LVT tile effect flooring?

[stressedouttumbleweed]

We're doing an extension and currently looking at flooring. It's for an open plan kitchen/dining/living/playroom (will be a bit "zoned" but don't want different flooring in different areas)

The new part will be on a concrete slab floor and will have UFH, the current part is a solid floor (presumably slab, whatever they did in the 80s) and won't have UFH as too expensive to retrofit

We're pretty sure we want LVT, originally planned on wood planks but seen a couple of tile effect ones that are nice, but wondering about using them without the "grout" strips. Has anyone done that? Any pics?

Also our builder said that we need to be careful about splitting/movement between the old & new part with different substrates and LVT. Flooring shop said shouldn't be an issue-but does any one else have experience? He said we'd need a threshold or consider using LVT as a floating floor rather than glue down.

Thanks :)

Sorry for the delayed reply but I have a similar situation to yours (zoned space) and have just DIY fitted my own floor with an LVT click system. I hope the attached pictures are helpful. This is a floating floor - Quickstep Livyn ambient click plus, light grey travertin, £43.99/m², on a wet UFH screed, with Quickstep heat underlay. We have slightly over 55 sqm in this space, and we (DH and I) did it in a weekend plus two weekday evenings. It was worth buying the installation kit, which is a special shaped stanley knife and a set square. But we bought it more cheaply than the Quickstep price, from another flooring supplier. First pic - teenager legs for scale and second pic my slipper to show a grout strip - that's the sitting room zone. Planning to put a deep red rug in here once I've steam cleaned it. Third pic is same flooring under dining table legs plus clutter. Fourth is a bit of the kitchen - we haven't put skirtings on yet, but this shows the junction with a door threshold, and the aluminium tape which seals the underlay to the wall.

When we were shopping around for this, we had been planning to pay a company to do glued LVT, but the room gets direct sunshine and quite a large temperature range in the summer, so I was paranoid that the tiles would warp. Even though they said they would guarantee it, and it's easy to take up a glued tile and replace, I didn't want the disruption. And the company wouldn't fit a click system for some reason. I think we've ended up paying less for materials and having the satisfaction of the achievement. Win win.

On your question about a heated and unheated zone, the Quickstep website does say that there should be a transition strip which allows the flooring to expand/contract at the slightly different rates in those zones. We have one small section which doesn't have UFH (under the fridge and beyond it where there will be a large pantry/walk-in cupboard) but we think the temperature won't be very different there in reality so we have taken the risk not to. The transition strips they sell are either metal or they are matched to the flooring pattern. Bit like the door threshold you would have between carpet types.

Hope that helps!

If you have tile effect without the grout strips it will look like sheet vinyl, not separate tiles. Makes a huge difference to the effect.

If you don't want grout, go for bevelled edge lvt planks.

We have glued down Amtico for our kitchen / diner extension and we’re having exactly the issue with the splitting at the line between the old floor and the new. I’m really cross about it tbh, the Amtico was pricey and I loved the look but we’re now having to think about relaying a floating floor over the top. We’re looking at Quickstep as a replacement. I have Amtico in our ensuite and it’s been great but the floor is all new there.

Have you got separation over the two sections? Do you have any pictures as I'm struggling to understand. The flooring company said we don't need to worry but maybe I didn't explain it properly to them...

Yep, here you are. I’ve struggled to get a good photo of the ‘lip’ of the floor that is causing the cracking but hopefully this will help.

@WorrisomeHeart do they think it's because the floor isn't completely level?
Have been told by two places as long as the join is flat & new screed laid it should be fine.

Don't want to spend £3.5K on flooring for it to crack...

TBH the fitter was so rubbish it could well be down to him as well. But other fitters have said that about the floor - however I would have expected that to have been anticipated and fixed before laying. But you can see why I’m thinking of changing to a floating floor!

We have LVT Iin our bathroom which I really love.

@stressedouttumbleweed We were absolutely millimetre obsessed when prepping the floor before putting the underlay and planks down here - went over it with a scraper and pulled out tiny flecks from the screed mix - poppyseed sized was enough to show a lump through the flexible underlay. But we knew our floor area had been poured in one go and therefore was flat.

The technical instructions from manufacturers for these products are very clear about the tolerances and I wonder if @WorrisomeHeart's fitter was a bit cavalier about that?

We have what you describe. It works for us but we didn't want a 'statement floor' which seems to be the case in lots of houses. We dont intend to change it very often so went for a subtle finish/colour which we felt we could work around with the rest of our decor for years to come.

Anyhow we chose a LVT tile which in the shop looked like it had a really clear bevel rather than fake grout. On the sample board i swore you could see it quite clearly. The day i got back to the fitter having done 50% of the install there was little noticeable bevel and i must admit to being a bit disappointed. I would say mine is exactly like @TyneFilth . Its a perfect example but it does not look like how it looked on the sample board from memory. I even called around to the shop to look again at the sample board and i had to admit it was the same fitting, it just didnt look the same on such a big surface area.

I am happy with it. I had to get over the bevel not being obvious and once i did its really good. Its wearing fantastically even with 2 dogs and 4 adults. Its easy to clean and it is doing what we wanted. Ours is a new build and we had it screed again before fitting so its a complete downstairs floor surface with zero joints even into cupboards etc.

Our LVT tiles haven't cracked - I'd be RAGING if they had - but there is definitely is some settlement "movement" in the grout line between the original house and the new extension.(I have put flexible filler in the gap previously and I need to remove it and do it again).

We have this.

@JamMakingWannaBe what material is your subfloor on existing & extension. Pretty sure ours is a solid floor in the existing build and is a concrete slab in the extension, so I'm hoping they shouldn't move.

If we have it fitted by an approved fitter would it be covered by their guarantee?

IIRC the extension was a concrete screed that they also put over the wooden floorboards in the kitchen. To be fair we've had quite a lot of settlement movement. The floor guys were great - the builders not so! It's the only place there is an issue and the rest looks the same as the day it was laid.

My old house had an extension with UFH and the older part of the house without. There was glue down Karndean throughout. It was completely seamless between the extension and old part of house. However some of the tiles did shrink (or move?) a bit in the extension and suspect the UFH messed with the adhesive. But it was easy to repair. Loved the Karndean. We have put tile effect LVT in my new house in the bathroom. I didn’t think of the grout thing till you said it! It is a click one and there are small lines between the tiles, but it’s grey and looks a bit like poured concrete too. Anyway I’m happy with it, wasn’t keen on having ceramic tiles as too cold and hard.

I've just checked old photos. They put some kind of polymer on the floorboards and then some kind of baseboard for the LVT. It's only in the doorframe area where there has been the movement and only across one grout line.

We had Karndean parquet LVT laid in ourkitchen/family room. It was a nightmare. Half the room had wooden floorboards then there was a row of bricks, then a cement floor where an extension had been added. Despite them doing a site visit beforehand and seeing the original floor, they laid the LVT on what we later discovered was hardboard that was half as thick as it should have been. The joins of the different sub- floor types quickly became evident as 'dips' in the surface. Dips also appeared where there was unevenness in the floorboards beneath.

Karndean were not interested because the problem was the fitting. The company were appalling. In the end DH had a builder friend come round and look and FIL looked too and they saw immediately what the problem was. The company wanted to charge us another £2,800 (we'd already paid that for the floor) to lift all of our floorboards saying the joists were collapsing. The builder said there was nothing wrong with the floorboards it was their workmanship. They 'lost' our file with any notes from the site visit in it. Fortunately, I had photographed the floor as it was part of a total renovation we did of the room, including a new kitchen, french doors, roof-lights and a wood burner- so it had been gutted. We ended up threatening the company with the small claims court for £3000 unless they refunded us the money. It took 7 months in total but eventually they did.

I would never have Karndean again, it scratched very easily, was fussy to keep clean and showed every mark. Looked great but not good quality or worth the cost.

We then had a floating floor fitted from Quickstep which has been great.

Our fitter was most definitely cavalier - and that’s the reason we’re not pursuing it with him, we’re chalking it up to a silly choice to go for the cheaper guy to get the floor I loved. It’s frustrating to say the least!

Just jumping on in case anyone is still trying to decide wether to have grout lines / stripping between LVT tiles, which is how i came across this thread. After much deliberation i opted for not having grout lines and am pretty happy with the result. I was hoping there would be a very fine line to distinguish between each tile but was worried it would look like sheet vinyl as previous poster said. I went for Amtico Signature range in the end (top end price range but was the pattern/look i liked best) The tile has a very slight bevelled edge. I didn't realise that when i bought them and am pretty sure it is not even mentioned on the Amtico website. It is very subtle but helps to differentiate the tiles and stop it looking like sheet vinyl. I went for the largest square they have (304cmx304cm) as i don't like rectangular tiles and brick pattern layout (perhaps im a bit weird who knows). Not having stripping will save you money both in the product costs and labour as it is a faff to fit according to my fitter