Nailing or Glueing Solid Oak Real wood floor

[uisgemhor]

Hello,

This is my first post on diynot, sorry if this topic has been covered before, I have looked and cannot see any similar.

I would like to lay solid oak floor in a ground floor dining room. The room is a suspended wooden floor and the floorboards are sound and flat. There is a 2 foot crawlspace under the floor (Just for information)

Having done a little research I thought that the best method of laying the boards was to float them, glueing the individual tongues and grooves together, rather than secret nailing them. This I am planing to do on top of a fibreboard underlay, no DPM as read on this forum.

I have now purchased flooring that on the front of it says "Glue Required". Whilst leaving it to acclimatise I read the instructions which in the first few lines say:

"Do not float this floor unless you are using self-adhesive solid wood underlay and do not glue the joints"

So now I am completely confused, should I just nail down the flooring? I can't see why it cannot be glued, but have no experience laying real wood floor so don't know better.

Help!

 

[big-all]

i think you are misreading the statement

"Do not float this floor unless you are using self-adhesive solid wood underlay and do not glue the joints"

do not glue the joins on the UNDERLAY

 

[WoodYouLike]

Sorry Big-all, you're misreading the instructions.

If you are using a "self-adhesive" underlayment (such as Elastilon) you indeed do not put any PVAC wood-glue in the grooves - although Elastilon itself recommends to glue the short ends, but best to keep to the manufacturer's instructions of the wood floor.

"Glue required" on the packaging could mean: fully bond the floor with flexible adhesive to a sound, level and dry concrete underfloor or plywood subfloor.

In your case: secret nailing would be the simplest solution if you don't want to add the self-adhesive underlayment (be aware of copy-cats with inferior products) to your shopping list.