I purchased hardwood flooring through “The Hardwood Floor Depot” which was manufactured by Craftco Hardwood Floors of Ohio. The flooring is a 5" wide prefinished Tongue and Groove Hickory material. The planks are supposed to be manufactured in accordance to NOFMA standards which provides for a tolerance of plus or minus ten thousandths of an inch variation in the face width of the boards. (That is from 4.990" to 5.010" is acceptable.)
The problem: My boards vary from 4.9" to 5.1" wide, a variation of ten times the allowable. If you install floor planks with this much width variation the result will be a floor with gaps of almost a quarter of an inch between planks. This is totally unacceptable.
I contacted “The Hardwood Floor Depot” by telephone on Aug. 21st and got an answering machine. They never called back. On Sept. 8th, I sent them a copy of a complaint letter addressed to Craftco. I received no response. On Sept. 22nd, I called the number listed on the Web site, (http://www.woodfloordepot.com/), and I was told that the Hardwood Floor Depot was no longer in business. I do not believe this is true as you can still place an order on their website.
In addition to contacting the seller, I called and wrote to the manufacturer, Craftco, about the problem. Craftco refused to admit to a manufacturing problem and claimed the boards had swelled from being exposed to high humidity during dry storage for 10 months. They offered no explanation about boards that were under sized by as much as 0.1 inches. They also insisted that their manufacturing process could not allow this much size variation. (Since Craftco claimed humidity was a problem, I soaked one of their boards in a bathtub until the face moisture content measured 22.6%. The board face width when it was dry, i.E., 7.6% moisture, measured 5.045 inches. After soaking overnight in water the board measured 5.056 inches, a change of. 016 inches. Based on this simple test, Craftco’s claim that humidity caused some of the boards to swell by as much as. 090 inches is false.)
There are two possibilities that may have caused me to receive unusable material. One, I was intentionally sold Craftco manufacturing rejects by “The Hardwood Floor Depot” or Craftco had a manufacturing problem they will not admit.
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