I need advice on my hardwood floor disaster. We built our home, with "the award winning builder in Dallas". The home is a 2 story, 3500 sq feet, on a concrete slab... No crawl or basement. Most of the first floor has 3/4 (5 inch) solid white oak floors. The flooring company uses poly film barrier, then 5/8 plywood, then felt, then planks. We noticed that they Missed about 1 foot by 25 foot area in front of our kitchen island... So they came back, cut the tile out there and put down more floors. The floors were installed in about November, with no heat on in house. Now flooring supervisor says it was acclimated?? Then it was covered with cardboard until January when it was sanded and stained before we closed on the house. In about May or June I started to notice cupping appearance. Builder said that's normal for 5 in planks, maybe you should have chosen the smaller size. Yes he did!
Then in Sept we had 2 huge roof leaks that allowed a lot of water into our home, through the drywall. After 4 months they finally found the sources of the leaks. The builder ripped out a small 4x3 area of floor, down to concrete. When they came back to reinstall that part the guy just threw the poly down ( it wasnt even around corners or up sides) then he installed the flooring in same day, with no acclimation?? They tried to do this twice. The second time I told him to leave. In the meantime our floors are getting worse and worse. The flooring supervisor came out to do moisture pin tests. Subfloor was reading 15-21% top floor 10-13%. He said " a little high" but it will go down the longer your heat is on! We hired a licensed flooring inspector who reported:
1. No expansion space around perimeter or vert obstructions
2. Floor terribly unlevel in areas
3. Nailing pattern up to 14" apart on 5 in boards
4 no vapor barrier and parts where not correctly installed.

Cupping is 90% of our $20,000 floors!
The floors are bouncy,noisy, has split boards, pinches your feet, and cupped. They also put a solid brick hearth on top of floors... So builder just wants to sand and refinish. We want the floors ripped out and redone correctly ( maybe by a different flooring company).
By the way it has been over a year with this mess.
After all that, how can you repair an unlevel subfloor, install additional VB, without removing the floor? Plus, what would you do about this flooring company / builder?
Thanks in advance for the advice!

Wow this is a text book in how not to do it. You say you had an inspector look at it. Was he a National Wood Flooring Association Certified Inspector? He covered some items but doesn't sound like it. You need an inspection you can go to court with. Go to www.nwfacp.org and get an inspector in your area.

Floors are bouncy, noisy, split boards. pinches feet????, cupped.
Acclimation: It can take 3 days or 3 months to properly acclimate a hardwood floor depending on conditions present. This can only be determined to be plywood. NWFA and most mfg's recommend solid 5" and over have a 3/8" serpentine construction adhesive on the opposite side of the nailed area to provide enough force to hold it down. Nailing schedule should be within 2" of each end of the board 6" to 8" apart. 14" you don't stand a chance of it not moving. No expansion space not a big surprise with those moisture readings the wood most likely has expanded if there had been no gap left cupping would be the least of your problems. The floor would undoubtedly be buckled 1" to 3" in the air.

If there is a difference of 1% or more from the top of the board to the bottom which it clearly states there is that they should not have installed it. Cupping is a moisture imbalance whereas the bottom of the boards are more moist than the edges. Could go down BUT with a moisture content of 15% to 21% in the subfloor unlikely it will happen even if you waited a year. NWFA recommends removal and replacement after the concrete dries to a Moisture content of 4.5% or less.

Any plywood with a mc of 12% or more dictates DO NOT INSTALL unless that area has constant relative humidity in the range of 70% or higher. Your average according to www.wunderground.com showed an average of 36% when this was installed.

What would I do about this builder? I would get an NWFA inspection, present him with it and if he does nothing about it get a lawyer.

I've had two builders recently who when confronted with a certified inspection and a lawyer did the right thing.

This is totally unconscionable and should not be tolerated.

Typical builder trying to save a couple hundred bucks on a heating bill. Hope he learns a lesson.

Plus just using poly and then putting thousands of fasteners thorugh it is stupid. It's no wonder the plywood has a high MC.

Hey Stephen, your point about the poly and holes is good. How are you supposed to put a Vapor barrier down, on a concrete slab?

Your correct about this builder being cheap. We have had numerous problems with this house, besides the flooring. For example, this past weekend we had to replace all of the screws used to hang our doors. They used 1/2 in screws! All the doors were sagging and literally falling off. Grrrrrrrrrr! I just hope we can fix these floors soon. We will likely have to go to court.

Thanks for your input! It helps!

Jim,
Thank you so much for your very helpful reply! Plus it just made me feel better hearing someone else say that we aren't crazy for being so pissed about this.
The inspector that we hired was a member of NWFA but not licensed by them. He actually said handesnt licensed thru them because he didnt want to spend $1500 a year for it. Huh. We are in $600 with this guy, since he has been out twice. We will look for an NWFA inspector.

I like your statement about the construction adhesive. I could see how that would help with the wider planks. The flooring supervisor is an idiot! He said he has files on my floor showing it was acclimated 7 days. First of all I don't think wood sitting in a garage counts. Nor does it when you don't know how to do a MC test. They just said 7 days in a cold garage should do it. Plus, I know they didn't test the MC of the concrete slab..... It was like 8-9 weeks old when they put these floors down. So all that moisture just sucked up by our floors!
The floors were so unlevel it wasn't even close. The flooring looks the worst where it's not level and where there was no Vapor barrier.
I wanted to tell you too that while I think your right about the wood swelling causing our expansion space to be zero..... But I know that they just cut it like that too. When they sent that flooring guy out to replace the small area from the leak, he cut it flush up against drywall and door casings. I even said don't you need to leave some room there. The supervisor's exact words " wood doesn't expand lengthwise, just widthwise, so we are good". I'm not kidding.

Some of our subfloor MC went down to the 12% ballpark, but we still have areas where it's 18. Usually where there is no VB.

I showed my husband your reply. We are both appreciative and we are making a list of points from your helpful reply! Let's hope we can make the builder do the right thing.
Take care,
Jennifer

its not written in stone to glue 5" wide flooring as well as nail. over 5" wide then yes glue and nail. wood has way too much power when it gets wet it will shear that bead of glue it right off the subfloor if it wants to move. Thats really beside the point because your floor was headed for a problem before that. One other point wood wood does move 98 percent more width wise vs lengthwise. Anyway you cant acclimate a floor with no hvac unless you dont plan on ever having one. The floor is suppose to be acclimated to "live in conditions." Just bringing it on site could actually do more harm than good in certain situations. Poor vapor barrier system along with lack of fasteners and lack of acclimation/expansion control and most of all a slab with high moisture is the real problem. IMo the whole floor will need yanked out to concrete sealed with a proper moisture retarder to battle.

Hey Kevin,
Thank you for your post. Thanks for letting me know about the glue and expansion widthwise versus lengthwise. As far as the acclimation, I think they think it's ok to install the wood, just as long as you wait to stain/finish them. Do you think we Should even allow this flooring company back here? I mean their flooring supervisor doesn't know how to teach the installers. I can't communicate with the installers because I don't speak Spanish. I don't know if the builder can use another company if they are under contract with this flooring company. And I totally agree with you about ripping these out and sealing the concrete. I have a feeling this is going to be a long ugly fight with this builder. They are very well known and have a " we're untouchable" attitude about this. Thanks for your reply. It's really helpful to us.
Take Care,
Jennifer

Construction attorney.

Thanks! I was wondering what kind of attorney handles this sort of thing.