Please do not make the same mistake I did, and do not buy from them. They are based in Canada making it difficult to successfully sue them, and their products are from China which makes quality a question.

Everyone in the flooring business has at times found themselves unknowingly selling defective merchandise or products that do not meet marketability standards. However, that does not excuse the business from liability. Your expert would have to prove that the product is defective or not suitable to be marketed for the given purpose.

My name’s Rob Jones, and I work in the marketing department at BuildDirect. I've taken a close look at what happened with your purchase, and what happened afterward, too. First off, I like to say that I fully understand your disappointment and frustration with what happened. Investing in a floor is a significant commitment, and one that isn’t without effort and expense. That things went very wrong for your installation is regrettable, to say the least. When our customers aren’t happy, neither are we. This is certainly the case here.

However, the idea that the products themselves were at the heart of what happened isn’t what the third-party inspector’s report showed. When these types of problems arise, it’s a third-party inspection that we must rely upon to decide what actions to take. In this case, it took some time before the third party inspector responded to requests to perform the inspections, which was frustrating for everyone, including us.

But, what the inspection showed was a humidity level on installation site that was well outside of the prescribed range as outlined in the installation instructions we’ve made available online to those researching the products for projects like yours. The report showed that it was the dry conditions on your site that was found to be the cause of the damage to the installed floor boards, and to the unused boards as well. The report suggested that as the wood dried out due to lack of air moisture in your space, the boards cracked, and delaminated.

As such, we were not able to compensate the full replacement of your flooring under the conditions of the manufacturer’s warranty. An offer for new flooring at a discounted price was our best solution at the time to resolve the issue for you, our customer, and to protect our company from greater costs relating to damages over which we had no control.

Still, in saying all that, this has been an extremely unsatisfying result for you, and I greatly empathize. The situation isn’t closed so long as you’d like to constructively discuss possible alternative solutions and reasonable options in resolving this issue, beyond our offer of a discount for new flooring, and with the above site environmental issues in mind.

Thank you for considering this response, with sincere understanding and empathy on our part of the negative experience you’ve had in purchasing products from our company.

Well, it depends on the kind of wood. In this case, it was a tropical wood that thrives naturally in a high-moisture environment, and not in a very dry climate. But, no matter what kind of wood you invest in, hardwood floors need to be in areas that are environmentally controlled at all times for both temperature, and for moisture. They are suseptible to moisture levels because they are, in the end, natural products, not ones that are badly made. So, a balance needs to be struck when you're preparing the space, and maintaining it as long as the flooring is there.

I hope this helps.

Lastly and most importantly, I hired a Certified wood flooring inspector,who is also certified to be an expert witness in Nevada courts, who did a thorough inspection involving 3 1/2 hours and multiple measurements of moisture levels at multiple locations, stated very clearly in his report that after his inspection, evaluation, and measurements, that delamination of my flooring IS a manufacturing issue. Secondly he stated that the initial cause of checking (cracking) is a manufacturing issue as well. His opinions are referenced and explained.

Therefore the ONLY opinion of a certified wood flooring inspector is that the delamination and checking occuring in my flooring purchased from Build Direct ARE manufacturing issues. The inspector hired by your company is neither certified, nor gave an opinion. I have sent your company the inspectors report; his conclusions are made despite any moisture gradients or humidity measurments which may or may not be in a given range.

Your company should really do what is right and pay for the demo, subfloor reprep and reinstallation of new flooring. It is highly instructive to note that your company offers to sell me different flooring. If your company does not believe there is not any issue with the flooring, why would you simply not offer me the same flooring at a discount, with instructions to correct any moisture or humidity issues in the house?

Please tell me if anything that I have stated is factually incorrect.

Just for context's sake, this discussion has been ongoing via FB and email since my last post. So, sorry about the delay in responding on this particular thread.

I'm not sure where the information is coming from that the inspector wasn't qualified to conduct the inspection. The company we work with vettes all of their inspectors rigourously. They have to. Otherwise, it would endanger their reputation to do what they do when issues arise. It would not make sense for them to send out an unqualified inspector. It would not make sense for our company to work with them. It wouldn't make sense for us to come to these conclusions without factual support just to gain what we think is a short-term advantage.

On the product front, we've been selling that particular selection of wood floor for about three years. I'm told that this is the first instance of the kind of damage we've seen in it. This is not very conclusive in and of itself. It's when the dry climate is factored in, and the extreme dryness of the wood as it was found on site as reported to us by the inspection that makes the difference. Again, this is a species that does not naturally thrive in a dry climate. Consistent environmental intervention, the details of which are provided in the installation instructions, is vital to its health. The report showed that the site was not within the specific environmental parameters, evident in the dryness of the wood. So, we believe our conclusions were drawn justifiably.

As to the offer of a new floor, that is legitimate. We're trying to come to some arrangement where we share the burden of what happened. But, since we believe that there is an environmental issue that affects that specific species (and other exotics like it), it wouldn't be prudent to repeat the process by sending you another batch of the same product. The selection of another species seems to be the best approach, with the issue of air moisture regulation being central to an installation strategy, whichever species is chosen.

This remains to be a terrible situation which we clearly wouldn't wish on anyone. Our offer of a collection of the old floor and a discounted price for a new one is the best we can do in this instance. I don't know how much further things can be taken on message boards like this one, or elsewhere on the Internet. But, I'll try to respond the best I can.

1) So you are affirming that the inspector that conducted an inspection of my flooring for Build Direct, Mr. M. Hallewell IS a certified wood flooring inspector? If so which agency?

2) Was the opinion that you stated above as the cause of the delamination and cracking in my flooring purchased from BuildDirect explicitly stated in Mr. Hallewell's report or any inspector's report?

3) Why have you or any BuildDirect representative not explained why you have discounted the opinion of a certifed wood flooring inpector who conducted a 3 1/2 hour examination of my flooring who stated explicitly that the delamination and checking in my flooring is, and I quote a "manufacturing responsibility." This report was forwarded to your company earlier this month.

I will await your reply to these questions,
Thank you.

You state, and I quote, "when the dry climate is factored in, and the extreme dryness of the wood as it was found on site as reported to us by the inspection that makes the difference"

In you own inspectors report he measures the surface moisture as 11 percent. This is VERY moist; indeed many manfacturers would not even find this level acceptable to ship out of the factory. The interior of the wood as measured by your inspector was 6%, also not dry at all. Thus your hypothesis that the wood delaminated because the wood was dry, is not supported by your inspectors own measurements.

Lastly you also suggest that the dryness of the environment contributed to delamination. If this were the case, that the dry conditions in the house dried out the wood, then this should have happened at the surface of the wood (which had 11% moisture readings) prior to happening in the interior of the wood where moisture was measured at 6%. Contrary to this supposition, the surface is much more moist than the interior of the wood; this runs contrary to your explanation. Let me state that I do not necessarily believe any of the measurements your inspector took are valid, but assuming you do, your explanations are nonsensical.

3.5 Bond Line: All adjacent surfaces of each ply shall be uniformly and securely
bonded. The flooring shall conform to the requirements of the bond test described in 4.2

3.7 Construction: The flooring pieces shall be of balanced construction, which means
that they are free from warp or twist to the extent that they do not interfere with the
installation or negatively affect the intended use of the product. The purpose of this
requirement is to provide a product which will perform satisfactorily over the typical
range of humidity and temperature in an indoor environment, when installed according to
the instructions of the manufacturer. Any construction with an even or odd number of
plies, and any combination of thicknesses and shrinkage characteristics that meets the
requirement for balanced construction is permitted. No two adjacent plies shall have
coinciding openings greater than 12.7 mm (1/2 inch)

4.2 Bond Line Test: Two test specimens, 50.8 mm (2 inches) wide by 127 mm (5
inches) along the grain, shall be cut from each flooring sample tested. The specimens
shall be cut from opposite sides of the flooring after all tongue and groove portions have
been removed. The specimens shall be submerged in water at 24 C+-3C (75 F +-5F) for 4
hours, and then dried at a temperature between 49 and 52 C (120 and 125 F) for 19 hours,
with sufficient air circulation to lower the moisture content (based on oven-dry weight) of
the specimens to a maximum of 8 percent. This cycle shall be repeated until all
specimens fail or until thr ee cycles have been completed, whichever occurs first. The
flooring shall be considered as failing when any single delamination between two plies of
either specimen is greater than 50.8 mm (2 inches) in continuous length, over 6.4 mm
(1/4 inch) in depth at any pint, and 0.08 mm (.003 inch) in width as determined by a
feeler gauge 0.08 mm (0.003 inches) thick and 12.7 mm (1/2 inch) wide. Specimens shall
be examined for delamination at the end of each cycle. Delamination due to tape at joints
or inner plies or defects allowed by the grade shall be disregarded. For performing the
bond line test, the flooring samples shall be selected in multiples of ten in order to
provide for a sufficient number of specimens (two specimens per sample) to which the
acceptance levels are applied. Ninety-five percent of test specimens shall pass the first
cycle, and eighty- five percent of test specimens shall pass the third cycle.

There is nothing in a residence that can come close to this spec. Short of three consecutive floods.

If it is sold as an engineered product in the USA it must meet this criteria and protocol.

Shear, as they call it is a direct cause from unbalanced construction of the plies, and the different species used in the construction of the boards. Different species have different shrink and swell ratios.

The old 3 ply stuff that was the same species in all three layers, rarely had any issues, like we see today with this cheap manufacturing from China.