Installing Hardwood Flooring

| Monday, November 7, 2011
By Roger Frost


The right type of flooring for you depends on the room where it will be installed. Various floor types are available according to your needs: engineered wood, glueless engineered wood, and solid wood.

Solid hardwood floors come in a wide range of dimensions and styles, with each plank made of solid wood and milled from a single piece of timber. Solid hardwood floors were originally used for structural purposes, being installed perpendicular to the wooden support beams of a building. Modern construction techniques now rarely use wood building frames and solid hardwood floors are used almost exclusively for their appearance.

There is, however, no standard size which will perform well in every environment. For contemporary construction techniques, the most significant characteristic of solid wood floors is that they are not recommended to be installed directly over concrete.

Engineered wood flooring is composed of two or more layers of wood in the form of a plank. The top layer (lamella) is the wood that is visible when the flooring is installed, and is adhered to the core (or substrate) which provides the stability.

Engineered wood flooring has several benefits over solid wood, beyond dimensional stability and universal use. Patented installation systems (such as "unilin" or "fiboloc") allow for faster installation and easy replacement of boards. Engineered wood also allows a 'floating' installation (where the planks are not fastened to the floor below or to each other), further increasing ease of repair and reducing installation time.

Over the years, hardwood installation techniques have been refined and innovative sealers and finishes have been introduced to the market. The result is that whenever you install hardwood floor, you can be sure that it will last a lifetime when properly installed and cared for. That, combined with a modern day consumer's desire for an easier to clean alternative to carpet, has led to hardwood flooring's popularity.

Tongue-and-groove is the most common type of hardwood installation system. One side and one end of the plank have a groove, the other side and end have a tongue (protruding wood along an edge's center). The tongue and groove fit snugly together, thus joining or aligning the planks, and are not visible once joined. Tongue-and-groove flooring can be installed by glue-down (both engineered and solid), floating (mostly engineered only), or nail-down (not recommended for most engineered).




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