Originally Posted By: kweiss
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I had a warranty inspection today at a nice house with extensive hand-scraped wood floors on a concrete slab. The homeowner pointed out a concern with the floors involving large gaps along the length of the boards at certain intervals throughout the floor.
These gaps are evenly spaced, typically about 3 feet, but vary in width even along the length of a single gap from 1/8" to about 3/16". The edges of the boards at these gaps are very rough and have lots of splinters (a big concern to the homeowner and their little kids.)
The builder has been very responsive to all their repair requests, it is a large expensive custom home, but has told them, and apparently the whole neighborhood who have the same problem, that these gaps are for expansion, but that they can come in and simply refinish them somehow to fix the splinters and roughness problems.
I am not a flooring expert, but I have always heard that you allow for expansion at the walls where you can cover the gap with trim. I have never noticed a case like this where there are supposed expansion joints all through the floor layout.
Has anyone heard of this? Is this a common practice for some types of wood floors? Unfortunately, I did not take a picture of it, as a picture would not show much, and I do not know the specifics of the type of floor (though I could find them out.)
