Hey all, I've seen you discuss various permutations of liability issues before. Now I have a situation as a homeowner with a 1 year-old installation of Lyptus in a 3-story, 100 year-old wood frame house. The house has a soft pine subfloor throughout, in some areas there was linoleum tile laid down over the wood. Wall-to-wall carpet had been laid over everything, pine and tile. I hired a flooring contractor to come in, remove the carpeting and install a wood floor. Given my budget, they pointed me at 5/16" solid prefinished Lyptus. I knew nothing much about wood floors, aside from having lived on them for 40 years in all sorts of houses, from NY and PA climates down to steamy New Orleans. They sold me the wood last December, dropped it off in sealed boxes and installed the floor 5 days later. It took 3 days to do all 3 floors including carpet removal; I was so happy with the speed of the job. In February, nails started popping up through the wood, and the installer came out and hammered them down, and shot more nails into the floor in certain places. In April with lots of rain and humidity, the floor started buckling on all three floors. On my own initiative, I installed a big dehumidifier in the basement which made the air down there drier but didn't help the floors. The installers (subcontractors I expect) came back out and shot more nails in to force down the planks. A few weeks later, with the next rains, more planks buckled, in some cases next to renailed-down areas. I got the installer back out and he pulled up some molding to show me that there was still some expansion space, so maybe the problem was with the wood, he said. He nailed down the buckled areas again. At this point one of his employees who i think felt sorry for me mentioned discreetly that the thin Lyptus wasn't a great candidate for this treatment, because the nails were splintering the thin boards: he showed me an example. A few weeks later, more buckling. This time I asked that they remove some boards and relay them. They relaid part of one room, and a few weeks later it buckled. At this point, it became difficult to reach the installer. The more I researched on the www, the more I became suspicious that the installer had cut corners, just throwing down the wood over whatever he found under the carpet. I suspected that he hadn't accounted for the local humidity levels in the spring and summer. My wife recalled (and confirmed) that in the showroom, the wood was labelled as "glue-down-only" yet they hadn't glued the wood, they'd nailed it. I finally went in to speak to the owner. He told me that the "glue-down-only" was not important to me, that it applied only when he sold the wood for installation by another company, because he couldn't guarantee their skill level. His own installers knew how to do it right. Or something. He arranged for an inspector to come and take a look. The inspector's report stated that the buckling was due to "a site-related moisture escalation" which given the lack of flooding I take to mean "it got humid in the spring". The report recommended that I "control humidity to minimize cupping", which seems to mean, "keep the windows closed from February to October". The owner has taken the position that the buckling is my problem, that there's something wrong with my house. He suggested I get a dehumidifier. I told him I had always had an oversized dehimidifier, and that buckling happened on the second and third floors as much as on the first. He suggested that I keep the house air-conditioned and sealed tight, and THAT is what drives me crazy. I've seen arguments on this board defending that point-of-view. At what point did it become OK for flooring installers to install hardwood in such a way that would only be compatible with constant humidity maintained with closed windows and HVAC? Did the guys who installed the wood floors in every house I've ever inhabited or visited, the floors that can handle the regional climate, did those guys all go extinct? I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on the validity of the owner's position, as the seller of the wood, the provider of installation and the judge of conditions. This is on track to go legal, so I'd also be interested in any recs for flooring inspectors in the PA/NJ/DE area. I'll need my own inspection to bring to court. Thanks for any wisdom.
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