Over the years of inspecting floors, I have found that claims for hardwood with checks, splits and gaps have increased. Has something changed, or are we just paying closer attention to this than in the past?
I grew up in a two story farm house, built in 1919, in central North Dakota. The floors were red birch 2 ¼” width and ¾” depth. The sub floor was 1” x 12” boards run at a diagonal. Growing up, I do not remember checks, splits, or gaps in the floor.
A while back, the current owners invited me to visit my childhood home. The recently refinished floors looked beautiful. The home does not have air conditioning, or any moisture system for the winter months. Looking closely, I found many gaps across the floor, but had never noticed them in the past. I did not find any checks in the floors. Looking for gaps and checks is a routine practice of being a flooring inspector. One tends to look at the floors when walking into a home, and I notice many things others may not.
This past fall, my wife and I went on a river cruise thru Europe. We had the opportunity to tour many castles and palaces. What did I do when I entered these amazing places? I looked at the floors, of course! I saw wide plank patterns, strip patterns, end cut parquets, and some very intricate parquet patterns in the ballrooms. The tour guide informed us it took years to complete some of the ballroom floors. Most of these floors are hundreds of years old and are still beautifully intact.
When looking at these floors, I found gaps, splits and some checking across the floors. Entering these elaborate rooms, I heard the oohs and aahs about the floors, and there I am looking for imperfections. I did not see a lot of splits and checks, but they were there.
There are two type of gaps in hardwood flooring: normal and abnormal. Normal ones open and close as the season and humidity levels change in the home. Normal gaps can be minimized by climate control with humidifiers in the winter and dehumidifiers in the summer. Your HVAC contractor can help you determine what level of each your home may need.
Abnormal gaps may have other causes. A trained professional is able to investigate, do site readings, determine where and how the gaps happened, and explain how to prevent them in the future.
Splits can have several causes, including tree damage before being logged and milled. Some splits can be repaired, but others require plank replacement. Having a few splits does not justify a total floor replacement.
Checks are a normal occurrence in both solid and engineered hardwood. They are small cracks in the surface of the wood that occur during the drying and manufacturing process of hardwood flooring. Most checks, like gaps, will show up in times of lower humidity, and close when the humidity goes back up. In these cases, they can be minimized with the same climate control as normal gaps.
Checks that cover the majority of an installed surface that do not close when humidity levels climb, take more investigation. A site visit by a trained professional is needed to determine the cause.
In conclusion, are gaps, checks, and splits more prevalent now than they were in the past? No. They have always been there. However, as the price of hardwood flooring has increased, consumers are looking more closely at their installed floors. This has resulted in more claims in recent years.
Do you find yourself looking closer at a finished project now than you did in the past? Leave me a comment and tell me about it.
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