Q: Hi Flooring Expert! I’ve found your answers very helpful on other topics so I’m hoping you’ll be able to help with this question. I’m preparing to install ~1700 sq ft of the Springwood “Click” flooring throughout my house. The floating installation will be over 3 different types of sub-floors. The whole house is concrete slab and that is exposed in one room. I don’t have any problems smoothing out that surface. The rest of the house is either vinyl flooring, or peel & stick tiles. I walked around the house last night with a 6ft level looking for dips/mounds and I found a few areas where there was between 1/16th to 1/8th inch variation in the flooring.
That leads me to a few questions. 1) Can I install do a floating installation over these three different materials? 2) What is the max allowable variation in the sub floor and is a 1/8th inch dip/mound going to cause me issues? 3) If I do need to even out an area under the vinyl or peel & stick tiles, should I just remove the affected area and apply enough patch material to smooth with the surrounding tiles?
Thanks for your help.
Jim L (Austin, TX)
A: You can install over all three of these surfaces, but I have a few suggestions and precautions here. First of all, keep in mind that floating floors are typically only able to account for variations in subfloor height of up to 1/32″. Also, variations in height such as the dip you mention are heavily dependent on the distance traveled for this dip. If this is over a very large area, slow gradual variations tend to not be an issue, but if this is an area around four feet or so in size, then you will need to level the subfloor appropriately.
Your best bet overall would be to remove all of the previous flooring so that the new flooring is going directly over the subfloor. I would especially suggest this in the case of the peel & stick type tiles you have installed. For the areas requiring level work, I would suggest ensuring that no area which the leveler is to be poured to have tiles as this could cause issues with it curing properly.
Your installation is possible, and a floating floor is the best bet here, but with the leveling work you will need to do based on the dips you have mentioned I would suggest removing all of the existing flooring to make your floor prep complete. Also, this prevents potential problems with portions of the existing flooring coming up and telegraphing through the floor itself.
