When installing laminate flooring it is essential to bear in mind that this is a product derived from natural wood and therefore subject to the expansions and contractions typical of this material due to environmental variations in both humidity and temperature.
Therefore, we must leave a distance between the wall and the beginning of the laminate flooring plank to ensure that this increase or decrease will not cause the planks to rise because they have no space to expand. This distance is known as expansion or gap joints.
Generally, this gap is established between 10-12 mm and this is due to the fact that, from 12 m in the longitudinal direction of the slats and 8 m in the direction of the width of the slat, an expansion molding must be installed to cut this amount of expansion.
It must be taken into account that this expansion joint must be provided at all points in the room that are likely to “touch” the laminate flooring during their joint expansion. That is to say, to take this into account when we find that we have to place a terminal or transition molding, expansion or dilatation molding, when we reach a pillar, or pipes, etc.
Installation errors, i.e. installation without making sure that the gap is adequate, cause, as we said, the lifting in different parts of the laminate flooring because it cannot expand properly. To fix this we have to remove the baseboard and trim the floor to the proper expansion joint. We will see the soil stabilize properly again immediately.
At Faus we have observed that our product has very good dimensional stability and we have been able to carry out installations of up to 25 meters in length without expansion joints. But we have to make sure to leave more distance “gap” to allow a greater sum of dilatations and to this we have to combine a wooden baseboard with the bead to cover this joint. The final result being:
Having this rule clear, it is much easier for us to be able to lay flooring by ourselves, even if we are inexperienced. Trouble-free and with all the guarantees of durability.
