ᐅ Differences in Wall Height: When Does It Become a Problem?

Hello everyone,

In our house construction project, the floors in some rooms are included in the price, while we are doing the floors in the other rooms ourselves. We had to inform the screed layer about the planned heights in the rooms so that he can set the screed height accordingly.

The rooms that will be done professionally are being covered with glued vinyl from Joka (thickness 5 mm (0.2 inches)). For the other rooms, we initially specified a build-up height of 10 mm (0.4 inches) because we were not sure whether to use vinyl or laminate.

Now we want to install click vinyl in those other rooms, which comes to a thickness of 6.5 mm (0.26 inches) (5 mm (0.2 inches) thickness + 1.5 mm (0.06 inches) underlay).

This results in a final difference of 3.5 mm (0.14 inches) between the rooms with click vinyl and those with glued vinyl. Is this a problem (trip hazard) or is the difference still too small to matter? Of course, I could use a thicker underlay (e.g., 2.5 mm (0.1 inches)) with the click vinyl. Then the difference would be smaller. However, this would negatively affect the heat conduction of the underfloor heating because of the increased insulation.

3.5mm (0.14 inches) should be easy to level out with filler.

That sounds quite complicated. Wouldn't it be easier to just increase the thickness of the impact sound insulation? Or maybe look again for click vinyl with an 8.5mm (0.33 inch) thickness. That would give you 1.5mm (0.06 inch) impact sound insulation with exactly 10mm (0.39 inch) overall thickness.

I agree. We have the same issue. We still need to do almost everything ourselves, except for the bathroom and kitchen, which the builder will tile. We specified a build-up height of 7mm (about 0.28 inches) because many vinyl floors are around 5mm (0.2 inches) thick. (With underlayment, it’s about 7mm (0.28 inches).) However, if we choose a thicker flooring, it can easily reach 9 or 10mm (0.35 to 0.39 inches) including the underlayment. So, it’s actually the opposite of what vaderle experienced.

But the height difference would only be visible in the kitchen, since it’s an open plan kitchen connected to the living room.

Isn’t a transition strip or something similar usually used between kitchen tiles and the living room flooring to even out the height difference anyway?

In my last construction project, I had the transition areas (where the 3.5 mm (about 1/8 inch) difference occurs) extensively filled and leveled over an area of approximately 3-4 sqm (about 32-43 sq ft). This prevented any tripping edge, and the client accepted the more than slight slope into the room. This effectively addressed the issue of heat conduction.