I just finished laying an engineered floating bamboo floor in my living room area. It is a click together system over a gypcrete subfloor with a 1/8" padded underlayment. Unfortunately as my wife walked across the floor I noticed it sagged in some areas ( she's only 105 lbs incidently). The attached photo shows the problem areas. In area "A" the floor is literally suspended in air about 1/8" where it meets the fireplace tiles. The tiles are not set, so I thought maybe I could slide some roofers felt underneath or something. However, area "B" also sinks quite a bit and there is no way to get under that. I don't mind that the floor sags a bit, but will this pose problems down the road? Fortunately, It is a click together floor, so I do have the option of unclicking it all and fixing the uneven spots. If this is recommended how should I fix it?.....Pull the underlayment as well and use floor leveler over the gypcrete? Lay some roofers felt over problem areas?



Thanks in advance for any advice

Hmmm?


Looks like you still have "wet" trades working in the home, to add moisture to the interior enviorment. I see expansion in the near future!!!


Did you check the subfloor for flatness specs, 1/8" in 6' before you started the installation?


It could eventually break the tongue off as it flexes over time.

I'm not sure what is meant by "wet" trades? The only other thing we have going on is retiling around the fireplace. Will a small tiling job like that add so much moisture?

As for the 1/8" over 6' Rule. I did check the floor with a 8' straightedge. It looked pretty good to me. However, it seems at this point I must have overlooked something. Now I need to figure out what to do about it. I would prefer not pull up everything, but if that's what it takes, I guess I have to deal with it. Could someone please suggest the best/easiest solution?

You may ( a possibility ) have something under the floor or pad causing a small bump which will cause the floor around it to flex. It happened to me. I didn't see a spacer and layed the pad and floor over it; and it was a glue together floater! The only choice I had was to remove the flooring as well as I could to that point and reassemble.

Thanks Gary,

In prblem area "A" I think the floor slopes toward the fireplace. To be honest I don't think I checked this area for level. I checked a few areas and assumed it was all good. Learning my lesson the hard way on that assumption . Thank god it's a click system. I think I will unclick it all this weekend and try to determine exactly what is going on. I'll let you know if I spot any spacers, but I had a second set of eyes (the wife) helping, so I doubt if we both would have missed something like that.

Assmuning there is a slope toward the fireplace, is it ok to level it out with roofing shingles or felt (I have seen this mentioned in other posts)? If so can I just lay it over the underlayment, or should I pull the underlayment as well?
Or am I better off to spread out some floor leveler?

I wonder when it's "unclicked" it will click again? Some of those milled systems break(fiber board) down if you've worked with it too much. Careful as you go.

I had the same concern Ken, but this product seems to pretty robust. I "clicked" and "unclicked" boards up to 4 times and couldn't notice any difference from a new board.

Thanks again for all the input from everyone. I pulled the floor this weekend and after careful analysis found that the problem was actually a hump in the floor. It ran almost the entire length of the room (4' feet out and parallel to the fireplace in picture above). When I balanced an 8' straightedge on the peak there was only about 3/8" gap on each end. Can't believe such a small hump caused the floor to get so messed up.

Long story short, I rented a floor grinder and knocked down the hump. The dust it created was absolutely unbelievable and hauling it up a flight of stairs was no picnic either.

Everything is much better now. Area "A" is perfectly flat, but there's still a little bit of flex in area "B" of the picture. Hopefully it's acceptable. I'm not about to get the grinder again .

I'm crossing my fingers I don't find similar issues in either of the 2 bedrooms I haven't even started yet