Parquet Floor Bowing due to underlay

[MarkRRR]

9 months ago we had a new carpet laid in the lounge and the carpet fitter used an underlay called Cloud 9, which gives a real good feel to your carpet but has a plastic membrane on the bottom

We noticed the other day a lump in the middle of the lounge, after lifting the carpet (what a pain that was) we found that the parquet floor had bowed due to expansion. Checking the cork filled expansion gaps around the skirting boards I was surprised to see that they hadn’t moved or been squeezed.

We believe this parquet flooring has been down since the house was built back in 1950 and when we bought the house there was already a carpet down and we replaced that about 10 years and when we had this carpet fitted there was no sign of bowing, we did however have the green rippled type of underlay before but this cloud 9 stuff does make the room very warm (very good insulation)

The carpet fitter said that he has never seen this in forty years of fitting carpets but the only thing I can think of is that the plastic membrane on the underlay has caused the parquet to sweat as its on top of a concrete floor so has expand more then before.

Has anyone else ever come across this or maybe could suggest what might have caused it.

Cheers

 

[mattysupra]

cloud 9 underlay can NOT be fitted on top of any solid/ parket floor because of this reason. Im not saying that this has caused the problem, it could be many other things that may have failed but YES! , cloud 9 can cause the floor to sweat! To defend your fitter, cloud 9 dont issue this info in any rolls of cloud 9, they will only tell you if you ring there tech side and ask if you can install on a parket floor! Bit naughty really.

But ( bit late for yourself ) cloud 9 now have a new backing without the plastic so floors can breathe, I have been playing with it for months, should be hitting the retail shops about anytime now and is a big improvement on the plastic backed stuff!

 

[MarkRRR]

Thank you very much for the reply, with this information I searched the manufactures web site www.underlay.com (Ball & Young) and the technical data for this underlay does say “Now suitable for wood-block floors” which in itself implies that it wasn’t suitable before so I gave them a call and yes, they changed the product this year to have this new breathable layer because it caused sweating

My challenge now is the carpet fitter who in all fairness was also miss informed.

Excellent result

Thank you. Mattysupra.

 

[chappers]

In all honesty a carpet fitter with 40 years experience should really have known not to lay cloud9 over a wooden floor.Although there is no information in the packaging it is prety much common knowledge.

 

[mattysupra]

to be fair to the fitter, if they have no knowledge of wooden flooring as just a carpet fitter and for all his life it has been o.k to lay underlay over a wooden subfloor, you would not think a new product should be sold on the market without some kind of warning that it CAN NOT be installed over a certain subfloor.

I belive that BALL & YOUNG should educate the trade before selling there product for a unfit purpose. There has been masses of problems with the product, hence the new backing that they are now using. They made the mistake in the first place for using this backing, they was warned by myself when i tested the first roll of the stuff many years ago, but nothing was done about it untill all these floors starting failing.