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Hiya! I'm forced to speculate a bit since I don't know a lot of exact things. First, when you refer to an apartment, my mind jumps to the standard apartment arrangement, which is that we pay rent, and basically everything the landlord owns that falls apart is their responsibility: the lock on the front door, the air conditioning, any water pipe issues - and flooring. And pulling up and putting back down even _some_ flooring can turn into a big deal, evoking the question, "Why didn't you save yourself the trouble of doing it and have _us_ do it," or "Why didn't you save us the trouble of your having done it, and discovering halfway through that your lack of expertise mattered..." so I'm assuming that this is indeed your purview, but I wanted to point that out just in case you have a very welcome, "Oh, yeah!" moment, and could wash your hands of the work and cost. That said, I can tell you what I know about the situation in general. 1. _In general,_ locking mechanisms are designed to be used maybe three times. The theory is that you might lock some planks together, then realize that something needs to move, so you unlock them and then re-lock them. One, two, three. That doesn't mean they self-destruct like Ethan Hunt's secret messages after the third try, just that they're not made to disconnect and reconnect over and over, and you could be crossing this particular product's threshold just trying what you want to try, especially given the condition in which you've found some of these. 2. You can really only pull planks up in one direction: the opposite from which they were installed. You'd need to find the edge row that ends in 'grooves', not 'tongues', and that's where you'd start. Not from the sides, and not from the opposite side of the room, because ultimately you have to put these back down, and that's tongue-into-groove, tongue-into-groove, tongue-into-groove, not groove-into-tongue (which you'd be impossibly stuck with if you undid this from the wrong direction). So depending on where these issues are, you could be puling up a _lot_ of planks, agitating a lot of locking mechanisms. 3. Doing this will may void the warranty. This is not because doing it is necessarily harmful to a floor, but because of how warranties work. You have to install things exactly their way, or they won't guarantee it anymore. Now, a) it may not void anything; check your floor's documentation, and b) the warranty might already be void under the 'original owner' thing many come with, or it might not yours to activate, so this may just be a non-issue. Okay, the irritants out of the way, then: It is very likely that you _can_ glue the joints together, for a floating laminate or vinyl floor with a click-together installation. It is (almost) never required, nor even recommended, but it's allowable because the whole floor needs to float, not the individual planks. Some tips: I. Since I don't know your product, go to a home or floor store, or call the manufacturer, if you can determine who it was, tell them your floor type and brand, and ask what adhesive you need. Different materials need different adhesives to even work, so don't guess on this. II. You should be applying a _very_ thin coat of the stuff into those joints, so it doesn't squeeze out and either dry into bumps on the top surface, or glue the flooring to the subfloor if it squeezes out underneath. III. If you can, experiment first, either with a small pair of easy-to-access planks or any available spare pieces. The thing is, even if you do this all perfectly, and the flooring (or your subfloor's unevenness, which could be the original culprit) just isn't up to it, it might not work. So it's probably time-risky to try, but potentially not cost-risky, because if it doesn't work, then you're buying new planks, which you probably had to do anyway. - David

Hey there, Broadly, no, you don't have to lift the whole row, just the most recent plank along with your new one. Yes, this can naturally give some lift to prior planks in the row, but you don't have to have hands on the 10-12 feet of prior planks. They'll go up as needed, then back down, and shouldn't disconnect, nor adjust in any way that tapping them back into total squareness shouldn't restore.

Our pleasure!

First, to get the technicalities out of the way, whether you have laminate or a vinyl, the documentation will insist upon a flat, even surface, to the tune of not more than a 1/4" variance across anywhere from 3 to ten feet in any direction. That's about both warranty voiding and genuine functionality of the flooring. If you have more bumpiness or waviness than that, technically, you'd want to build a little subfloor over your subfloor, which would then be nice and flat, or use this stuff called Leveling Compound, basically a liquid you pour and spread flat, which hardens into a new, correctly flattened surface on which your flooring can go. Real answer part one is that whether it's a little ridge or more of a slope, a harder plank is going to have a bigger problem. It can't form fit the bump, so it's going to wobble or rock where that lift is under it. This floor, and those like it, more resilient (bendable) floors, might be more accommodating. Loose Lay *can* be glued down, and in such an area, would need to be. That's likely as much a help as it would be a hassle, and you'd likely want to glue down a few surrounding planks, too. That would preserve the bump, meaning you'll still feel it underfoot, but perhaps that's better than a rocking plank or two. The real answer part two is that the advice to flatten that floor is pretty sound either way. Any floor installed over it will have a voided warranty, but beyond that, any flooring installed over it can have issues, whether from unbalanced hard planks, the continued presence of the bump through your glued-to-it resilient planks, or some installation issues, like your glued planks not being able to be fully square where the floor raises.

@@FloorsToYourHome thank you for the reply! Looks like levelling out the floor is the way to go cause I'm definitely sick of redoing this floor over and over again. Thanks for your help 😊

It's hard to be specific without seeing it, so I'll show you what we can instead. We have two videos showing the installation, and maybe you'll see something that helps: Angle Angle Laminate and Vinyl Flooring Installation Tips ruclips.net/video/PCjLfJR33G8/видео.html Laminate Flooring Installation Tips: Best Way To Start, and Handling Problems ruclips.net/video/ZroGpIHvJAo/видео.html (This one is our most viewed video, with over a million views, so it's got to be helping some people, and I hope it does for you)

Sorry to hear that, dexivoje. Not all of them are, but following the specific documentation that comes with a specific product, over any more generalized direction, is Installation 101. That's why we put the documents right up on the site, so do-it-yourselfers can see _exactly_ what they're in for, because 'exactly' is how you install flooring.

Good tips, all!

We're a flooring outlet, so while we always have a lot of choices (23 different Loose Lay products out of almost 300 vinyls in stock today), but for us, once they're gone, they're gone. I would start here: floorstoyourhome.com/vinyl-flooring/golden.html and filter by type to see if we currently have a close match in any given month.

​​@@FloorsToYourHome I've tried looking before and on your website you have loose lay in natural wood color but it's water resistant not waterproof and it does say that it can mold underneath which I would not consider purchasing. But thanks.

We have no loose lay which is not fully waterproof. I'd be surprised if anyone does, because the material used to make a loose lay floor just *is* inherently waterproof. But we do have a _lot_ of floors which look and sound like a lot of other floors, just within our own site, so I don't doubt we have a product like what you've described. As for mold, and I'm not trying to sell you on us, just hoping to help wherever you do wind up shopping, the waterproof flooring material, a vinyl, isn't good mold food, but what it does even better than some other floors is trap moisture that might rise up under it. Being waterproof, it isn't porous or very 'breathable', and any trapped moisture in a dark place can grow mold, if it has something to eat. Wood and carpet are good mold meals. It can't eat vinyl. It *can* eat stuff contained in concrete, which, with wood, is what 90+% of subfloors are made of. Material-wise you're best with vinyl and ceramic, but if you have specific reasons to want an especially mold-resistant situation, I would talk with a very local specialist who knows your area's climate and water tables. Should you seal your subfloor? There are situations where that wouldn't be good. Will a simple moisture/vapor barrier take care of it? Find someone smart and well-regarded in your area and ask, then get a floor which can accommodate their answer. While any flooring could go over a sealed concrete subfloor, with loose lay vinyl you can't have an additional moisture barrier, so if that were the necessary solution, loose lay would be ruled out, if that makes sense.

Ricky, do you mean raised by the tape itself? The material of the tape being under the flooring, lifting it up by however thick the tape is?

Yeah, pretty much. A mallet is pretty a common floor installation tool. Some manufacturers call their installation system tap-and-go - the 'tap' is referring to the mallet. You'd use it with a tongue and groove hardwood, and on both the long and the short sides of an angle-to-angle installation.

As long as it's a glued down tile, and the surface of the tile meets the tolerance requirements of the subfloor's flatness. A strongly textured tile might blow that, so check your product's specific installation documentation (we post all of it with each product) to get those numbers.

A reasonable question, and the answer is that you don't! One side always goes together before the other. This super quick video says which side is to be first, based on the two main installation methods: ruclips.net/video/M4mWfJwxizQ/видео.html We didn't _show_ the angle-to-angle method very well in that one, but this jumps right to the spot in another video where we do: ruclips.net/video/PCjLfJR33G8/видео.html Does that help?

Oh, that's a good question no one's asked yet! The answer is that it does not matter. The directions can be parallel to each other or perpendicular to each other, and as long as both are otherwise installed correctly, you'll be fine.

@@FloorsToYourHome Great! Thank you for the response

Thank you very much!

You know, I really don't have any good ideas, Amy. I'm sorry to be no help. In our case, the advantage is that we're rubbing the grease pencil off something designed to be _walked_ on for 25+ years, which is not the case with any box.

L K , it's going to be specific to the product. Each product's installation instructions will note which adhesives can be used with their materials. Some companies will recommend a type, and others, like Shaw, will recommend specific Shaw adhesives. We always post those documents on our product pages, in part for that reason. People need to know what's involved and what they'll need for their installations. To give you an example of how specific they can be, I'll quote a few of those docs we have up now: "Pressure sensitive releasable or permanent hard-set adhesive" "For some commercial applications and special substrates, a two-part epoxy or urethane adhesive is recommended. Typical applications for these types of adhesives are wet areas, floors subjected to heavy point loads and/or rolling loads, and floors that will be exposed to extreme temperature changes or extreme temperatures." "If installing on a landing or on a stair tread, flooring must be glued directly to the stair tread using hard-set adhesive. Special procedures must be followed. Request more information from our technical department." "ProSeries Adhesives: 4510 for a releasable system; 4584 or 4564 for a permanent system..." "Milliken loose lay LVT is to be installed in a perimeter fashion with Milliken TPS or Acoustic-Loc LVT adhesive. If it is determined that a non-Milliken approved adhesive is to be used on an installation, Milliken recommends a written warranty be obtained by the adhesive manufacturer warranting this specific installation with their products." As you can see, each floor can have its own guidelines, so wherever you buy, be sure to check those on your specific choice of flooring. - David

For a click, or even more specifically Drop & Lock floor? No, we sure don't, Jerry. We haven't had the opportunity to set that sort of shoot up, yet. Broadly speaking, you would 'uninstall' the flooring to the point of that plank, replace it, then reinstall back to your wall. You would start from where the installation originally ended, not from where it began. So, if your floor was installed starting from "the wall with the window," and ending at "the wall with the fireplace," you would go backwards. At the wall with the fireplace, remove your trim to gain access to the flooring to pull it upward, and uninstall that last row, working your way row-by-row to the bad plank. You'd swap it out, then reinstall right back to the fireplace wall (in my imagined example). With all of the planks connected to each other, there's just no other way to remove one from the middle. It's a lot of work, but with a Drop & Lock, it's easier than it would be with an Angle to Angle, and it's less rough on your locking mechanisms. So it's less likely to break both your back and your flooring than it could be. - David

That's what I call a "pro-tip from experience, A&O." We have it in other videos, but not this one, so thank you for mentioning it here! (readers, here's a visual of what they said) ruclips.net/video/Zt7N77x3k7E/видео.html - David

Inconsistencies would show through as much as they would with any resilient floor. There are preparation standards for this (we post documentation on all of our products, so you can check any out that you need to), not extreme ones either, but if they're ignored, yes, an unaddressed, substantial flaw in the subfloor is going to affect these planks, and all vinyl is more likely to 'transmit' such issues through than the rigid planks of a hardwood or a laminate. As for pets and kids, no - again, if the subfloor is as level and flat as prescribed in the documentation. We've been selling these for 10 years now, and they remain the category of our flooring about which we get the fewest callbacks for issues. To be honest, it surprised us for a few years, but these are well engineered to meet flush and flat. You can see the host scooting his rubber-soled boots cross it, trying to get a rise out of the planks (at 4:26). If you are concerned about some area, though, you _can_ use glue under those planks, even just at the joints. Glue isn't forbidden, just inessential for most installations. Shawn goes over that process in the last third of the video.

Glad you liked it!

Most vinyl flooring is, yes, as long as you mean the material. Water won't hurt it. This doesn't mean that something like a flood of water won't get past it to your subfloor; it means that once your flood situation is cleared up, this material won't be water damaged,

Yeah, sorry about that, on behalf of the planet. When Drop & Lock first got really popular, we caught quite a few manufacturers putting the other method's instructions in those boxes. It's why we made this (and keep it on our Drop & Lock product pages). It's _such_ an easy method, as long as people are given the right directions.

Scott, it is a much easier way to lay flooring. A lot of people get frustrated because general installation demos show the other method, and that won't work with Drop & Lock (and sometimes the manufacturers insert the wrong instructions!) but you should be all set after seeing this. It's one of our most liked and positively commented-on videos, so I think Brian must have hit the nail on the head with it. - David

No, you cannot. You'd be gluing the flooring to plastic, not your floor, so it wouldn't achieve your goal. This particular flooring does not need a moisture barrier, though. The material itself is waterproof (100% - like, if your basement floods, after the cleanup, you'll be putting these same planks right back down).

Glad to know we helped! Thank you!

That's a pretty broad question. If by better you meant ease of installation, personally, I'd do Drop & Lock, because it seems a little easier. I think some might prefer the feel of having all four sides connected the way angle to angle does it, and to be honest, after three or four rows, whichever system you choose will become easy for you from repetition. - David

Drop and Lock is easier to install but there's do difference when it comes to the strength unless you buy low quality material.

Like MSI

Thanks for the comment! Drop & Lock is very, very easy, but almost as easy to not _quite_ get, and Brian did a nice job of targeting the two issues some have. This seems to be one of our most helpful productions, and I'm glad it helped you! - David

Thanks so much, B. Very glad it helped you out. That's the goal. - David

Yes, following the requirements in the documentation regarding evenness. We post the instructions on every product, so you can check that before you buy anything, and you want to be specific to the product you get, but _generally,_ the floor needs to be flat and even within around 3/8" across any 10 foot span, no dips or bumps, sweep it nice and clean to keep stuff from staying under your planks, and you should be fine! - David

Adrienne, we don't. We are located in Indianapolis, and when it comes to floor installation, you really want to hire locally, and check reviews on installers _locally._ You'd be surprised how many unexpected things can affect flooring, like climate, water tables, where your home is located - all stuff a good local installer will know about that someone out of state simply couldn't. We sell flooring, and we really do have good prices, without gimmicks (like super expensive padding, or "You must use our installers" [who then overcharge]), but you'll do much better to check reviews and recommendations on local professionals, and find someone who knows your area to install for you than you would do to let us pick someone from however far away from you we are. It's 20 minutes of online research you won't regret. - David

No, the tongue is always toward the wall. The only odd thing Adam is doing with the first few rows is starting away from the wall. That's only because when there are so few planks in place, they slide around, so he works from the 'wall side' and pulls them together, bracing the planks with his knees. Once he has a few rows, he pushes the whole set to the wall (spacers), because the flooring won't slide anymore as he installs new rows, but he's not turning the flooring around; he's turning himself around.