laying reclaimed beech flooring

[nick60]

Hi, my second post about this, hope someone can advise.....

I've just bought some reclaimed Junckers sports flooring - solid beech 'twin plank' boards which are 22mm thick, 130mm wide, random lengths and T+G all four sides. The Junckers website has installation information for this type of flooring, but I assume these instructions are really for commercial installations involving very large areas and many different environments. Normal installation is to secret nail to supporting battens, but I plan to glue this down to a screeded floor which is well established and dry.

One thing Junckers specify is the fitting of spacers every few boards - there are different spacing requirements depending on the type of building. Should I be worrying about this? I know beech is a bit prone to movement, but I'm glueing it down and the floor is max 4.4m wide. I've seen a post somewhere by WoodYouLike which talks about leaving a 'lazy tongue' half way across the floor - maybe this is all I need to do?

Just for info, I'm planning to use Everbuild 650 parquet glue - I used it last year for a solid oak floor and was very pleased - it seemed to have very strong adhesion but was very flexible.

One final question. The flooring has a moisture resistant film on the back. It's easy to peel off, which is what I assume I must do for my type of installation - yes?

Advice appreciated, TIA
Nick

 

[Elmoinlondon]

How did it go? Any advice for a complete novice thinking of giving this a go? More hassle than it's worth, perhaps?

 

[nick60]

It went really well! The floor has been down for about 8 months now and it looks fantastic. I get lots of compliments from visitors. In terms of hassle, it depends on how you see things - to get a floor of this quality installed brand new I think would have cost me upwards of £100 per sqm - that's the 'no effort' option, which I wouldn't ever have taken. It did take quite a few man-hours but it looks great and I think overall cost was approx £20 per sqm, including collection of the flooring, adhesives, finishing oil etc etc. If you're going to do it I'll let you know what glue I used etc. The technical people at Junckers steered me towards their (expensive) products but I took advice elsewhere and used cheaper alternatives. The floor appears to be sound and very stable and has already seen most of the temperature / humidity cycles it's likely to see I think

 

[Elmoinlondon]

Congrats! Sounds like a success! Yes - I'm tempted to give it a go. I'd be grateful if you could share your experience, and any tips you would offer the complete beginner. Were there any other posts on here (or other websites) that you relied on heavily? Any special techniques for cleaning the boards before laying, for example? Any advice on what to put under the boards? (There are old pine boards already in place in mine and I plan to lay the Junckers on top.) Did you glue and nail, or is that not the right thing for Junckers? Any help would be great.