My house is about as humid as they come, (I'm in CT in a heat wave) and my new floors are not showing any separation. (so far) Did your installer properly acclimate your flooring to your house before installing it? Wood floors need to be acclimated at least 72 hours in the room out of the boxes and with no plastic wrapping. If he didn't do that, the humidity might be the cause, but it was preventable, and he should know that. Considering what they charge for installation, I'm surprised to see this problem so often.

Some gapping of solid wood flooring is to be expected. Even with proper acclimation and control of the installation site before, during and after installation, some gapping may occur. Nature of the beast.

How wide are your boards and how wide are the gaps? Is your home new construction or existing?

Our boards are 3 inches wide. I just measured them with a ruler. They were properly acclimated. Our house was built in 1987. The floors were put in March or April 2005. We noticed no gapping until June of this year. The gaps will fit a business card. Yikes!

A business card size gap is an acceptable occurance in a solid wood installation...so is a credit card size gap.

Are you using your HVAC system? What is your usual humidity level in percentages?

We use the heating system during the summer; no air conditioning. The heating is very uneven in this house, so I don't even think that the boards are subjected to the same heating/cooling issues all over. Is this from the boards shrinking with age or the house settling or what? Is there anything or should anything be done about it? I know that the installer left a little "leeway" at the edges to allow for expansion issues. I know that he was a good installer. We bought the wood from the "premier" place here, the owners are friends of ours, and they were very clear that this was the only installer that they would use (he had done the floors in their house.) So, this is acceptable? Do I just have to learn to live with it? If I know that, I'll just close my eyes to it and quit worrying about it! Thanks so much for all of our help/advice!

I meant that we use the heating system in the winter.

Raise the humidity, and the gaps will close up.

Floorguy, with that in mind is a good time to lay flooring is mid to late fall? A little shrinkage in the winter, good use for an aprilaire system, and no gaps in the summer?
Live in Wisconsin. thansk you

My reclaimed random-width wide plank pine flooring from the Harvest Stove plant now has gaps wide enough to easily accommodate two stacked quarters. While I wouldn't necessarily mind the gaps (the floor is intended to be somewhat rustic), I very much mind the filler that the installer used to conceal the gaps at the time of installation. It is the nasty appearance of the split and degraded filler that draws attention to the gaps. I will be digging that filler out of the flooring for quite some time to come.

Incidentally, the flooring was aged for about 18 months inside before intallation. Every room had a nicely stacked supply of flooring -- under the beds, along the inner walls, anywhere it would fit. I was looking for the right installer for the job. In retrospect, and as I pointed out in response to a query from another poster, I should have hired the flooring company recommended by my GC, not the installer recommended by the source for the reclaimed flooring.

Wide plank flooring will gap no matter what you do to prevent it. For you to have the least amount of gapping, you need to install the flooring on the substrate when the moisture variation between the two is 2%. 4% is the usual target for narrow width products.

Then...you need to maintain a constant temperature and humidity level in the space. Reduce the humidity by heating or air conditioning and the product will dry...shrink in the width...and gaps will appear. Raise the humidity level and some of the gapping will disappear.

Using that fact, is is better to install during the dry winter months, the humid summer months, or in an air-conditioned room in summer?

Can't really answer that question definitively, as where the product is installed (what region of the country) has a bearing on how the floor will respond when the seasons change and the HVAC equipment changes over. The HVAC equipment itself (i.e. how the home is heated) also has a bearing.

However, I generally feel most confident with flooring installed from fall through spring. I try to avoid installing in the hot and humid summer. I figure that the house parts have grown due to heat and moisture and it is almost impossible to acclimate flooring to some dwellings in the summer months. The HVAC system has to be running constantly to keep the building, the flooring and the indoor atmosphere in moisture equilibrium...and most HVAC systems do not do the job perfectly.

The last thing you want to do is attempt to acclimate flooring in a hot and humid home environment; that is NOT acclimating the flooring! The flooring will suck up moisture and you will have gaps when the heating months start.

I have wood floor gap issues that are even worse

We remodeled the house, which involved opening up interior and exterior walls, and now have big gap issues. Each place where the floor transitions from the original house to the new addition, there are 1/8" or larger gaps. The 3 or 4 boards in the doorway are fine, but to either side the gaps open up. It only happens in the winter, so I suspect it's a humidity issue, but I don't see how in the world I could put enough humidity in the air to keep it from happening. Is it a temparature issue as well (the floor is over crawlspace)? Should they have run the floor boards in the other direction to span the opening?

Any comment or suggestion is welcome.

Varenovator,

Not really any way to prevent what you are seeing with your floor. You have two enjoined buildings and each is growing and shrinking sperately. Also, as you suspect, the fact that one floor has a subfloor environment that is different from the other can have a bearing on how the floor may move during seasonal changes. My guess is that it really isn't a humidity issue with the flooring, but rather the reality that you have two enjoined buildings that move away from each other when they shrink in size in winter. Nothing, and certainly not the flooring, is going to prevent that from happening.

I decided on Owens engineered flooring. The 3 inch brazilian cherry shows no gaps at all, and the 4 inch white oak has some thin small gaps right around the heat register. After hearing all this and knowing how picky I am I am glad I did. Also glad I did sand on site so my floors do not look live all the ones I see at Home Dumpo, etc.

There are a lot of reasons why there are excessive gaps in a hardwood installation. A good way for you to check if your floor has excessive gapping is to look at some of the other hardwood floors in your neighborhood and see how much gappingis in their floors. Some questions would be; what kind of subfloor do you have; what kind of vapor barrier was used; was the floor installed running across the joists and not with them; and what was the finish used? Also, I don't recall how stable Brazilian cherry is but that would have a bearing. Some examples. The floor in my house is quarteer sawn 4, 6, and 8" planks glued togather from 1 1/2" glued up boards to make the planks which are then beveled and decorated with pegs. There are no readily visible gaps. I just refinished my sons red oak hardwood floors installed in the late 1940's when the house built. Some areas of small gaps, not readily noticible, but as a whole no gaps. A job I did was for a friend so I get to look at it over a long period of time. That was about two years ago and no gaps that are apparent without getting down on your hands and knees. As I explained, check out your neighbors and see how their floors look. I have seen some of this Brazilian cherry installed in new homes recently and I didn't notice all of this gapping, Some gapping is inevitable but if it jumps out at you, you might have some installation issues.

Wood is naturally hygroscopic. Meaning it will absorb moisture and swell, or it will lose moisture and shrink. Humidity is the amout of moisture in the air. Wood will absorb high humidity and swell, then if it loses that humidity, it shrinks, leaving you with gaps. The size of the gaps are determined how much the wood has swelled since the original installation, and then shrank back to installed dimensions. Gaps.

It is normal for a wood floor to swell and shrink. To manage the swelling and shrinking, a consistent interior humidity level is required.

Since no one can actually see your floor, our advice is just conjecture. Call the manufacturer. They usually have a rep. that will come out and look at your floor. Also check to find out if your installer is licensed. If they played loud Mariachi music while they were installing the floor they probably weren't. Any work done to your house $500 or more labor plus materials, must be done by a licensed contractor. Get the installers name, business name or license number and check him out at CSLB.ca.gov. Let us know what happens.

Russ, there are many states that do not require the installer to be licensed, or even trained to do it properly. I think it is called "a right to work state"
Texas has no licensing requirements to be in any construction trade. The fly-by-nighter, and the tail light warranties, rule the roost.
Being certified by an accountable organization, is the only resource to accountability in the flooring trades, in Texas. Those Certified installers, are far and few between. It is a big gamble, with better odds, at the Vegas game tables.

Floor Guy; Here in California, I would speculate that about 95% of the installations are done by people without licenses, and with owner builder permits, if any at all. These guys get on the job training and the homewoner is paying for it. If someone is having work done by a contractor without insurance or without a proper license, then the homewoner is responsible for all the work and also for any injuries the workers may sustain plus any material bills they do not pay. There are a lot of laws in California concerning who may do construction or renovation work but the state, county and local governments don't enforce them. I only offer this web site to people in California so they can see what they are getting and have some recourse if they are fleeced. Loads of psudo GC's are becomming millionairs by flaunting the laws and using the cheap unskilled labor available with zero risk because all the risk is on the homeowner.

Russ, how are we going to fix, an obvious problem??

You know the saying...

If it is to be, it is up to me.

I have been preaching for years, with a lot of resistance.

Our floor was installed by a reputable company. They claim it's the nature of the addition process - like glensfc said, it's like there's two separate buildings. I suspect its a combination of humidity and temperature - dry winter indoor air to shrink the wood, and cold air in the crawlspace to shrink the joists.

One idea I've had - is there any benefit to insulating the crawlspace, puting a more permanent covering over the ground, and actually heating it during the winter? Has anyone ever heard of doing such a thing? Sure would be nice to have the floor a bit warmer on those cold winter mornings.