I have a friend who is installing Mirage brand prefinished hardwood flooring. The product is strip, solid wood, not laminated, 2-1/4 x 3/4, t&g, and like all the manufacturers do, there is a radius ease-over on the top edges.
The prefinish goes over the radius, and very slightly down the mating surface. If you run your finger along the edge, you can feel little bumps of the finish. The factory finishing process probably involves roller application on the top, and a little finish drool down the edge is happening.
He has a problem with his installation, in that he can hear little crackling sounds coming underfoot, when he walks on the floor. Taking two pieces of uninstalled board, and joining them, you can hear the same sound when you push hard to mate the joint, then flex the joint back and forth. It seems to be finish-against-finish on that little area where the finish goes over the eased edge and slightly down into the joint face. It sticks to itself, then goes “crackle” when it unsticks.
Is this common? Will this go away when the finish fully cures, and after the floor has undergone a season of heating and traffic?
He installed another section of the floor of the house with this same product a couple years ago, and never experience this. The difference this time is that the flooring is paralleling the floor joists underneath, and the materials are fresh from the factory, whereas in the previous install, they came from stock and probably were warehoused for a few weeks or months, before he bought the lot.
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I wonder if the problem isn't largely caused by the excess deflection from being run parallel to the joists. What's the subfloor? The fact that you can cause it by flexing by hand seems to me to be much more flexing than you should have in normal use...
I am not flexing the two pieces of flooring in my hands, but am pressing them together, edges joined, and rotating the joined edges slightly. It is easy to do.
What I am hearing is the sound of something in the joint coming apart, and it sounds exactly like what you hear when two painted surfaces stuck together are unstuck. A little teeny "crack."
There is nothing in the product's installation or pre-installation literature to say that the product must be installed perpendicular to underlying joists.
Try and imagine all the house plans you have ever seen where the deck structure has joists running one way in parts, and the other way in other parts.
My mistake then, your description made me think you were able to flex the strips...