Right below our living room there is a crawl space. The floors underneath are not insulated. The previous owners installed engineered wood flooring. They look great, and after 5 years of living here we had no issues with them, well, except of course the occasional sweeping off the dust

You are welcome to install any floor you wish - so long as you realize that manufacturers put "limits" on their warranties. One of the limiting factors = temperature. If you space dips below 60 F in the winter (Wi will CERTAINLY get colder than that) you void the warranty. So long as you are OK with that, you are welcome to install flooring of any type.

The weak link is not the plastic nor the wood, it is the BINDERS/FINISH on the floors. These binders/finishes start to crack/deteriorate at temperatures just below the freezing mark (around 20 F...or -28 Celsius). This is where you run into trouble with flooring "staying together" once temperatures have dropped below these levels.

The floors should still perform for a while...but you will not get "25 years" out of them. You can 'bank' on 5 years....7-10 yers if you are lucky. The laminate could be quite fragile, depending on its quality. Rolled vinyl/lino would be a better choice.

The one thing you will want to investigate is the presence of a moisture barrier. Like Curt pointed out, he has an unheated crawl space. This is perfectly acceptable. The MAIN problem you will run in to (in terms of flooring lasting for more than 3-4 years) is the presence of proper moisture barriers in crawl spaces, etc. A dirt crawl space requires heavy plastic properly draped and taped.

The moisture barrier is what will allow your chosen flooring to survive more than 5 years. I've had several clients use cork floating floors in this situation and have been very happy with their installation. In Canada, -40 C (same as -40 F), is common in the back country. We've had several floors last 3+ years.

Unless your carpeting is worn, it looks cool. Kind of like what is in style now with all the ikat, flamestitch, etc. patterns.

Thanks everyone! We ended up just putting in new carpet. After researching hardwood just wouldn't last.