Solid Wood flooring

[Effigy]

I want to lay a solid wood floor in my new house. I will probably use oak. I've put down a couple of laminate floors in the past few years, but not a solid floor.

I was thinking of using the self adhesive sheet underlay that B&Q sell to hold the planks. I don't know what the sub floor is yet (we dont move in for a few weeks).

I know that it is important to leave a 15mm expansion gap, but on the first row do I have to trim the tongue off? I would have thought that with 15mm plus the size of the tongue, the gap will be too big to be bridged by the skirting? (I will be removing the old skirting and replacing with new once the floor is down).

Any advice or observations will be most welcome.

Thanks

 

[White House Workshop]

FWIW I didn't remove the tongue when I laid my floors and have had no problems.

 

[andrewm]

Why not lay the groove towards the wall for the first board. The last board will need to be trimmed to fit the width of the room so you will loose the tongue anyway.

Andrew

 

[mack9110000]

Andrewm has answered your question correctly.If the floor were to be fixed by nailing,it would be through the tongue.You will also find it less easy to bruise the surface,when knocking the boards together,if you proceed with the tongue outwards.

 

[Effigy]

Why not lay the groove towards the wall for the first board. The last board will need to be trimmed to fit the width of the room so you will loose the tongue anyway.

Andrew

D'oh!

I thought that the tongue would have to go towards the wall so it wouldnt get damaged when tapping in subsequent boards!

 

[mack9110000]

Isn't it better to 'perhaps' damage an unseen tongue,than the edge of the next board.In my experience the only time boards were laid 'groove' outwards was in 'glue down' situations,where a little ^ on the bottom of the flooring took up the excess adhesive.

 

[chippy1970]

Have you bought the floor yet?

If not I would advise you go for engineered floating floor and not fixed solid flooring, its much more stable and easier to fit.

I use Kahrs starts at around £20 upto £80 per metre plus underlay and it works great with underfloor heating

 

[Pecker]

Ok. Traditionally boards always start from groove against the wall working outwards. Boards were nailed thru the tongue for fixing, this would not be possible groove out. Furthermore if you buy proper floor laying/fixing kit the "knocking blocks" are always designed to go over the tongue. It is far better to risk damaging the tongue then damage the groove edge.
There are some excellent guides by the Wood Flooring Manufacturers assoc (I think they come under Nofma (national Oak Flooring Manufacters Assoc) on the www. If you do a bit of searching some sites link to them for free so you dont have to pay $10 to download them.

JFYI I recently laid 200sq mtrs of oak flooring by their guidelines as suggested by someone else on here.

woody

 

[Effigy]

Have you bought the floor yet?

If not I would advise you go for engineered floating floor and not fixed solid flooring, its much more stable and easier to fit.

I use Kahrs starts at around £20 upto £80 per metre plus underlay and it works great with underfloor heating

Thanks. I have looked at the engineered boards, but they look too much like laminate to me. Solid floors look so much better IMHO.

There are some excellent guides by the Wood Flooring Manufacturers assoc (I think they come under Nofma (national Oak Flooring Manufacters Assoc) on the www. If you do a bit of searching some sites link to them for free so you dont have to pay $10 to download them.

Thanks for the link - found a site and downloaded the manual.

 

[johnnyb]

solid oak is nice BUT it needs to be glued or nailed down. the self adhesive underlay is definitely a diy dodge. also it cant be nailed to chipboard flooring. and gluing is messy and expensive. surely its better to have a quality engineered floor than to put a solid floor down incorrectly.(this is what i say to my clients anyway). btw some of the solid oak floors are rubbish quality and an engineered floor would look better imho and cost twice the price.

 

[harryc]

We chose a khars engineered floor for our kitchen the 1 strip jatoba, it looks fantastic and was considerably more expensive than the real oak floors we considered.
Apart from looks the other reasons we chose this over the real oak was it's stability over the under floor heating and ease of laying making it a relatively easy diy job with the tongue and groove boards.

Harry.

 

[Rich]

For anyone who's interested, (I know it's getting late) if you go to Niki's site there is a very useful animated film showing " how to lay engineered flooring") hth.
Rich.

 

[Effigy]

After the recommendations above, I've been looking at the Kahrs engineered flooring. It looks very nice, but the wear layer is only 0.5mm

Edit: Just seen that the flooring is produced in 15mm boards with a 3.6mm wear layer. The thinner wear layer relates to their budget range.

Might be worth considering afterall :roll:

 

[chippy1970]

Have you bought the floor yet?

If not I would advise you go for engineered floating floor and not fixed solid flooring, its much more stable and easier to fit.

I use Kahrs starts at around £20 upto £80 per metre plus underlay and it works great with underfloor heating

Thanks. I have looked at the engineered boards, but they look too much like laminate to me. Solid floors look so much better IMHO.

There are some excellent guides by the Wood Flooring Manufacturers assoc (I think they come under Nofma (national Oak Flooring Manufacters Assoc) on the www. If you do a bit of searching some sites link to them for free so you dont have to pay $10 to download them.

Thanks for the link - found a site and downloaded the manual.

Its nothing like laminate flooring you might be thinking of the linea model they do which is laminate but with real veneer on top.

If you get the 15mm click together stuff it has a 3.6mm thick top layer and is guaranteed for 30 years.

Make sure you get the Tuplex underlay as it wont be covered on the guarantee otherwise.

I have laid miles of this type of flooring and I went back to one the other week to do more work and the floor still looked like new after 3 years.

 

[Effigy]

Have you bought the floor yet?

If not I would advise you go for engineered floating floor and not fixed solid flooring, its much more stable and easier to fit.

I use Kahrs starts at around £20 upto £80 per metre plus underlay and it works great with underfloor heating

I checked out the Kahrs at flooringsupplies.co.uk, and the prices seem very reasonable. So I requested a couple of samples and they came today. One was a Satin finish, the other Oil finish. When I took them out of the jiffy bags you could smell the oak right away.

I must admit I am impressed - much much better than I thought.

Thanks.

 

[George_N]

Do these engineered floating floors work on concrete sub floors. I have cheap laminate in my dining room (put down by previous owner) and fairly grotty carpet in the lounge and I would like to lay a wood floor right through. Apart from the cost, I am concerned about laying a solid wood floor over concrete.

 

[Effigy]

Do these engineered floating floors work on concrete sub floors. I have cheap laminate in my dining room (put down by previous owner) and fairly grotty carpet in the lounge and I would like to lay a wood floor right through. Apart from the cost, I am concerned about laying a solid wood floor over concrete.

I think you will be ok providing you get the correct underlay. Have a look here.

I think I shall be ordering from them once I have measured up.

 

[chippy1970]

George,

Yes they are great for that but I would recommend you latex cement the existing sub floor so its perfectly flat as this type of floor does not bend and flex like a thin laminate does.

If worried about damp use the Tuplex underlay but put down a thick visqueen damp proof membrane (thick polythene) first and make sure you run it up walls then trim off after laying the floor. They do recommend you run it behind the skirting.

The Tuplex should be enough on its own but if you are worried , belt and braces and all that.

 

[George_N]

Thanks for that Chipp. Am I right in thinking the boards click together and are not glued?

 

[chippy1970]

Yes George they slot together at say 40 degrees then push down leaving no gaps whatsoever. You cannot knock them together but you shouldn't do that anyway.