I'm really sorry about your problem and I'm surprised that the problem is lack of humidity. The only time I've had problems like this with wood flooring was due to moisture in the substrate (particularly concrete floors that weren't fully cured/dried). In these cases the flooring had to be removed, then the area fully dried and new flooring laid. This sounds awful and I hope you can get some resolution with the manufacturer or Home Depot since it really doesn't sound lieka reasonable response so far.

humidity and climatic conditions are required for ANY flooring. Its not something specific to that brand. Burden is always on the installer to determine job site acceptance. Don't really know how anyone would buy any product if the salesperson listed each thing that could go wrong?

So boxers, does that mean that people in Arizona and other dry climates are precluded from installing ANY flooring or just wood flooring in general?

Unless the correct humidity is maintained, any manufacturer's warranty is void. And that includes the use of air conditioning/dehumidfiers in the summer in order to remove the excess humidity from the air in humid climates. Wood shrinks in the absence of humidity and swells in it's presence. That's the normal natural cycle that develops the gaps in the hundred year old flooring that you see. People that are OK with gaps and crowns developing like the old fashioned flooring will be OK with not controlling the humidity. But, it'll void any warranty that they have. If people want a perfectly flat wood floor with no gaps/crowns developing at any time, then control of humdity is essential for that. That's basic science. Which I guess isn't learned that much in school anymore, so it has to come as a warning amoungst the various warnings created by litigious people who don't think coffee is served hot either.

dakota-farmer ~ your name really caught my eye. I am from the Dakotas. Thanks for the information as we too live in an area that is suffering from a drought for the past several years. Moisture is hard to come by lately. We have been debating between prefinished-engineered wood flooring and regular hardwood. I am beginning to wonder if we should test our humidity before we think more about going with either type of wood flooring. I am sorry about your situation. I wonder if you shouldn't consider filing a small claims case due to the fact that the consumer was not well informed of the humidity issues because that "warning" was well hidden in their packaging at purchase time. Where are the consumer's rights? Bathtubs full of hot water...no, I don't think so!

I'm currently dealing with a similiar issue with this same flooring. I recently instaled this flooring in part of my home (4-5 months ago). About 3 weeks ago I noticed that the planks have started to bow up in one section, and each day that goes by it continues to get worse. I've been in discussion with TrafficMaster support for the last week, sent pictures, etc. Basically the planks all came from the same defective carton. The last message (and this just cracks me up) is that "the brazilian cherry is not supplied to home depot by us, please contact home depot". Now wait... it's listed on your customer support website... It's clearly the same product... (sigh). After reading several article of folks having the same type of issues I'd have to agree that this is bargin basement flooring (even though the price certainly isn't)and the quality could best be described as poor at best.

Your being fed a bunch of bull!!

If the flooring read 27% you would see visable standing water on it. When oak gets to 24% it is totally saturated and cannot hold anymore water!!!!

Delamination is a manufacturing defect. No if's, and's, or but's about it!!!

Here is the standard. Nothing inside your home, besides a flood completely submerging the flooring, will come close to the failure test.

The American National Standard for Engineered Wood Flooring, ANSI/HPVA EF 2002
3.5 Bond Line All adjacent surfaces of each ply shall be uniformly and securely
bonded. The flooring shall conform to the requirements of the bond test described in 4.2
3.7 Construction The flooring pieces shall be of balanced construction, which means
that they are free from warp or twist to the extent that they do not interfere with the
installation or negatively affect the intended use of the product. The purpose of this
requirement is to provide a product which will perform satisfactorily over the typical
range of humidity and temperature in an indoor environment, when installed according to
the instructions of the manufacturer. Any construction with an even or odd number of
plies, and any combination of thicknesses and shrinkage characteristics that meets the
requirement for balanced construction is permitted. No two adjacent plies shall have
coinciding openings greater than 12.7 mm (1/2 inch)
4.2 Bond Line Test Two test specimens, 50.8 mm (2 inches) wide by 127 mm (5
inches) along the grain, shall be cut from each flooring sample tested. The specimens
shall be cut from opposite sides of the flooring after all tongue and groove portions have
been removed. The specimens shall be submerged in water at 24 C+-3C (75 F +-5F) for 4
hours, and then dried at a temperature between 49 and 52 C (120 and 125 F) for 19 hours,
with sufficient air circulation to lower the moisture content (based on oven-dry weight) of
the specimens to a maximum of 8 percent. This cycle shall be repeated until all
specimens fail or until thr ee cycles have been completed, whichever occurs first. The
flooring shall be considered as failing when any single delamination between two plies of
either specimen is greater than 50.8 mm (2 inches) in continuous length, over 6.4 mm
(1/4 inch) in depth at any pint, and 0.08 mm (.003 inch) in width as determined by a
feeler gauge 0.08 mm (0.003 inches) thick and 12.7 mm (1/2 inch) wide. Specimens shall
be examined for delamination at the end of each cycle. Delamination due to tape at joints
or inner plies or defects allowed by the grade shall be disregarded. For performing the
bond line test, the flooring samples shall be selected in multiples of ten in order to
provide for a sufficient number of specimens (two specimens per sample) to which the
acceptance levels are applied. Ninety-five percent of test specimens shall pass the first
cycle, and eighty- five percent of test specimens shall pass the third cycle.

I too bought Traffic Master Bazilian Cherry from Home Depot. It immediately started to cup and separate. I called Home Depot and they too told me about having low humidity in the house. We have an April Aire on our furnace but they told me that we still needed more humidity. We bought small humidifer and a gage so we would know what the humidity in the house was. It was 38%. It has been that since December and the floor is still cupped. We don't even want to invite friends over for the floor is so bad. Home Depot won't do anything about their product. I'm no longer shopping there and now am looking for a new floor.