes when installing you dont realize its a short from the manufacturer and you've nailed too many in to take it all apart. You can fill that kind of situation with putty. But your pictures seem very excessive...

Here what i think your problem is... bamboo is 5/8" thick not 3/4" So the installer was probably using his normal nail gun without adjusting it to the bamboo. So he was proabably shooting his staples into the from of the tongue and when going to tap the next board in place it wont close.

The pieces particularly by the stairnose or transition (cant tell from pic sorry) is from the installer cutting the butt end not the manufacturer for sure. Again it sometimes occurs with pre-finished but he could have filled a slight gap like a 32th of a inch with putty but an 1/8" or so is not really acceptable.


Now on a side note not to offend you but i have to rant, i definitely do not like bamboo or the way it looks, expecially pre-finished. I dont know why its such a growing trend besides it being a renewable resource.

Thanks for the input...

on the look...no offense taken...its simply a matter of different tastes for different people....i dont care for vertical bamboo or really light "natural finish" bamboo....on the other hand i think the carbonized horizontal bamboo with all the "stop" marks has a very striking distinctive look.

Not acceptable!!! A nickle!!!!!!! Wow!!! I see installer error written all over this.

The Installation Manual says the nails approved for use with this floor were 2 different kinds of 1 & 1/2" staples...and two diff kinds of 2" staples.

The nails and nail gun was provided by the flooring company who also provided the staples for the flooring when the bamboo was picked up. I looked at the staple box tonight and they are 1 & 3/8". Could this be the main culprit or contributing factor?

Ok...a little more info.......

Can anyone tell me if their is a generally accepted tolerance for the width of gaps in engineered hardwood or bamboo.

Over about the first 250-300 feet of installation i have counted at least 25 gaps that are at least 1/16" of an inch in width. This is just side seems and doesn't include a few similar gaps where the ends butt together and one end corner is tight while the other corner of the same end has around a 1/16" gap.

Now the gap where the nickel was shown was a little over and 1/8" of an inch...and it marked the area where the gaps started getting wider...they had completed maybe 150 sq. feet beyond that point with at least 5 to 6 gaps that were 1/8" of an inch or just slightly wider.

The installer had said that the 1/16" of an inch gaps are normal, typcial, and acceptable in that type of material/flooring, however, prior to me showing him the view of the staples and putting nickels in the 1/8" inch gaps he had also told me those werent really very big gaps as well.

Someone has already said that 1/8" is def not acceptable.....what about the 1/16th of an inch gaps....is that generally tolerable at that width..if so are that many on that amount of space within tolerance?

All my floors are tight with no gaps. If there are any gaps at the end butts or on the sides, it would be due to poor milling from the manufacturer. If you have boards where most of the sides are tight except at one end, then it is probably bad milling. Same can be said for end butts. If I was installing a floor and had a lot of miss milled boards, I think I'd stop and discuss the problem with the owner. If the owner supplied the flooring, then it's their problem to deal with. If I supplied it, I make a call to my distributor and get an inspection pronto. I just don't believe in installing badly made wood.

I suggest you measure the widths of 15 boards to 1/64".
Are there variations in the widths of the boards?

When were these gaps visible?
- During the installation?
- After the Installation? If after;;; how long after?

visible within 24 hours of what they had laid so it had to be visible while it was being laid.

I had measured about 12 boards and didnt see much difference...but i will leave that to the professional inspector thats coming for measurements the precise. Even if its the milling it seems they should have realized the problem and stopped much sooner than getting 75% complete.

Exactly.

If the boards were narrow widths, and visible during installation;;; the installation should have been stopped.

IF the boards shrank after installation, this would be Latent and not the responsiblity of the installer.

Some will argue that the installers did not Moisture Test enough boards to insure proper acclimation on this as well.

Gaps can be 1/32" and still be acceptable considering you have a Natural Product.

so anything bigger than 1/32" is not within tolerance or acceptable then?

the 25+ gaps i counted over the first 300-350 sq feet were 1/16th"

The second 150-200 feet leading up to where they stopped had over 5 gaps that were 1/8" or slightly bigger to were you could put a nickel between the planks without even touching either side. The installer originally tried to say those 1/8" gaps where you could see all the staples in the tongue were normal and ok for that type of floor....i didnt budge and he agreed to redo the kitchen area....but said he didnt think he could get them tighter.....

when i told him i didnt think he could get them tighter because the problem started out near the beginning point of the installation with the first few rows exhibiting 1/32" or bigger gaps and with the 1/16" starting probably only 6 planks in from the door where they started......he said he measured that foyer area and hall and that "none of them were over 1/16" saying that was acceptable and i was just being too picky now.

anyone had experience laying engineered bamboo?

IF so anyone laid Shaw brand bamboo and had similar or differenct results than my experience

Yes, many times.

No, never Shaw.

I have never laid a gapped floor

inspector finally came saturday...didnt say much while he was there but was there about 30-45 minutes or so and said he would have the report in a few days....so i should know something definitive shortly.

Thanks again for the input.

I've put down white oak prefinished Shaw and am not terribly pleased. Overall it's okay, but there's certainly some pieces (especially the short ones) that are narrower than the rest. I ended up just usually not using them. But, the wood was inexpensive enough that I ordered quite a bit extra to compensate. I'm glad I did. That being said, I do have some gaps that I don't like. Not many, but there are a few.

I'm wondering if you aren't seeing the same milling quality issues. I just couldn't bring myself to do the Chinese wood thing again.