Rigid core vinyl, compared on what the maker actually declares

Two rigid vinyl planks can carry the same thickness, the same wear layer and the same warranty length, and still be governed by installation rules that do not line up: not in what they permit, and not in the units they are declared in. Those rules are published, on page three of a separate document.

Two ways in, one record

The consumer and the specifier are not reading different data. They are reading different columns of the same normalized record, in a different order, to different depths.

Choose a floor

You have a room and a budget.

Starts with the four things that decide whether you regret the floor in year three: what the wear layer is made of, what the joint is called, what the pad is, and what the warranty leaves out.

Specify a floor

You have a submittal, a slab reading or a schedule.

Starts with thresholds: the product standard claimed, the slip method named, the radiant flux class, and the moisture limit the manufacturer will actually stand behind.

Each lobe is one product line with a page here, drawn to the longest run its maker allows before a transition is required. A dotted lobe has no published figure, and the words beside it say what the record holds instead. A hatched lobe is declared as an area rather than a length, so it is not drawn to the same scale. A small raised number points to a condition printed below.

Ambient SPC Rigid Core 7x48: 40 linear ft, over radiant heat the maker cuts the run to 25 ft in any direction and requires a break at that interval
Cali Longboards 9x71: 80 linear ft, transition pieces beyond 80 ft in any direction; the maker adds that SPC lines need no extra expansion space past 50 ft, where its WPC lines need 3/4 in
Tarkett ProGen 7x60: 40 linear ft, light commercial and spaces without permanent HVAC; residential space with fully operational HVAC has no stated limit
Tarkett ProGen 12x24: 40 linear ft, light commercial and spaces without permanent HVAC; residential space with fully operational HVAC has no stated limit

This site reads the manufacturer's own technical data sheet, installation instructions and warranty document for each product, normalizes what they declare into one set of units, and publishes each figure next to the document it came from. Every cell is read twice, independently. Where the two readings disagree, nothing is published until a person resolves it.

One cell, opened up

One row of the record, taken apart. The same limit appears three times below: as the maker declared it, as it is normalized here, and with the condition the maker attached. The last line is the document all three were read from.

One published cell, with everything this reference keeps attached to it.
Part of the record	What it says
Product	Ambient SPC Rigid Core 7x48
Field	Max run without a transition
Declared	40 linear ft
The same figure, normalized	about 1,600 sq ft, if the floor is square
The condition the maker attaches	over radiant heat the maker cuts the run to 25 ft in any direction and requires a break at that interval
Read from	Ambient Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring — Installation Instructions & Guidelines

What this release contains

Coverage is counted, not described, because a table that looks complete while resting on a handful of declarations is the failure this reference is built against. Where a manufacturer publishes nothing for a field, that absence is recorded as a finding and shown in the table. It is not left blank.

Release contents, counted from the published dataset.
Measure	Count
Brands	8
Products with a page	16
Cells in the record	896
Cells published	590
Fields the maker does not declare	222
Cells held back pending resolution	20
Cells no document has been read for yet	64

No figure here is our measurement. Every one of them is a manufacturer's declaration, and the condition attached to it travels with it. A maximum run means nothing without the unit it was declared in, a slip figure means nothing without the test method, and an acoustic rating means nothing without the floor assembly it was measured on.

What this site will not tell you

A reference is only usable if its edges are stated, so here are ours. Nothing on this site is tested. We do not scratch planks, flood them, roll loads across them or measure a slab; every number is a manufacturer’s declaration and is presented as one. Where two brands measure the same property under different standards, we say so and refuse the conversion instead of inventing a bridge.

There is no ranking. No product is called better than another, no score is computed across fields that are not commensurable, and no brand pays for a place here. Where a manufacturer publishes nothing for a field, that silence is recorded against the product instead of being filled with an estimate. A table that guesses is worse than a table with a gap in it, because only one of the two tells you where to go and read for yourself.

We publish no fitting advice and no labor figures. Whether a floor can be laid in a particular room is a question about that room, and the only thing this reference can honestly contribute is what the manufacturer says its own product requires: how flat the subfloor must be, how dry, how long the material must sit before it goes down, and how far it may run before the floor needs a break. Those requirements are here, in the units they were declared in and converted where a conversion is defensible.

No price appears anywhere in this release. The only price a reference like this could honestly carry is one the manufacturer itself publishes as an advertised-price list, and of eight makers here one publishes one, so a price column would be filled for one brand and empty for seven, which reads as cheaper rather than as unpublished. Of those seven, two do publish a price, but it is their own retail price as direct sellers rather than a rule for the market. What was measured, and what would reopen the decision, is on the methodology page.