Many times during the wood flooring installation process you need to fit the flooring around a forced air heat vent, and of course it’s easier to keep the line straight with the edge of the flooring. However, when doing so, how will it look when the vent is seen from the angle of the louvers?
The installer on this job didn’t consider that: You can clearly see the subfloor and how far off the vent is from the actual duct opening. When you slide the wood grill off the frame, you can clearly see we have lost over 50 percent of the airflow efficiency for heating and/or cooling! This will have a direct impact on the client’s comfort within that room—and, in this case, it created a reason to call for a wood floor inspection. But it doesn’t take a wood floor inspector writing a report to know the installer took a shortcut when installing this wood grill frame. If there is no more of this specific flooring available to make the necessary corrections, this careless error could even require a full floor replacement. Obviously, this cost would be the responsibility of the installer since the issue is installation-related.
These are lessons most rookies will learn as they go along learning the trade. In most cases, shortcuts never pay off in the end. In fact, they usually will cost you a great deal of more time and money than the amount you “saved” by taking the shortcut.
