Welcome to our Good to Great Series. My name is Barry from Flooring Africa and today we're
going to be talking about allowing your floating floor to freely expand and contract. This is a
mission critical component that so many aspiring installers get wrong. Now floating floors need to
be able to move around as climatic conditions change within the environment. Relative humidity
goes up and down, temperature goes up and down, and because these floating floors will respond
to that, they'll expand and contract, they'll get bigger and they'll get smaller. So if you have to
lock them down, when you lock down a floating floor, that's when floors start failing. So they
build up pressure and they will actually pop the joints up and, you know, we've all seen photographs
of that but then also when floors cool down or the climatic conditions dry out, the relative humidity
drops, and the floors shrink, and then if the floors are locked down they can actually pull the joints
apart, which again causes the floors to fail. So how can we safeguard that this does not occur? Let's
get into the detail. So even before you start your installation you need to make sure your material
has properly acclimatized to the local conditions. This means that any major movement of expansion or
contraction to reach a status of equilibrium with its environment, it gets that kind of like out of
the way before you start installing. This allows that when you have installed the floor it only has
micro movements to expand and contract versus actually going through that big stabilization
movement phase in the initial 48 to 72 hours. Only once the floor has stabilized do you consider to
start installing the floor. One key factor that really supports the floor in freely allowing
it to move forward and backwards, or expand and contract, is installing the underlay correctly.
You always want to install your underlay or combination underlay with the moisture barrier on
the surface, which is the slipperier side, so that the floor can easily move backwards and forwards.
This will also allow the floor to be able to push a greater mass of flooring before it actually
starts concertinaing and showing signs of pressure. If you had to do it on the reverse side, which is a
almost like a grippy rubber brake, unfortunately the floor doesn't have as much power to be able
to push a greater area which will cause the peaking of the floor a lot sooner. So
when we install these floors we need to leave an expansion gap around the peripheral. You'll
see that all flooring manufacturers will ask for between an 8 all the way up to a 15 millimeter
expansion gap depending on what the product type is. My favourite expansion gap to leave for most
laminate floors or even thinner engineered wood floors is approximately 12 millimetres. I feel this
is going to safeguard me in South African climatic conditions and it's just a rule of thumb that I
apply to all of my installations. To make it easier for myself and my team I use pre-cut 12 mm
laminate floor cut into blocks, put into bags, that I recycle from one job to the next. Cost
effective, made from off cuts, really safeguards my floor. So as you can see in the demo floor behind
me, I have been using my 12 mm expansion gap all the way around the peripheral. So some installers
who don't understand the science will leave very tight expansion gaps and this is where they can
get caught out time and time again. If most of your covering trim, be it quarter round, skirting or
various aluminium trim, they all will definitely allow for a 12 millimetre up to
15 millimetre expansion gap. So why not safeguard your installation by making your expansion gap a
standard thickness that you can measure, quantify, and secure the end result. So we don't just need to
use expansion gaps when we're going up against a vertical fixture. We also need to manage the size
of the floors that the flooring can structurally handle. The floor can only push and pull so much
weight. So when you have a big area, obviously the floor is all interconnected, it can only push and
pull so much floor. So that's why you have most of your manufacturers will actually detail that the
greater area that it can be installed in is maybe 12 by 12 square meters or 15 by 15 square meters.
Every manufacturer has already worked out this limit so if you have a big room you
have to put a break in the floor which a lot of installers and home owners find unsightly.
And while yes it is unsightly, it is required to safeguard the floor. So when we are considering
expansion gaps we need to consider all elements that will be fixed into the floor. Even
a common door stop, if the screw is fitted all the way through into the floor, we only need
one fixing point and this entire floor can be compromised. Just imagine if I'm a giant and I put
a massive hand on the middle of the floor, I need to be able to move this floor in any direction
by my required expansion gap of 12 millimetres. If not, the floor when it's growing or pulling, could
compromise the joint structure. A key element where many floors fail is with the detailing and the
trimming that you accessorize your floor with. All too often, trims are installed incorrectly or they
have been installed in such a manner that they are actually locking the floor down. Way too many
installers, whether it's the weekend DIY warrior or multi-skilled contractors, these installers
are not following the instruction manuals. They're getting creative and they are actually destroying
their floors. So using the same philosophy on why we want to break up a big expanse of flooring
into different sections because it cannot push and pull the entire weight of a floor,
so do we want to break up floors from one room to another room with the transition strip.
The reason is that the temperature or the environment of one room to another room may
vary and all that pressure and strain of the two rooms expanding and contracting at different rates,
all that pressure, is concentrated on the narrow doorway. And the narrow doorway, if
you run a floor all the way through without any proper breaks, that's where the floors will fail
first. Now trying to detail these doorways can be tricky. You know, we can have a timber door
frame, we can have a steel door frame, and trying to run an expansion gap around that detailing
can be really difficult. All too often I see installers where they'll cut a channel,
be it eight mm, five mm, two mm, around a steel door frame and then they'll fill it
up with silicone or a colour matched caulk. While in the most extreme cases this can be done if
done correctly, it's so much neater and better to undercut the door frame. Now I can understand that
contractors can be a little bit cautious around a steel door frame but steel door frames are
actually really easy to undercut. They're manufactured from just over one millimetre
thick pressed medium gauge steel and because the door frame is actually supported by various
flanges into the masonry or timber stud wall, it can never drop, and using an oscillating multi-tool
this task will take approximately three minutes per door frame and it gives you an absolutely
fantastic end result. We recently invited Festool to try out their oscillating multi-tool and it
was an absolute breeze to cut these door frames. If you do have to silicone up against something
and it's not viable to put a quarter round, an aluminium trim, or a piece of skirting
to cover up that expansion gap, please remember don't fill up that entire trench with silicone.
That silicone goes hard and it works exactly the same way as a lock down point. What you want to do,
is you want to get some foam or air conditioning wadding, which is like an aerated sausage as such,
and you go and you cut it to the right size and you put it into your trench
and you push it down just below the surface of the laminate floor and then you just do a color-coded
silicone detail on the top. This prevents you from over caulking, which will lock down the floor. When
gluing various trims down you really need to have your wits about you that you are understanding
what the floor needs to do. If you apply too much adhesive or the incorrect adhesive and
it actually squeezes underneath the trim and compromises that expansion gap or bonds the trim
to the actual floor, locking down the floor so it's not actually able to expand and contract
and to be able to move, you're going to have either failed floors or trims that keep on coming loose.
So many flooring installations fail because people have not installed the trims correctly.
Pay attention to the science and you will have great long-lasting floors. Take the shortcuts
and you're going to come up short. This is really the difference between a bodger or
somebody really understanding the science and taking their installations to the next level.
So I think you're getting the drift of what is really important here. Floating floors, no
matter what they are, laminates, engineered, SPC, they need room to expand and contract.
Give them that room. Allow them to move freely. Remember 12 mm, any direction, if you allow this
to happen then the floor is going to comfortably go through its climatic changes without anybody
noticing any stress or strain. The floors will last longer, they will look better for longer.
Really, it's a no-brainer. Understand the science and your installation will go from average to
great. If you found this video interesting, please consider subscribing, hitting the bell, dropping us
a comment below. There's a whole lot more content to follow in this series, from Good to Great. A big
shout out to Finfloor. As always, thanks Finfloor for being a great supplier of fantastic product.