Topic: For those of you doing changeouts from carpet and sheet vinyl to LVP (wood look planking), are you using the glue down or the click in?

For those of you doing complete changeouts from carpet and sheet vinyl to LVP (wood look planking), are you using the glue down or the click in? And why. TIA

We used the click kind before, but it wasn't as good with water as the glue down.

Shannon Ray, some complain they have to rip up glue down plank to treat the subfloor for pet damage. The urine seems between the planks and into the cement. Spills that are cleaned up quickly shouldn’t have a negative impact, but a pet that either is left for long periods, or goes in the same spot repeatedly can be an issue. Still easier and cheaper to fix than pet damaged carpet.

Joe Jefferson This. Our click in shows more damage not just with pets but some people use the steamer mops (even though we say not to) and also over swifer their floor. The planks just end up warped. As well for upper units they are definitely louder than vinyl.

Joe Jefferson tenants pay for that not really an owner problem.

Upper floors are not offered lvp for noise purposes, and my ground floors are slab, so we haven't had this issue so far.

What are your subfloors made of? If you have plywood floors, you can not glue to plywood. The most common is 2mm glue down. If you have sound concerns on upper floors, you can opt to add an underlaymemt or utilize a click/float w/ attached pad. If you use the click/float, you will want to use a rigid format and not a flexible format to avoid seeing all the waves in the floor.

If you have gypcrete on the 2nd floors, then you have to encapsulate the gypcrete with with either sealer or floor prep so the glue down plank will adhere to it. Most of the time the gypcrete has broken down creating a layer of dust that’s settled on the gypcrete.

You also have to consider acclimation. If you have extreme hot and cold seasons, and the units may be vacant with A/C or heat off, vinyl plank expands and contracts. The floating floor accommodates that. There is also glue down fiberglass core plank that is more dimensionally stable than vinyl. They can have a range of 45-115 degrees with the proper glue. I have seen vinyl plank contract that was installed during the hot summer months either when the A/C was finally turned with normal use, or on a cold winter day when the unit was vacant and no heat on. In contrast, I’ve seen vinyl plank installed in the winter that expanded and caused “tenting” when the unit was vacant over the summer with no A/C. Tenting is when the length of the plank expands and it forces one or both of the plank ends to pop up from the floor. If vinyl plank is used, the unit must be kept @ 60-80 degrees at all times. Vinyl plank only expands and contracts in the length, not the width.

Click in, because it's in rentals and no matter how durable it is people are still going to ruin it, so I'm going to end up replacing it.

Was only using the click until we had issues with it with wheelchairs. Wheelchairs were cracking the click LVP. So in the assisted living centers we have switched to glue down. However I am still using the click in my senior apartments.

Click in type, on concrete slabs. They have done very well. A lot better than carpet.

Glue down plank floors for about 12 years. Works great, unless it gets very wet, like a broken pipe wet, then it starts popping up. You can replace just pieces if you can still find the same pattern. The manufactures like to discontinue them pretty often. then you have to relay the whole thing. Strongly suggest that you buy extra boxes for repairs.

Glue down. Works best over our current flooring and also better in an old property that may have a pop up water leak.