I installed Mirage Lock in the basement. Very easy to install and does not require any nails, staples or glue! I picked Sapele which is a nice hard wood (harder than Oak). The only thing with engineered is that it is still prone to denting if you drop anything on it or drag anything across it ... so use felt pads on all your furniture. Other than that ... I love it! Check out my video.

Here is a link that might be useful: Basement Walkthrough

Thanks for taking the time to show your video. Your flooring looks terrific. You did a great job on the basement. Where did you end up getting your flooring?

rudeee, That's a gorgeous floor...I love the variation in the wood. I've never heard of Sapele but it reminds me of tigerwood. I assume this floor is over a concrete slab, correct? Did you level the concrete first? We're having problems with a glued down engineered floor on a concrete slab that wasn't leveled first.

Alaskan...I picked up the floors at an authorized Mirage dealer near my home. If you visit Mirage's website, you can locate a dealer near you.

Ruthie51...I actually laid Dricore over the concrete slab. The slab was relatively level, however, minor dips can be fixed using the levelling shims with the Dricore. Anything more than a 1/4" dip should be filled with self levelling cement. Mirage floors requires an acoustical underlayment as well...which makes the floor feel and sound solid. I have an earlier video which shows the dricore subfloor if you want to check it out. As far as the wood characteristics, I love the Sapele. It is an African hardwood with a varied grain and colour. Each plank is unique...which is what I was looking for.

The engineered locking floor is quite solid and easy to install....however you should strive to have a level floor, otherwise you might get some bounce.

Thanks, rudeee. You obviously did your homework. We paid a lot of money to professionals to install our floor who didn't bother preparing the subfloor. We have dips over 1" in some areas. Now it has to be torn up. You did a great job and your floor is stunning.

I wish rudeeee would have installed my floor since he did a better job also than the installers who installed my engineered hardwood exotic floors.

The Mirage Sapele is gorgous, Any hardwood flooring from mirage is truly a great buy if it is in your budget. Ruthie, your dips and hollow spot's can be repaired using a dri-tac wood flooring repair kit. Before you have the flooring removed I would have try using that kit first. What the installer must do is drill a small hall and using a syringe to squirt the adhesive under the floor. This will fill the hollow spot leaving the floor solid and the dip will be gone. The small hole will be filled with a dowel and then matching filler applied. This is the only true way to fix the holow spots. I posted a link to dri tac's website for more product information. To obtain other useful information feel free to visit my website http;//www.smhardwood.com

Here is a link that might be useful: dri tac repair kit

Rudee, how do you like the finish on the mirage? Does it seem to hold up well to scratches, etc?

We installed Grafhaus Collection by Graf Brothers (4mm wear layer over 9 ply birch) engineered about 6 months ago and are having cupping problems. An inspector determined that installation was done correctly and there are no moisture issues. Can anyone please tell me if they are aware of similar issues?

since cupping is moisture related what cause did they say caused the damage? Its an illogical conclusion to say its not moisture related.

To mlayne - Thank you for your suggestion. We actually did go that route first, and the installer came back twice and drilled over 60 holes to inject glue and we still have more planks coming up. We finally had enough and called in an inspector. He found that the concrete subfloor was just too uneven in most areas of the house, hence, time to tear up the hardwood. However, we're just having the worst areas replaced not the entire floor.

seagull: Our inspector told us that he had inspected an engineered floor with cupping problems. The homeowner told him that she cleaned the floor with water, which the inspector determined was the cause of the cupping. Do you by any chance clean your floor with water?

This is seagull. The only explanation that I can get re the Grafhaus collection cupping is that there may be a design flaw in the Engineered wood floor and that 4mm wear layer may be too thick so that as the floor planks dry they pull up on the edges. I'm being told that if I had used a 3mm or 2mm wear layer this lifting would probably not have happened. Any comments would be very welcome.

Seagull , What type of Adhesive did you purchase for your floor? Was it a Urethane? I had a Bamboo cup on me a few years back because the store we installed the project for sold the home owner a water based adhesive. I have seen cupping happen on inspections i have been called in on and they were all from moisture transmitting from the sub-floor.Especially with solid products. A 9ply product with a 4 mil wear layer should be a very stable floor when glued down with the correct adhesive and it shouldn't be cupping. The installation may have been installed correctly with the exception of using the correct adhesive. If they used a water based adhesive and it is cupping and the manufacturer recomends a urethane in your installation specifications, it will be on the company that sold you the wrong adhesive and the installer if they didn't use the correct adhesive. I would refer to your invoice and see what type of adhesive was used on the project. I have been installing floors for 20 years and i have never had an engineered product cup on me nor have i have ever seen or heard about one cupping. I always recomend a urethane based adhesive on all of our products for this same reason. It defintely doesn't sound right to me unless you are pouring water on that floor when you clean it or you flat out have a moisture issue and they didn't test for moisture before the floor was installed. I will discuss this with my Armstrong Rep on monday when he comes in and see what he has to say.

Here is a link that might be useful: S&M Hardwood

RE Cupping of Graf Brothers Engineered Flooring?
Thank you mlayne for your comments. I will pull out the invoice and check on the top sealant used. This was a sand in place engineered floor so it was nailed not glued in. We have now had advice that the angle of the nails was incorrect as a result of the wrong shoe being used during installation. It appears that the groove edge of the wood has lifted higher than the tonge side of the board. Does that make any sense?
All comments are very welcome

Seagull, Please provide the State you are in and the wood species. Thanks.

RE Cupping of Graf Brothers Engineered Flooring
I live in Oregon and the wood is white oak rift cut, Graf House Collection - Sand in place Engineered Flooring.

Thank you. Seagull_2010. To me one of the 2 things could cause the edges pulling more on the groove sides than the tongue sides. Rift sawn white oak veneer should be quite stable if the Kiln dry done properly at the factory level.I wonder the veneers had higher than normal moisture at the time of installation. So it shrinked during your Winter heating season. The shrinkage will pull the groove sides higer than tongue sides since the plywood base is thinner and weaker on grooves. We have seen the same thing happened to the 4mm wear layer Exotic species in our showroom. Of course our MN winter is quite much more harsh than OR and some Exotic woods can have quite much more pulling power than Rifted W. oak. We like to hear other comments on this subject. Engineered flooring failures are happening all through North America in past few years. To me, it is a lot more tricky and situational than solid wood floorings. Unfortunately,they are sold everyday by many floor covering salesmen as the more dimentional stable products than solid. Thanks for your time.

Seagull. We too have had many problems with our Graf engineered flooring. we installed 4" walnut over radiant. we have had checking,delamination,lipping, shrinkage and poly "squeeze" between boards to the extent that it causes the poly to peel away from the edges of the boards. It was installed in Aug 2009 during an extremely humid period (we are in MA), the flooring was not acclimated and the installer never required the radiant heat to be on to dry our any moisture that may have been trapped in the sub floor. Graf sent a tech to examine the floor and their response was a photo copy from the NWFA handbook saying we had a greenhouse effect. We are not in agreement with their findings. How did you make out and do you have any info you can share? Sounds like we have similar issues. Hope you are heading towrds promising results.

rudee,

Your sepele wood floors are beautiful. We put down Mirage sepele wood floors down on our ground floor condo that has cement floors, but we had to have it glued down. This was about 5 years ago so the product must have changed.

Will you please tell me the name of the paint color you used on the walls in the basement. It seems to be a beautiful gray color. It's really nice with the floors.

jb1176,

My wall colour is Bleecker Biege (HC-80) by Benjamin Moore.

BTW - Mirage makes both Engineered and Lock styles in Sapele. I opted for Lock since I did not want to glue or staple the floors. So far it has held up nicely with no cupping. We've had some really hot weather lately and so far the humidity has not affected the floors (the basement gets cool ... so it helps).

I am happy with my BR111 amendoim engineered flooring. But it does dent easily. I have solid oak in kitchen which holds up much better.

Seagull and fptwist I'd be willing to look over your inspection reports and tell you whether or not you have all the info needed to determine what is going on. I manufacture the same type of product as Graf and can assure you the product design doesn't have any flaws. We've sold hundreds of thousands of square feet and if all the recommendations are followed it should perform fine. I know the Graf product and the owners personally and know they make a quality product. Send me the report info and I'll look it over for you if you'd like. sam at realwoodfloors dot com.