Sisyphus and an LVT setting Out Question

[Spinny]

The rock is pushed up, the rock rolls down.

Some LVT went down, some LVT was taken up again - manufacturing fault affecting 20% of the planks.

Apply shoulder to rock - attempt to push.

 

We have chosen LVT planks with a featured wood design. Some planks are fairly plain, some are heavily featured/knotted. So how do we decide how to lay them out. I had a concern that the contractor was not laying them randomly and seemed to have laid more heavily featured ones than plain ones.  They said we open 2 or 3 packs then lay them as they come. Amtico said loose lay them and then swap planks around until you are happy, then stick down. Contractor not happy with that approach.

 

I appreciate the PITA of loose laying them first, especially with a total area of 50sqm (could only really loose lay a section at a time) but it is going to be down for 20 years.

 

Experiences, thoughts and comments...?

[G and J]

We've recently had a similar amount of amtico laid. Not planks but a  figured/textured design. Our fitter did lay out section by section then fit.

[Nickfromwales]

3 hours ago, Spinny said:

Contractor not happy with that approach

Tell him to (expletive deleted) off.

 

I think you need to remind him you're paying the bills and it’s your house. The tail doesn’t wag the dog!!!

 

Agree to pay him the downtime as an extra, an hour or two at his 10hr day divided by 10 x 2hrs, and take control of how this gets laid.

 

Will the replacement 20% be the same batch / variant? If not guaranteed, then they need throwing in here and there to camouflage them. 

[Spinny]

I am told Amtico have agreed to replace the whole order with new packs from a different batch number which will be quality checked before despatch and should be with us on Wednesday.

 

Slightly makes we wonder a bit...

Why would you need to quality check something that should be quality checked at the factory ?

What is happening to the original packs now ?

Who actually bears the cost of 2 wasted man days due to supposed premier manufacturer shipping out defective product ?

 

I also wonder the original packs were about 50/50 plainish vs featured. Could I sensibly take say 10% of featured planks and leave them out of the mix ? If the colour match is good could I take selected non-defective planks from the original batch to mix in ? 

 

I believe the Amtico is manufactured in wider sheets with a single photographic image, then cut into strips and boxed. I had a couple of sample planks from one box and they did seem to match if you placed them along side each other. No doubt you can't lay them that way as they need to have staggered joins and you would end up with one large scale repeating pattern.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 6 by Spinny

[Spinny]

Guy just said 'I am not doing that'. Seems difficult to square with Amtico recommending dry laying and the contractor being an Amtico Premier partner. You would have thought he could at least say, 'it will take longer to lay that way so there will have to be a price increase'.

 

It would have helped if he had at least said something like, these planks vary a lot, do you want to have a look before and as I start laying ?

 

When I raised it he said 'I can't take these up again'. Once his boss came to look at the manufacturing faults they had spotted (but only mentioned to their boss and not to me). The boss said these will all have to come up - and come up they did.

 

Kitchen fitter called today too, saying he intends to come early. Tomorrow I am calling the kitchen company to bend their ear. I have had to wait 6 weeks for them to get missing parts. I sent them a gantt chart showing the earliest 2nd fit date. They are supposed to be coming later not now. I am not having it. They insisted on being paid 100% on delivery. Now I have 90% of a kitchen, they couldn't even be bothered to tell me when the parts had arrived, and they want me to renegotiate dates with their sub contract fitter. As ever, once people have your money they take their eye off the ball. This job isn't running to other people's convenience, it is running to a sequenced plan.

[saveasteading]

20 hours ago, Spinny said:

Contractor not happy with that 

Doesn't have much argument if the instructions say to mix and rotate and dry lay. It's good that the instructions do say that, as I don't think they always do.

I hate repeated when products  mimicking  a natural product  have obvious repeats.

Tilers, vinyl layers, paving slab layers are not necessarily aesthetes. But it's part of their job so well done for hanging on to that boulder.

[Dreadnaught]

"Amtico Premier partner" - oh dear! Concerning.

 

I am planing to have Amtico LVT and thought "Amtico Premier partner" meant an easy life.

 

I wonder if Method Statements exist from Amtico than be can inspected and quoted. 

[Nickfromwales]

4 hours ago, Dreadnaught said:

"Amtico Premier partner" - oh dear! Concerning.

 

I am planing to have Amtico LVT and thought "Amtico Premier partner" meant an easy life.

 

I wonder if Method Statements exist from Amtico than be can inspected and quoted. 

Meet your fitters at the door, invite them in for ‘the chat’. 
 

If that goes well use them, but if they are obtuse or confrontational then you just smile and say thanks for coming out, ask them to make their way back out the front door…and give them the FO.

 

“He who pays the piper”.  

[Gone West]

In our last self build in East Kent, we had Amtico LVT tiles laid in the bathroom and ensuite. The supplier in Canterbury used an Amtico recommended installer and the result was superb. This was several years ago now.

[Nickfromwales]

1 minute ago, Gone West said:

In our last self build in East Kent, we had Amtico LVT tiles laid in the bathroom and ensuite. The supplier in Canterbury used an Amtico recommended installer and the result was superb. This was several years ago now.

Name some names, if you’d be so kind, as anyone in that area would be glad for the information I’m sure. 

[Gone West]

2 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

Name some names

Lenleys, Roper Road, Canterbury.

[Spinny]

So my LVT contractor got replacement Amtico Spacia from a different batch without the manufacturing fault which had affected 25% of the first batch. So I have borrowed 2 boxes - each box contains 27 planks. Just found the time and space to lay them out on the floor.

 

I can clearly see that laying these is not at all straight forward. The planks seem to be cut out in a strange way, in that the same 'feature' in the wood can appear on multiple planks within a single box. The plank cut is just in a different place, so the feature might be near the end of one plank, and then in the centre of a 'different' plank. Just laying out this box as I suppose you might lay them working across by 9 planks and then on down the room, and bingo I have the same feature knot repeated 4 times within about 1 sqm. In my eyes NOT a good look.

 

AI now suggesting to me at least 5 boxes (that is 12.5sqm or 135m planks) should be opened and mixed and dry laid to avoid this type of concentrated pattern repeat. It is still not clear to me how large an image is actually used to make the planks. But AI suggests there are roughly 24 unique plank designs - this must be roughly 2 sqm though ?!. Given the room is 35 sqm this is really rather crap. I thought I was buying luxury vinyl tile. I'd have thought it would be just as easy to manufacture from say a 10 or 20 sqm image (or set of different images) as a 2 sqm one.

 

In a small room with less pattern variation then I guess things are easy, but we are having 50 sqm plus laid.

 

Feeling frustrated now - why did nobody tell us about the pattern repeat problem, and why did our fitter not automatically recognise it would need to be mixed across many boxes and dry laid ? 

 

The temperatures have been too high to lay any for a week, now they may be coming down and there is this big disappointment and all the complications of arguing and dry laying.

 

Would never have gone for this had I known the truth. See Photo.

 

Has anybody here laid LVT over a large open plan area ? How did it work out for you ? Did you have this issue ? Were you only using something plain ?

 

 

Edited yesterday at 18:04 by Spinny

[G and J]

On 06/07/2026 at 22:01, G and J said:

We've recently had a similar amount of amtico laid. Not planks but a  figured/textured design. Our fitter did lay out section by section then fit.

 

As already mentioned above. We had 60 odd square metres laid throughout upstairs. 

 

1 hour ago, Spinny said:

Feeling frustrated now - why did nobody tell us about the pattern repeat problem, and why did our fitter not automatically recognise it would need to be mixed across many boxes and dry laid ? 

 

There is, unfortunately, a bit of a buyer beware thing going on here. The no. of designs vs planks info. is available, and then the style (planks vs small tile patterns) impacts how often you're going to 'see' the repeat. (We had to do similar research to make sure our 88sqm of porcelain tiles didn't suffer the sames issues). The design we chose is a small plank, this then changes direction regularly (broadweave), but even then, with 30 odd different face patterns, if you look closely enough over the whole area you can find a repeat, likewise the large format tile. Neither of them are, after all natural materials.

 

So where you are now...... can you offer to pay a bit higher fitting cost to allow the planks to be dry laid and  any "offending" repeats, in high visibility areas, be moved.

 

 

[saveasteading]

I have raised this repeat thing with lots of manufacturers and I think they genuinely dont 'get it'.

Even if the main effects were  less bold it would help.

Do the planks reverse ? The main offenders will still appear but look slightly different.

And if they are at ends can they be worked so the features are part of the offcuts? Or under the sofa.

[Spinny]

Thanks for all your comments.

 

10 hours ago, G and J said:

The no. of designs vs planks info. is available

Is it ? I can’t find it published anywhere and all Amtico were saying on the phone was it is made on a big roll and cut into 1m squares for storage then cut into planks on demand. The actual size of the image repeat was obfuscated.

 

AI can’t tell me, although some other brands now state 50 or even 100 planks. So increasing it seems to be a trend.

 

With a featured pattern it is definitely problematic.

 

Amtico clearly cut in different places but don’t really seem to have a big enough master image. We are going down hall & open plan room, about 15m with no thresholds. Laying in linear style which seems to be worse.

 

Did you have tick finish or the wood grain type finish and which plank size ?

Edited 13 hours ago by Spinny

[G and J]

1 hour ago, Spinny said:

can’t find it published anywhere

Our Amtico supplier/fitter provided the information when asked

 

1 hour ago, Spinny said:

Did you have tick finish or the wood grain type finish and which plank size ?

Our choice is both heavily patterned and embossed with a wood grain pattern.

The format is 5 tiles (individual)in a 450mm square, so although there are repeats they are way less visible than they could be. Even then a couple of tiles were removed and repositioned during the process. At the end if the day they are not wood, and were bought with long term practicality considerations as well as aesthetics.

 

Photo shows the initial laying out process (after the floor had ply and leveller)

 

 

If you are really unhappy is it too late to change design now? Better that than live regretting it for the next ? years

[Spinny]

@G and J

OK, so you dry laid before glueing down by the look of it ?

Did you install it yourselves ?

 

It is a tricky thing. We actually chose the floor about 5 years ago now before our bad builder started. Flooring retailer lent us about half a box he had and we put the 12 odd planks down in our old long demolished now conservatory to look at. Have used small sample pieces ever since to coordinate with choosing kitchen, worktop etc. Never really appreciated the pattern repeat/heavy featured repeat issue because it just didn't show up with a 1 sqm sample. I don't think there is anywhere where you can actually readily view Amtico on a large floor - the retailers we went to all just have small areas and sample boards no bigger than say 1m by 0.5m. None of them ever mentioned any considerations re choices and laying patterns for open plan areas.

 

Don't think SWMBO is going to go around the houses on it again now, we have been 3.5 years with no kitchen sink or water appliances. Every single aspect of getting work done has been delayed and problem impacted.

 

Best bet seems to be to reduce/leave out a few very heavily featured planks (can go under appliances) and then dry lay first, mixing boxes well and checking the look. The fitter is not going to be happy about dry laying - but hopefully if I do it so he just has to shift planks across I can get them to do it and/or pay a bit extra.

Edited 11 hours ago by Spinny

[G and J]

2 hours ago, Spinny said:

The fitter is not going to be happy about dry laying - but hopefully if I do it so he just has to shift planks across I can get them to do it and/or pay a bit extra

This sounds like a way forward.

 

No, we did not lay ourselves, nor did we specifically ask the fitter to dry lay, mix boxes or look for repeats, but we didn't need to as they said they would when discussing beforehand and that's what they did. Only a couple of part tiles were moved, and this was only because they were very, very promenantly marked.

 

For others reading, we chose to go to a large furniture store who actually had laid room size displays (on which they stood the furniture they were selling). Our installers had done similar in the showroom. This reinforced the need to choose a pattern/plank size we could live with. We then only used the small samples(1m x1m) to choose colours. 

[Spinny]

1 hour ago, G and J said:

we chose to go to a large furniture store who actually had laid room size displays

Good idea.

Probably still have to be lucky to find a specific tile design though.

I wonder if Amtico/other brands are missing a trick here. Presumably they could be approaching such stores and incentivising them to showcase their LVT designs and keeping a list. Then they could give LVT customers a list of where to find different designs locally - and the store would get more people through the door that are likely to be in the market for furniture.

[Spinny]

Hmm. Not sure what to make of that.

Flooring boss has told me he is worried that the fitter will walk out if he is asked or told to dry lay the LVT first !

Therefore he is proposing the fitter takes one plank in turn from each of 5 boxes and glues them, with the darkest deepest featured 10% put to one side as he goes.

 

I have proposed dry laying say 5 sqm at a time transposed to the side of where they would be glued so the fitter can then lift and glue down. He has said 'you can try that' but the fitter may not be happy. He has also said they never dry lay first and no-one really does because it shouldn't be necessary, though does accept our choice of design is heavily featured and so controlling tone variations and pattern repeats is especially problematic.

 

Naturally he is not around tomorrow when the fitter plans to come !

 

Not feeling entirely happy here. Once again the boss disappears leaving me to manage the guy on the job, who, whilst experienced and hard working, can be obstinate.

What can I do ? If the fitter walks they don't seem to have another experienced one, if I go elsewhere it will be weeks, probably months of quotes and availability waits with everything on hold. Feels like a kind of blackmail. Not good.

 

Any suggestions ?

 

 

 

 

[Tetrarch]

Amtico Spacia are the cheaper brand and the planks repeat more often than its more expensive sister-offerings

 

You are also hampered by the laying pattern you have chosen. (IMO) Straight patterns show up repeats and duplicates more obviously. This is one of the reasons we chose a herringone laying pattern for our Amtico Spacia.

 

Over time and especially as you fill your room with rugs and other furniture the repeat highlights will become less noticeable

 

Regards

 

Tet

[saveasteading]

3 hours ago, Spinny said:

What can I do

be a huge help to him in  opening the packs up and tidying away the waste for a nice clear room.  also any offcuts that are no use (or unlikely to be, and a pile of possible bits for fitting in where any small bits needed.

In so doing you can choose to mix the packages up, look for any severe patterns near ends and ask him to use them where the ends will be cut off.

How much waste have you allowed? it is standard to allow 10% with other people's money whereas 5% is more likely with care and attention.

 

Can they be reversed? That can make a huge difference and its something that most fitters wont do. You can rota te them before they reach him.

 

With your help and a few 'queries' , but not too many, he may end up respecting your concerns.

The danger is ending up with nothing but the strongly marked ones.

 

I did something similar with floor tiles that were a complex layout. By me handing the excellent tiler 'the next one', he was pleased with the  help.

[Spinny]

I have certainly got 20% more than I need as deliberately over ordered to have a spare stock for any future maintenance. Also reasonable number of places to put rejects under appliances etc. some are reversed as they come out of the box.

I generally do all I can to help people, clearing work areas, endless vacuuming, disposing of waste, preparation, ventilation, clear driveway, tea and cake, tools. 

If I knew what sequence he was going to work I would dry lay then box up again in the laying sequence if need be. Despite being sleepless and exhausted and growing more decrepid by the day.