Helping You Make the Right Choice
Hardwood floors are an investment that will last for a long time with the proper installation and care. Floor Installation can be a messy process, but we take pride in leaving your home looking as beautiful as we found it, with the added value of your beautiful new floor. Our expert technicians have seen every situation and are proficient in the three different types of installation for hardwood flooring.
There are different modes of installation for engineered wood strips, solid wood strips, and parquet. With all modes of installation moisture testing is imperative to ensure proper installation.
Floating Hardwood Installation
In this method, we glue together the tongue and groove of every plank and the floor floats over foam cushioned padding. If the flooring has a locking system we can lock the pieces together without glue. This can be used with either laminate or engineered wood floor, but either way, the flooring is pre-finished.
Not all engineered surfaces can be floated. Floating installation can also be placed over subflooring of questionable quality, unlike the other two modes. Also, floating floors are a great option if you have multiple layers of flooring and do not want to remove them all. With floating installation, the wear layer is important to consider as the thicker the layer the more times it can be refinished. Generally, laminate flooring gives a hollow feeling underfoot with this mode of installation. Remember that floating floors expand and contract as a unit because the pieces are fused together. Allow for as much expansion area as possible.
Our comprehensive service ensures that no detail gets overlooked. We determine the temperature, levelness of the subfloor, and presence of a moisture barrier and sound barrier to guarantee your satisfaction with the installation.
A modified pneumatic flooring nailer that is used to drive 1-1/2″ – 2″ Staples versus cleats to attach tongue and groove engineered or solid wood flooring to the subfloor. A pneumatic nailing gun is used to drive the staple into the wood flooring and subfloor. Wood flooring 5/8″ or thinner would most likely require a smaller pull trigger pneumatic nailing gun and smaller sized staples. Read the manufacturers installation manual to assure you have the right staple gun and right size staples for your particular flooring.
Typically used with 3/4″ solid wood flooring, however on some flooring nailer models there are adapters plates available for the base of the manual flooring nailer or the pneumatic nailing gun, for thinner solid and engineered flooring sizes as well. For 3/4″ thick flooring 2″ nailing cleats are normally used to attach the flooring to the subfloor. Although there are 3 different size cleat nails that can be used for different installation applications and wood thicknesses. Solid wood flooring should only be installed on wooden subfloors on or above grade.
With the floating installation method the engineered wood floor is not mechanically fastened to any part of the subfloor a bead of recommended wood glue is applied in the groove of each plank to glue the planks together. There is a thin underlayment pad that is placed between the wood flooring and the subfloor to provide a cushion. This underlayment also retards any moisture transfer from below and can reduce noise when walked on and makes the floor softer under foot. Nowadays most all engineered floors and engineered Longstrip floors can be floated. Installing a floating floor is a fast, easy method of installation. Please consult the engineered manufacturers installation instructions to see if your flooring can be floated.
Many manufacturers are using newly developed ways to install their engineered flooring by milling the boards tongue and grooving design into a click lock floating floor system where the boards simply fold and lock together with no messy glue or clamping. This proven method has clearly made the process of installing wood and laminate flooring a lot faster and easier than any other type of installation method. More and more wood flooring manufacturers are offering this style of floating floors every day. All laminate flooring has the click lock design.