I always thought that 1/4 inch expansion gap was just for wood floors

Read a spec sheet from a big laminate manufacturer that said you need the same gap for glue-down LVT in rooms over 30 feet long. Found it buried in their online installation guide last week. Anyone else run into this on a big commercial job?

3 comments

3 Comments

nora_park1mo ago

Actually, it's for ANY room over 30 feet in ANY direction, not just length. The whole floor plane expands.

brian_smith61mo ago

Hold on, you're saying the whole substrate moves? That adhesive is meant to stop movement cold. If you're gluing it down right, the floor becomes part of the slab. I've done miles of glue down LVT with no gaps and had zero callbacks. That hallway failure sounds like a bad glue batch or poor prep, not a missing expansion joint. These specs are just lawyers covering their backs.

riley431mo ago

Yeah, that spec is real. Had a 40-foot hallway blow up last year because the crew skipped it. The adhesive grabs hard, but the whole substrate still moves underneath. Now we just cut it in with every glue-down LVT job over 25 feet to be safe.