Question to you guys that have hardwood flooing. We live in a raised ranch in CT (split level), with stove insert in lower level. Just ripped up vinyl floors in kitchen, and laminate in dining room. These rooms sit directly above the insert. Trying to decide between hardwood floors, or engineered floors. How much do your hardwood floors shrink during the winter while running the stove? Our house gets very dry, where we have to run a humidifyer in our bedroom at night, and i'm worried that the gaps between the flooring will be way too much for me.
Just saw this, and didn't bother reading all the replies, so probably a lot of repeat of what's already been said. I've owned houses with hardwood from 2" width to 8" width, and pine from 6" width to 20" width. I've laid my fair share of yellow pine and doug fir flooring, as well.
You should first understand that wood primarily expands and contracts tangentially to the growth rings. In other words, the "rings per inch" count does not change seasonally. This means that if you have quarter sawn or vertical grain lumber, its width is pretty much constant, year-round. Our forefathers -- who had the luxury of much more plentiful and less expensive large timber -- knew this, and this is why a lot of old flooring is vertical grain / quarter sawn. It varies in
thickness throughout the year, but not so much in width.
If buying new flooring today, unfortunately, you're going to deal with a lot of plain-sawn (flat-sawn) lumber. It will vary in width, the exact numbers varying heavily with species, your local climate, and whether you use AC vs. opening the windows in humid summer weather. If you keep your house shut up with the AC in the summer and heat in the winter, the effect is minimized.
Here in eastern PA, I'm used to seeing less than 1/8" of yearly movement on a 5-1/4" width (~2% variation) planks of plain-sawn yellow pine. I see FAR less on my old growth rift-sawn (45'ish degree to growth rings) doug fir floors, definitely less than 1/16" on an 8" plank (< 1%).
It still blows my mind to see folks spend crazy money like $8-12/ft on engineered fake wood when real wood is way less than that?
Wood is cheaper, but installation and
finishing are much, much more. I can lay 6" T&G in a 12' x 18' bedroom in a day. That even includes under-cutting door casings, etc. Takes me several days to sand and finish, which means several return trips for a flooring contractor, if you're not doing it yourself.
What burns me up, as a recent home shopper, is folks advertising their crappy Home Depot grade pre-finished engineered garbage as "hardwood floors", when selling a home. Should be illegal! There's a reason hardwood floors were considered an expensive luxury by previous generations... they are. (Rant off)