Underlay and insulation under solid wood floor?

[greentomatoes]

hi
two related and fairly newbie questions.
We are thinking of installing solid oak tongue and groove flooring over floorboards in hall and lounge.

Lounge has stripped floorboards with quite big gaps so is very draughty. Howver even when little air movement can be felt, floor is very cold. Room is freezing in winter and I'm fed up of watching TV wrapped in a blanket!

The T&G flooring should sort out most of the draughts (although I believe that air can still get through?), and fitter says he doesn't need to put underlay underneath.
Question 1. is that correct? wouldn't underlay provide a bit more protection against draughts and provide a little bit more thermal insulation?

Question 2: is it practical to insulate under the existing floorboards? there is about a 2 foot crawl space. We can't insulate walls (1930s solid brick) so reducing heat loss where we can is important
If not practical to insulate under the floorboards, is there any clever (and thin) insulation we can put between the floorboards and the new wood floor?

Thanks ...

 

[WoodYouLike]

A new floor with T&G installed perpendicular over existing boards normally reduces the draught a fair bit.
Presumably your fitter is going to install the new floor secret nailed? Then indeed an underlayment underneath the new floor is useless. If however he plans to install the floor floating, then a suitable (without DPM) underlayment is required for sound-insulation.

 

[ladylola]

It's possible to insulate whilist you have the floor up, it's something I have done on a couple of occasions,

Fix batterns or tile lath along the lenght of the joists so the top is say 3" from the top. Then cut chicken wire into strips and staple to the top of these laths and then simply cut and press in fibre glass insulation and board over, job done.