Old Pergo glued the seams. And was decent quality. Not so for modern snap together laminate. It has more avenues for water infiltration.

Costco anything flooring wise is crapola to begin with. What you have is what you get with a low quality laminate. It cannot tolerate any water whatsoever.

Good quality laminate is still available. But you will pay more for it than for a mediocre quality engineered wood or solid hardwood. Thus laminate's market share has tanked.

People that used go buy laminate are now buying luxury vinyl planks. And not just because of the moisture resistance of vinyl. It's far easier to replace a damaged piece than with laminate. It looks pretty good too. If you buy the $4-$6 range that is. Which is still in the price range of your average quality wood. So it becomes a features decision not one based on cost.

Cheap anything is still poor quality. And that goes for $2 laminate, vinyl, or wood.

So, what i'm hearing is that all cheap laminate floor has this problem. I got what I paid for. Boo, this cheap crap should not be sold. It's not suited for the purpose of being a floor.

Too bad I spend so much time installing it.

I have Costco Harmonics flooring in my basement and it has held up fabulously (4 years).

I only use a damp terry cloth mophead to clean it -- never a spray cleaner of any kind. In all honesty, it doesn't get that dirty being in the basement where we don't go much.

As for water, our washing machine leaked from the main floor to the basement. Actually, it has happened 2 or 3 times. The water was on it at the most several hours but I mopped it up with towels and there is ZERO damage.

I would call the manufacturer of your floor or speak to someone at Costco.

We have the same Acacia flooring - I would say it is more sensitive to water than 2 other laminate brands we have had in our past homes. The Pergo and Wilson Floors versions we had in the past did have some water issues, but only if water was left for a long period of time, or if there was a spill or leake that wasn't noticed.

Our Costco flooring (which is made by QuickStep by the way) is showing some water swelling in a many areas despite diligently following the no water cleaning rules - and yes even if we leave water drops on a seam or a glass on a seam it will leave a little swell mark...

I am not totally happy with it - and my wife would really love to be able to Steam clean it. We can't imagine what the damage to the floors would look like if it was steam cleaned.

We purchased the floors knowing they wouldn't last too long. We are at year 3 of what we hope to be our 10 year "temporary" floor.

We are another year into the Costco laminate floor - and have had more of the same experiences I mentioned above. I do feel like the floors look good, hold up pretty well, and beyond water being an issue, they work great for what we need for now.

In the future we would like a floor that doesn't damage as easily with liquids, can be steam cleaned, and has a good tough outer layer finish. I don't know if we will find it.

We have looked into other floors including bamboo and aren't yet sold on the best option for us when we get around to replacing this floor in 6 years (fingers crossed). I think we will try to find a top quality engineered floor with a real wood top surface in the end.

You must've a defective batch; I bought Sunset Acacia Harmonics flooring from Costco almost 3 years ago, installed it over a span of 3 months; dining room, living room, kitchen, 2 flights of stairs (6 steps each), entry way and 2 hallways; we clean with moist flooring cloth; here over 2.5 years later after completing the installation, I still have yet to see even a single spot of water damage; the only thing I've noticed is shrinkage: the connection gaps are becoming more noticeable, but even in those spots there is still no water damage or warping.

Wanting to use a steam cleaner=TILE ONLY. There isn't any manufacturer of wood, laminate, or vinyl, that allows the use of a steam cleaner.

@the-top-floor-installation-co Have you noticed a difference in current Harmonics offerings vs previous Harmonics offerings? In looking at Costco's website, some of the newer, better-looking designs have no reviews, while some of the older designs have a large collection of poor reviews indicating exceptionally poor sensitivity to brief contacts with liquids as well as chips.

@Sophie Wheeler I've noticed that I like some of the LVP products out there, such as Coretec Plus HD, and am probably going with it for the durability and high definition printing options, but they are $5/SqFt for material costs, so it's tough to compare $1.46/SqFt product to something almost 3.5x as expensive and priced similarly to many other options (cork, engineered hardwood, bamboo, eucalyptus, etc.)

At Luke....the LVP is the "answer" to the laminate "Oh goodness! It swells just by water LOOKING at the floor! What do I do?" comments. In the flooring business, you get what you pay for.

Costco has a long history of questionable products. The good news is Costco has a great return policy...if you yell/scream/cry enough. A floor that is 2 years old won't get any action (Costco or other wise). A floor that is horrible after 3 months will get a better response from Costco compared to other retailers.

Costco bit the biscuit on the Bamboo lines a few years ago. I mean HORRIBLE stuff. Right up there with Lumber Liquidators. The laminates that Costco sells would certainly be in the same category = about as good as the paper they are made from.

We are installing the Harmonics Camden Oak flooring now. Some of the left over cut pieces were outside on the ground during a monsoon rain storm. In the morning I found one of the pieces upside down in a puddle almost as high as the laminate. We turned it over and let it sit there until the puddle dried out - almost all day. We then let it dry thoroughly. There was almost no change in the piece. I was pleasantly shocked. We are putting this flooring in temporarily in a new build until we decide what we really want. I was panicking about putting this in areas where water may splash on it. I am feeling much more at ease that this floor will work well for us for the time being.

Also, I am really pleased with the noise dampening quality. What a great value.

You Mickensx Mike C You are not alone. I have had my Costco Harmonics flooring for five years now. The first three years were good except one portion of the house showed major separation of the planks in two places. Not sure what that's about. it almost looks like it shrunk. Flooring was pretty good the next few years but in the past year I am noticing even if a bit of water is dropped on the floor (which can happen in any household) for a few seconds it takes to clean it up, the floor puckers and bulges up under wherever the water may have dripped. For a few seconds. Also some of the planks are puckering up along edges of planks with no reason...if it was from dampness...then all the rest of it would have done that. I loved the flooring and now cannot even find the same color and pattern to replace those planks. One of those Kirby vacuum sales people came to the house and said that's because the top layer is just paper. Harmonics denial that it's not something wrong with their product is false. (Sorry I noticed this was six years ago). Wish I had read it then...