Hi experts!
I am a cost-conscious home owner on a first time 3/4" prefinished Bellawood (yes, from Lumber Liquidators- wish I had done more research before buying, but the stuff is in the house and out of the box) hard wood floor install. I have segregated the pieces from 10 boxes into piles of similar lengths, and I find that there are a lot of what I consider short pieces- 12" to 28".
I've learned the hard way that the topic of "random lengths" is one of those sales points that sellers gloss over and inexperienced buyers don't know to ask about. So I am asking, what are standard random lengths, and what is their usual distribution. In a 84" box, I would expect something like 20% 16-32", 20% 32-48", 20% 48-64", and 20% 64-80".
So is my expectation totally off base?

Thanks people

Steve:

There is no real standard in so far as percentage of lengths. How much is a lot? Sometimes you can run into a few cartons that may have a larger number of shorter prices, then open a half dozen more and it balances a bit better.

I have opened and sorted and stacked the boards from 7 of 10 cartons, and found 145 pcs under 32", 65 pcs 36-48", 17 pcs 48-60", and one piece longer than 60". Never having done this before, I have no idea if that is a "normal" amount or not, but it seems like a lot of shorter pieces. What do you think?

Thanks again.

I just did my whole house with Red Oak from Canada......not LL stuff. I sorted the boards by length as you have done. The floors came out really nice. After sorting I calculated (roughly) how many boards of each length should be in each row so the lengths would be randomly spread. I racked 12 to 15 rows at a time. Also, I made sure to stagger the joints in abutting rows to avoid the H and stair step patterns.

It seems to be getting more of the norm. I just did a 3200sf install of Mercier red oak in a 2.7 million dollar home and there was an over abundance of short boards between 1 foot and 3 feet.
It takes a little longer to rack out but if you take your time it will look fine.

Use the shorter boards as row starters along walls etc. and distribute the rest randomly in the rest of the floor. I like using showcasing longer boards through doorways, halls and other areas that make sense. I also mix from several cartons for the best color and grain variation. I noticed some cartons had more shorts than others but like Ken said, it balances out.

A problem with trying to randomly distribute the shorts in unfinished wood is that they're often extreme wavy grain, or very dark or light compared to the rest of the floor. I don't notice this so much in pre-finished or laminated floors.

They really stand out because of these differences. We did some bedrooms the other day, and I sprinkled them in pairs on the far side of the room, away from the door. It'll be a stain, so that will minimize some of the effect. It is easier when we lay the 2" square-edge flooring; unlike the 'select and better' T&G, it comes in 'clear' grade, and the grain isn't so wild on the shorts. It also comes in bundles sized by length, so you can see exactly how many bundles of 2-footers you've got. There are no aces in square-edged milling.

One method I had heard mentioned is to rack out one row that uses all shorts, over in the low traffic areas of a room. When I've tried that, I ran lengths in the next row, and then found it hard to avoid "Hs" in the row one board over from the shorts.