Random length or fixed length engineered wood flooring?

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I am currently choosing the flooring for the downstairs of our house. We are going to go with brushed and oiled engineered wood.

Thanks to WoodYouLike, I know about the 'dangers' of cheap random length offers where you end up with too many short lengths in the pack, and initially based on that I was going to choose a fixed length product.

However, having given thought to how flooring is laid, I now appreciate that this is usually done in a random style. I am therefore now thinking that it is not worth paying a premium for fixed length flooring as it will just end up getting chopped up into random lengths anyway!

Based on this I was thinking that we might as well go with a random length product, assuming that the mix contained plenty of long lengths.

However I am held back by a further consideration specific to us, which is the shape of the space; it's not just one square / rectangular room. As mentioned above, the floor is to be laid throughout the downstairs of the house. It is an extended 30s semi: we have an entrance hall about 2m wide at the entrance, reducing to just over 1m next to the stairs. The hall opens to the right onto a lounge roughly 4m x 5m and also straight ahead onto a large open plan room at the back of the house. This open plan room is over 9m wide although most of the width is cut short by a kitchen of two parallel runs of units with a 1200mm passageway between the runs of units. Given the wide span of the open plan room at the rear (the boards will be running the width of the room) would I maybe be better off with fixed lengths to ensure we have plenty of long boards for this long span?

Any thoughts most gratefully appreciated!
 
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s - probably the most important question is:

What's the sub-floor made of? An extended 30s semi suggests a mix of timber joists supporting floorboards and concrete.

Full length boards IMO are preferable to randoms (you WILL be confronted by a large pile of unused shorts). You don't chop full lengths to get randoms; you stagger a full-length one then the next row starts with a half-length then the next row starts with a full-length, and so on. Obviously the position of the cuts is determined by joist positions in the sub-floor. The unused half-lengths can be either used to finish off the rows or, if you've got the correct tackle new tongue or groove can be fashioned to create a 'starting' board .... nothing gets wasted.
 
Thanks Symptoms.

We live on a hill so the ground floor (including extension) is all suspended timber, with a mixture of original floorboards and tongue and groove chipboard on the joists.

I'm thinking that the minimal wastage will probably rule out any saving for going for random lengths!
 
s - your next decision is what to do about the existing floor covering (f/bs & chipb/d mix).

Really, really do consider lifting all that old stuff and fixing the new directly to the joists by secret nailing. The advantages of doing this is effective fixing (not relying on nails into chipb/d ... which WILL loosen or nails into f/bds which rely on the original nails for firmness of sub-floor), keeping levels throughout the house the same (I think this is really important so as to avoid trip hazards), avoids expansion gap covering beading at skirtingboards as the new stuff can be positioned under the skirts, no cutting of door frame bases to hide the expansion gap ... often you can slip the new stuff into the gap vacated by the old stuff, no need to trim door bases.

You don't have to take all the old floor covering off in one go, you can do it bit by bit as you go, replacing old for new as you work across the floor; the new stuff will be laid in the same direction as the old and not cross-boarded (if you overlaid).

If you fancy doing it properly (IMO) then you next step is to measure the distance between the joists as this'll determine the minimum new board thickness.

If you don't want to do the above method then you could overlay & nail, overlay and glue, overlay and float the floor ... however, each of these methods have issues to resolve.
 
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Thanks for this Symptoms. In a way I don't want to hear this (no offence!) but perhaps it is fate. My husband really wants to fit underfloor heating and wishes that we had had all the original floorboards taken up at the time of the extension work so that he could insulate, lay wet underfloor heating and do new flooring in a one-er. Instead we have shelved any dreams of underfloor heating (DIY taking over our lives and eating into time spent with our young family) and he's been crawling around under the house to insulate from underneath - it's dark, damp and it's only about a metre high. (We must be mad.)

The chipboard isn't old. In fact husband ended up taking up what the builders had put in because it was poorly done and the floor was too springy, and redoing it himself.

When you think of the time already invested redoing the T&G chipboard, and insulating from underneath, I don't want it all to be in vain!

Floor levels and skirts aren't a problem. We would be doing the whole ground floor, and skirting boards are off in anticipation of the new floor. Actually hat's not quite the whole truth... they are on in the lounge as we were going to do carpet there but then changed our mind. Likewise door frame bases isn't an insurmountable issue for us.

But the crossboarding concept is new to me. I guess this means we should lay the new flooring perpendicular to the existing boards? We were hoping to run them parallel; it would look silly otherwise. Would this be a serious mistake?
 

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