I have had Lauzon engineered flooring (red oak natural - select & better) for about 5 years. If my memory serves me well, about $6.50 may be the ballpark figure. Depends on the type of wood you choose, width, etc. The online company we ordered from wasn't the greatest, but everything turned out well in the end. In hind sight, I wished we had ordered from Hosking Hardwood which would not have been that much more in cost. In our case it was penny wise pound foolish. Dh & I installed ourselves (glued down). Lauzon boards are milled so perfectly and we hardly had any waste (no "bad" boards). Good luck with your search and best wishes in your new home!

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.

OK... the "reality" for VOC free engineered hardwood is...there aren't any. Why not you ask? Because the GLUE they used to keep the layers STUCK together contains small amounts of VOC content. The factory finishes often have small traces of VOCs (some as low as 80g/L = super low) but they are still THERE. Which means you will need to change your search to LOW VOC content wood. Even the European produced engineered hardwoods have traces of VOC content. Only the SUPER HIGH END stuff out of Switzerland (which bothers the Germans to NO END!) will get you the "Zero" you are looking for. And they start at $10/sf....and that's for the ugly stuff. The beautiful wide plank European Oak stuff hits $15/sf without blinking. If you want NO VOC wood = solid unfinished hardwood. Done. You have your No VOC wood floor. A hardwax finish can be applied on site = NO VOC (Rubio Monocoat comes to mind). So...with your low budget, you may need to modify your requirements. You can get the look you want with LOW VOC criteria....but not the width or the long length (the link indicates "short" lengths of 2ft - 4ft lengths are the MAJORITY).Or you can get the look+length you want with an INCREASE in budget. Your limited budget means you must look at altering your requirements. I think LOW VOC is the start. Then the width of the product needs to change. And you will need to accept the shorter lengths. But the easiest thing to do is to increase the budget. A 3500sf install is no small feat. This is a SIGNIFICANT amount of flooring. It is the surface that will take the MOST abuse! A budget of $28K for 3500sf is too lean. I would prefer to see $35K for 3500sf of flooring. That's a better price point. It will get you MUCH closer to where you want to be. Going "cheap" on flooring is like going cheap on roofing. It isn't worth it in the end. If the wood in the link is still available....I suggest you find contact the manufacturer/seller and get your order in. It looks to be a decent product for a decent price. But most likely made in China.

I'm sorry but "Orange Glow" has just blown your warranty. No I'm not kidding. Things like "Orange Glow" or "Rejuvenate" are temporary polishes. These polishes are FORBIDDEN by wood flooring manufacturers. I'm going to take a wild guess: "Someone" thought your floors were 'dull' or so dirty that they needed 'help' to look good. This brought out the 'first' coating (of whatever the heck they put down...which still hasn't been clarified). You then told them there was something 'on' the floor so they thought they would try something 'shinier' (because in their eyes they thought the floors were too dull = 'wrong'). Both of these events have probably ruined your floors. They certainly have ruined your warranty. At this point, I would STOP allowing these people access to your flooring. Go ahead and pay for an NWFA Certified Flooring Inspector (yes it will cost money). The written document produced by the inspector will be 'ready for court'. The installer/GC will KNOW this and will be more than anxious to make this right. It will be a VERY expensive lesson for the GC to learn. You will have to grit your teeth and let the GC learn this one... And why wasn't there a PROFESSIONAL flooring installer used in the first place? Your GC is going to have to eat whatever money it takes to get a professional in there to correct what his 'hammer swingers' tried to do.