How to Lay Solid Wood Flooring

Solid wood Flooring can be a very attractive prospect for any home. Solid wood takes a little more care than laminate but the Results can be beathtaking.

-STEPS-

Handling and Storage

It is essential that you unload your wooden flooring in dry weather - never unload in the rain as the moisture could cause the planks to warp.

Your wood flooring should be stored n a dry place at room temperature and if possible should be raised off the ground. You should store your wood flooring in the room that it will be laid for a minimum of 72 hours (preferably a week) so that it has time to acclimatise to the humidity and temperature of the room.

Preparing to lay your flooring

The most dangerous enemy of a hardwood floor is moisture. You must ensure that the sub floor is dry.
This is especially true when laying a hard wood floor in a new build property where concrete floors will still contain a high level of moisture. Your solid wood flooring should have been allowed sufficient time to acclimatise to the conditions of the room in advance of installation.

Any timber - existing flooring, joinery or battens - should have a moisture content of no more than +2% above the moisture content of the new floor. It is advisable when laying onto existing timber that you ensure it is treated against fungal or insect attack. Concrete or screed should contain a damp proof membrane and have a moisture content of no more than 5%. This is in practice almost impossible to achieve and so additional precautions should be taken to prevent moisture reaching the new floor.

Concrete or screed will take approximately 1 day per mm thickness to dry or 1month per 25mm of thickness to dry naturally to a moisture content of 5%. The deeper the concrete slab the longer the period - for example a 150mm slab will probably take around 6 - 8 months to dry back to a safe moisture level.

The ambient conditions in the room should be around 40 - 50% humidity and a temperature of 15 - 25 degrees at the time of laying the floor. Never store the floor in a room that is wet, outside or in a garage where it could pick up moisture.

Solid Wood Floors

The best fitting methods for solid floors are to either nail down to the Sub Floor (secret nailing through the tongues) or glue the floor down directly to the Sub Floor.

For nailing down directly the flooring nailers are best used as these will automatically fire the nails at the correct angle (nailing is not suitable for chipboard floors - these should be glued down instead)

For gluing the boards down direct a special heavy duty adhesive needs to be used - this is applied with a trowel over the whole floor.

Floating the floor is not recommended for solid wood in normal circumstances.

Engineered Wood Floors

The most common fitting method for engineered floors is the floating method - this is done using and underlay laid over the existing floor and then gluing the tongue and groove of the engineered floor together. This way the whole new floor is "floating" from the original floor. The underlay is used to cushion the floor and to stop any echo noise that occurs when there is a space between the two floors.

The adhesive used for floating the floor is a basic PVA wood adhesive.

The underlays available vary depending on the thickness and quality required.

The basic 3mm foam underlay is fine for general floors, as it absorbs the extra noise and cushions the new floor.

Fibre boards are not recommended for real wood floor as there is too much movement.

The sound insulation underlays such as the silent floor gold and the timbermate excel are very dense and act as sound insulation as well as a cushion for the floor. These are especially good for flats etc where minimal noise is essential.

The Envoy multi adhesive underlay has a sticky side which sticks the new floor together - you peel back the backing as you go and it instantly holds the floors in place. It is also recommended to glue the edges when using the adhesive underlay. This underlay is very popular with DIYers.

When floating floors you will notice a small amount of movement or "bounce" in the floor - this is normal for floating floors as they have not been stuck down to the sub floor.

Engineered boards can also be glued down directly to the sub floor or nailed over an existing timber floor. The thicker engineered boards (18 - 22mm thick) can be nailed down directly to joists as they are structural boards.

Tools

For nailing floors you will need a flooring nailer (or similar). You do not need an underlay or glue with this method.

For gluing floors down directly to the sub floor you will need the adhesive and a trowel. The tongues and grooves do not need to be glued and no underlay is used.

For floating the floors you will need an underlay and PVA wood glue for the tongue and grooves.

Fitting Accessories

An expansion gap of 10 - 15mm must always be used to allow for expansion of the boards. This expansion gap can either be covered with skirting (when the skirting has been taken off before installation or the existing wood floor has been removed leaving just the joists), beading or edge profile.

The skirting should be either glued, or screwed and plugged (using solid oak plugs to blend with oak skirting). The beading can be nailed or glued using the 2 part instant bonding adhesive. The edge profile can be either nailed or glued using standard PVA wood adhesive.

The fitting kit ( push block and pull bar) is useful when fitting, the floor fitting tension strap is also useful when floating the floor as it keeps the boards together.

It is always useful to have a filler to fill any small gaps or nail holes in the floor - it helps to finish the floor off. The filler is available either pre-coloured to match your floor or ready to mix with sawdust from your floor. This is also used when some boards need to be surfaced nailed - countersink the nails and fill the holes with the filler.

The radiator pipe rosettes are perfect for covering the holes where the radiator pipes go - the holes need to be larger than the pipe as this pipe will change temperature frequently.

Thresholds and reducer ramps are perfect for filling in between different floors and varying floor levels - these come in solid wood or aluminium depending on your choice.

The fitting accessories are the items that finish your floor off so please make sure you have all the necessary items to give your floor the "professionally fitted" look.