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Let's talk engineered flooring real quickly. Engineered flooring is a
constructed product where plywood and real wood are mixed to create an
engineered floor. It is done for two reasons. Primarily it's dimensional
stability, but you also use less valuable timber on the upper surface layer
because you don't need to make the board out of a full piece of thickness
of valuable timber.
It could be a great product for many applications. There are some issues
that you need to understand on the construction that could make you have a
product that develops problems later. We see this in the inspection field,
and I want to explain it to you.
To create the upper wood layer, there are two ways you do that. You can
have a log spinning across a knife. It creates a sheet. We call it a rotary
peel. Or you can slice through the log to create that veneer.
Because this is a constructed product that relies on adhesive, in dry
climates you can have problems with rotary-peeled veneer products and the
glue holding. You can get something that's called face checking in which
that veneer kind of will lift away from the plywood layer because of an
adhesive failure or problem with adhesive.
The other issue which can affect either method of construction, if they're
using a poor-quality adhesive, especially in dry climate, you can have a
full de-lamination between the wood layers. Even it can happen within the
plywood, or the wood and plywood junction. Okay? So it matters. When you're
buying an engineered product, buy a damned good one.
The only other issue I see out there is there may be no service life to
your engineered. Because there's a too thin of a veneer on the upper
surface, you can't put a sander to it. Do not buy products because of
warranties. Warranties are only in existence to sell more product, okay? So
if you're buying an engineered, spend the extra money to avoid problems
later down the road. If you have any questions, definitely email me;
scott@floorscientist.com.