How level does a floor have to be for engineered wood?

[buyryte]

We've had a new kitchen and engineered wood flooring laid. There's movement felt underfoot and creaking heard when walking on one part of the floor. The skirting board doesn't join up with the floor at one end, leaving an obviously visible gap. Is our only option to have the whole floor taken up and the floor leveled again? Apart from the unsightly gap at the bottom of the skirting board, I'm worried that the stress on the low part of the floor will in time catapult up the boards in the middle of the floor. Has anyone had issues with the laying of engineered wood floor on top of existing floorboards? (I think our builders used a self-leveling compound)

We laid engineered wood ourselves in an upstairs room. Our floors are absolutely not level. We laid a double layer of insulation/ underlay - it has the fibre board type underlay laid on the existing floorboards, followed by what is in effect a giant sheet of foam sticky back plastic which the boards are stuck to - and they are then free floating, so not attached to skirting boards or nailed down. It doesn't pop or creak at all. I should add that this was how it was designed to be laid (although it didn't mandate the underlay boards - they were our idea).

It doesn't sound as though this was how yours was laid, though??

We have an uneven floor, the underlay and in one place the self-levelling stuff. We has a few instances of creaking and feeling like the floor was bubbling up bug out fitter told us to expect this. He just came back and nailed it down in places. Seems fine now . We didn't have the skirting problem though. Could you fitter come back and do this?

The builders and fitter aren't signed off yet, so we can raise this as an issue if we want to. We're at the end of a drawn out extension so part of me just wants to be done with it all and part of me is worried about storing up problems for later. It's the movement underfoot AND the gap between the skirting and floorboards (at one end of the room) which makes it feel like a bigger issue. But it might not be. They might have done the best they were able to do, in which case, I would rather leave it and try and fill the skirting gap so it doesn't look so obvious.

Actually just remembered we did have a bit of a gap in one place as skirting level but floor not. Builder put on some expanding foam and then wood filler. Once skirting painted you can barely see it. We also had a few small gaps by fire place which were filled with wood filler - again you can't see them now.

Can you post pic of gap?