Morning all. I'm about to embark on fitting an engineered wood floor on a level concrete base. In the past I have installed wood floors over joists using a secret nailer. My options this time are to glue it down or go with the floating option. The latter appeals because it will be a lot quicker and less messy but does a floating floor move about a lot when you walk on it?
Hey Gunz,
Not sure I know that much but I'll give it a shot in the absence of a professional. 😆 If your sub-floor is level and dry, then floating is an option - not my preferred as I always think they feel a bit bouncy - but it's a perfectly acceptable way of doing it - and as long as you use enough glue (good quality PVA, plenty in grooves) and your boards are weighty enough to lie nice and flat, it's fine.
Use decent underlay (something like Timbermate Excel or equivalent) instead of the shitty flyaway stuff that is often supplied "free" with your floor - it's little better than packaging material. A good heavy underlay will cushion better and lie flatter when you roll it out.
You should definitely DPM the concrete before laying the floor - for floating, this is achieved using rolls of heavy plastic - overlapping by about 300mm (and taping) at joints.
Start off by loose (or dry-) laying three rows, pushing together as if you were laying the floor for real - making sure these are all ok before gluing. Make sure to leave at least 10mm gap for expansion - more important for a floating floor than for a fixed-to-sub-floor floor. Once you lay the 3 rows with glue, make sure to wedge off the wall so as to stop the expansion closing fractionally each time you tap the boards together. Make sure you work out before starting with a full board, that that's not going to leave you with a sliver at the other side.
If you'd like to be talked through gluing to the sub-floor, there are ways to do that nowadays which are less messy and I can give you some tips later but I'm off out now and posting on mobile is a bit crap.
As with a lot of jobs, spending on the floor and using budget ancillaries is a bit of a false economy. Good quality glue (nothing too expensive, just nothing too dilute) and underlay will help achieve a much better finish.
Ive got both in my house, but the room I installed an Ash floating floor ( 16 years ago) is still looking great. No bounce or movement, just a slight softness as you walk on it, which is good. I used cork around the perimeter as it wasn't possible to move the skirtings and its a neat job and looks fine. It was fitted on a dpm and an underlay recommended at the time, but can't recall what it was.
It was even flooded once, but just dried out with no issues at all.
We fitted an engineered floor to the whole downstairs and opted for floating it. We had a mix of concrete and floorboards. Floating seemed the easiest option and so far it's been perfect except for a small area that feels a bit bouncy but the concrete underneath had a small dent (whoops!)
I also managed to get the floor extremely wet in the kitchen with a dishwasher leak and it dried out fine. The flooring came from here and I would recommend them, we used this underlay.
Deadly, Rock (edit. and Craig). Thanks for taking the time to reply, I think I'll go for floating for a change as it looks a lot quicker and I've got a stack of jobs to get through.
i recently fitted a Kahrs floating engineered floor. things i learned while doing so:
your floor must be level, i don't mean looks level but get down on your knees with a spirit level and move it around and look for any high/low spots and mark them with a marker pen.
if the floor needs some self level then it’s not a difficult job.
use a good underlay, i used sonifloor gold (the Kahrs version)
buy an oscillating multi tool, its great for removing the bottom of door frames.
buy the right narrow blades for your jigsaw.
plan and measure the boards if you have any funny shapes and work out the best direction to work from, you dont want any tricky narrow boards to cut and fit last
remove the skirting, scotia beading looks awful, if a jobs worth doing then do it properly.
Cheers Mr Smith, all good advice.
I used a oscillating multi tool to take off the bottom 20mm of my existing skirting - the skirting and walls were 110 years old and I didn't think either would survive intact if I tried to take them off. It took a while (very high quality thick wood to cut through) and needed 3 blades to do the 3m square room but looked ace when finished. I'll be doing the same in my hallway. Those tools are very good for door frame too.