Solid oak floor... installation questions

[miceden]

Hi all, hope you can help... am about to install a solid oak floor in my dining room and lounge, its one large room, L Shaped - 2.7m wide at the top, 4.3m wide at the bottom, RH side is 3.72m long, LH side is 6.1m long.

The room is groundfloor, the floor is concrete on which sits those old fugly Marley tiles... they are glued down to hell and back and may contain asbestos so i'm leaving them down. The floor is level and I intend to put a plastic DPM down.

The flooring is solid oak, 130mm wide, 18mm thick, 300-1500mm long (more long than short), T&G, bevelled on all 4 sides.

I had hoped to use a 5mm thick fibreboard as underlay for ease and as there are a few small protusions on some of the marley tiles... nothing major, no higher than 2mm and rounded, the fibreboards would be taped together - is fibreboard ok?

Leaving an expansion gap around the room can I glue the T&G and float the floor? Or should I glue the floor down?

Generally I read that you shouldnt float solid wood floors, on here there are a few posts saying you can... but due to the size of the room & floorboards i'm left wondering. Also, I keep getting conflicting advice about oak flooring and fibreboards, some say you shouldnt, others say its fine.

If I have to glue down, which is not a problem, can I glue onto the fibreboard?

Any help is appreciated!

 

[crazydaze]

If you glue the floor down, you will likely need to check the subfloor for moisture first with a hydrometer, you will probably need to paint a liquid DPM on the whole floor, then self levelling screed the subfloor so that it is perfectly smooth and level and you would then trowel glue to the floor and install the wood.

Fibre boards would only be used if you were floating the floor.

There are people on here more qualified than I am who can confirm wether your solid floor can be floated.

The main advantage of a solid floor is that when it is glued to the subfloor you get a solid installation and feel under foot. If you float a Solid wood floor, you would probably have saved a fair bit of money buying an engineered floor which would normally be floated, it would be very difficult to the untrained eye to tell the difference.

In reality, floating a solid wood floor is only really going to give you the advantage that you MIGHT have gained extra depth in the top layer so you could possibly, if you want, sand the floor more times than an Engineered product.