Who knows best - You or the experts?!

[GotWood]

Situation: You get a specialist in to do a job you don't feel capable of doing. They tell you they are going to do it in a particular way; which seems to contradict with what personal research suggests.

How do you decide who knows best??!!

Afterall, they have Xyears experience and have seen the job to be done. You don't.

(for me its flooring specific, hence this thread)

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Join a forum and ask them? Maybe if you asked a question someone will answer?

 

[GotWood]

Engineered flooring installation. One of the companies we have approached propose to install it as follows:

1) Lay it in the direction of the existing (tatty) pine boards using 3mm ply in the low areas only - Whilst I understand that a min of 5.5mm is typically the minimum.

2) Use foil-backed (dpm) acoustic matting - I thought boards had to breathe, or does that go out the window when glueing anyway?

3) No need to acclimatise the wood (or measure subfloor moisture content).

4) No 'break' between rooms to account for any expansion.

Comments very welcome!

GW

 

[WoodYouLike]

Honestly: you know better than them and I would run a mile from this company.

 

[GotWood]

Thanks WYL,

Out of interest, which of the above four points worries you most?

If you glue a new flooring to the subfloor, will this effectively be like a DPM? i.e. it will stop the floor 'breathing' anyway?

GW

 

[WoodYouLike]

The one that worries me most is:
1, 2, 3 and 4 - sorry, but all are incorrect and can cause problem on their own. Having them all together is definitely asking for trouble.

Not sure what you mean with "stop breathing"

 

[GotWood]

OK, not good then!!

When you lay a new floor on top of an existing wooden subfloor, I understood that you should avoid using a DPM as this may cause condensation issues?

If this is correct, and a DPM should be avoided, I would have thought that covering the subfloor in an adhesive would have the same effect.

I hope that's clear.

gw

 

[WoodYouLike]

We would never use a DPM on existing floorboards or sheet material. If you plan to fully bond you new floor you do have to ply over with at least 6mm. The adhesive will not prevent the normal airflow as much as a dpm sheets would and can therefore be used on plywood.