Hardwood floors are a beautiful and elegant accessory to homes and offices. Their rich color and shiny polished finishing add to the coziness of many a room and office. Hardwood floors are easy to clean, durable and can be restored when they show signs of wear. Long before you can enjoy the luxury of a wooden floor, the right steps have to be taken to install the floor. Proper installation practices will ensure that you have peace of mind from problems that arise from poor hardwood floor installation practices.
It is usually recommended to acquire the services of a professional hardwood flooring installer. This is because installing a hardwood floor is nothing short of an art. There many factors that have to be checked, such as the humidity, the type of sub-floor (the existing base floor, for example a concrete floor over which the hardwood floor will be installed), adjustments needed to be made on other home fittings to accommodate the proportions of the new floor and ensuring that the temperature is just right for laying the floor.
Common hardwood installation techniques
1. Nail down method: Mainly used when installing solid wood floors. Because of their thickness, they need to be nailed down so that they keep in place when they contract and expand due to temperature changes. This method can also be used with engineered wood floors but other floor installation methods are preferred for engineered wooden floors because they are less complicated and faster then nail down. Also, when the sub-floor is a concrete slab, nail down technique is not recommended because of the hardship encountered in driving nails into the concrete.
2. Glue down method: This method is preferred when installing engineered strip or wood planks where the sub-floor is a concrete slab. Specialist adhesives are used to glue the boards to the sub-floor. Before the floor boards can be glued on the concrete slab, one has to ensure that moisture is prevented from seeping up from the sub-floor by putting a damp proof layer. This method can also be used to install engineered strip or wood plank floors on wooden sub-floors. Its use is not recommended for laminate wood floors.
3. Staple down method: It is mainly used when installing engineered strip or wood plank floors where the sub-floor consists of wood or plywood. The wood flooring is attached to the floor by driving in 1-1/2 to 2 inch staples using a pneumatic gun. The recommended staple gun and staple size are not constant and depend on specific wood flooring material manufacturer’s instructions.
4. Floating method: In this method, the engineered long strip wood floors are not attached to the sub-floor in any way. A pad made of foam or plastic mixed with foam is put between the sub-floor and the engineered wood floor. The hardwood floor is placed or “floats” on top of this pad. The engineered long strips are then glued together at their edges or tongues using PVA adhesives with no gaps within the strips. This makes the flooring to expand as a whole when temperatures rise to avoid problems such as warping. An expansion gap is left between the flooring and the wall.
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