Flooring for a Cabin

Q: I want to put laminate or some kind of flooring up at our lake cabin..
The cabin is not heated during the winter time the cabin sits on a wood flood up on a cinder block foundation. The flooring we have now is the 9″ square glue down tiles. these tiles are starting to crack and come up. I’m look for some kind of floating floor to go over it so I don’t have to pull up the old flooring could be asbestos. Can I use pergo or do you have a better idea.
A: If the tiles which are currently on the floor are cracking and beginning to come up you MUST remove them before installing a new floor. Even with floating floors, with this happening under the floor it will cause the new floor to fail.
This being said, having a place which is not heated during the winter can be somewhat troublesome, if not hazardous, to wood flooring depending on the region of the US said cabin is located. My guess is that this area gets somewhat cold, and a little snow, this being the case, you can expect any wood floor to contract a bit during the winter due to the cold and then to expand back out. This can be fairly problematic for most wood floors. Engineered products, such as engineered hardwood, floating laminates and corks are a bit more resistant to this expansion and contraction, but shifts in temperature of 40 degrees or more will cause expansion and contraction regardless of what type of wood flooring is installed.
Can you install Pergo or a similar laminate in this cabin? Yes, as long as you leave plenty of expansion room for the expansion gap, and are willing to see gaps in the floor after these shifts occur.
Your better bet would be to install a wood-appearing vinyl floor such as those made by Konecto. Vinyl is going to take to these extremes a bit better, but you should still remove the current tile to ensure that it does not continue to come up underneath and ruin whatever new flooring is to be installed.