Engineered Wood, Floorboards + Secret Nailing?

[slippyr4]

Hi All,

I'm in the process of selecting a wooden floor for my hall and dining room.

The current floor is floorboards over wooden joists, which are suspended about 18" above the ground, and under the floor is very dry and well ventilated with lots of airbricks.

I would like an engineered oak product. I quite like the look of Furlong Flooring's "Next Step" 4927 "Dark Smoked" which is an 18mm thick ply backed floor with 5-6mm of oak on the top.

Given that my existing floorboards are quite level, is it likely to be OK to secret nail this product directly to the floorboards? Or, would an 18mm thick floor need an additional load bearing plywood base?

I'm actually a bit confused about the secret nailing method- surely it prevents natural expansion of the floor?

Any advice is much appreciated

thanks

slip

 

[flooringman]

The flooring you are looking at is in itself load bearing so there would be no problem in nailing it to your existing floorboards provided they are level.

Lay it at right angles to the floorboards otherwise you will need to ply first.

I would also recommend laying building paper underneath.

Although you will not get the same movement as with solid flooring this floor will still move so you do need to leave an expansion gap.

 

[slippyr4]

Thanks flooringman.

The thing that is having me most confused is that the brochure says (and I quote word for word)

"Can be secret nailed to load bearing ply, entirely glued or floated".

This made me wonder if I would need an extra ply layer? This seems excessive.

Or, would I be better just gluing the joints and leaving it floating?

 

[flooringman]

Well, all of those apply, the choice is yours. If you don't have a nailer then floating would be the least expensive option, followed by nailing and then full stick down.

You certainly wouldn't need load bearing ply to support a board of that thickness.