I have to lay some 22mm T&G flooring in our office – 600 x 2400 sheets

Flooring will be screwed and glued on the joins.

My query is …… On the first row of boards do I cut the groove off of the lengths that touches* the wall or leave it.

Wall will have skirting board.

So to cut or not to cut, that is the question.

* I believe I should leave a 10mm gap between wall and board.

No, you don’t need to. Before starting though, just check width of room and divide by width of chipboard you’re using to make sure you don’t end up with too narrow a rip at the opposite side to your starting side.

Will the flooring go under the skirting or butt up to it?

I personally prefer under.

(waits for DD to tell him off)

The plan is to have the boards under the skirting boards.

Thank you DD, I had genuinely forgotten to do that.

Don’t forget to fit a squeaky board near enough so you can hear the managers approaching

Also, in the absence of a string line or laser, it can be helpful to get your first two rows of chipboard “dry” fitted, ie nice and tight on the ends and lengthwise joins, use a straight edge to mark your joists then screw those rows down. (No raggedy lines of screws!) You’ll have a nice straight run of boards to be going on from then. Any electrics or pipes, mark with a sharpie on the top – you never know who’ll need it in the future. Any starter/finisher should span the first two joists.

No, you don’t need to

If he nails across that area, as in tight to the wall nails, the top part of the groove will collapse. So any nailing would have to be further in.

Nobody should be nailing anything into chipboard, especially not a floor unless you want squeaks.

Easiest way to tight joints is grippy trainers and kick them in

Flooring will be screwed and glued on the joins.

Is there a particular reason for gluing the boards onto the joists?

If ever the boards need to be lifted for access to pipes or cables, or to fix pipes or cables at a later date, it will be a total nightmare.

Not only will it make it extremely hard to lift the flooring but it will also result in spending considerable time chiseling off the glue and pieces wood off the joists with a very sharp chisel.

Obviously gluing the T&G joint isn’t an issue but I would avoid gluing the boards onto the joists – decent screws will guarantee no squeaking.

Thanks again folks.

It was por description on my part …. I meant just glued along the seams and then screwed into the joists.

Thankfully there isnt anything under the floor nor will their be services wise so hopefully it’s fit and forget.

@dti I’ve found Crocs to be a good compromise of grip and give for moving the boards around so far😂

@WCA – good call. This will be a home office but you never know who might turn up ……..

I fitted a few boards for a customer, you need a minimum of 150mm width if you need to rip one down so as said above measure before you you start and work out what you need to do.

I used turbo gold screws from screw fix and glued the joins with PVA, as the board were old stock I made a tool so that I could use a mallet to get them to butt up tight with out damaging the tongue and groove.

Oh and you will need 3 screws per joist which really adds up