Wickes Real Wood "Fast Fix" Flooring

[ijc]

Hi

Have any of you guys experience of Wickes Real Wood Flooring? It's an engineered wood floor with a click together system hilariously entitled "fast fix".

eg:

http://www.wickes.co.uk/invt/158009

I'm a fairly experienced DIYer, but this thing has me beat. Basically the instructions say the boards should simply tap together using a tamping block and a hammer. However, the only way I can join the boards successfully is by sliding them together at the ends. As soon as the time comes to attach two boards along their full lengths it seems impossible to get them to click in.

I've already taken a lump out of the tamping block and got nowhere near a good join. I've also tried offering the boards together at an angle, like how some other systems work (uni-click?), but this doesn't work either.

All this is no way to spend a bank holiday!!!

 

[gcol]

Sounds like the same problem as this one //www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=85425

 

[WoodYouLike]

Eeks! Real Wood Veneer normal price £27.82 ? ? (Even £ 14.99 is too much) Total thickness 7mm??

That means a 0.6 to 1mm Solid top layer at maximum. Our most simple Real Wood Engineered with 3.5mm Solid Oak top layer - total thickness 14mm - is hardly more expensive (plus doesn't have that horrible, time-wasting, useless, board damaging click-system)

ok, rant over, Happy Easter!

 

[ijc]

Hi

Thanks for your replies. Are you saying that no engineered wood floor has a decent click-together system?

There seem to be various tradenamed click systems - can anyone recommend one that genuinely works easily?

I had a quick look on what I guess to be your website, but can't determine if you sell such systems as they don't always specify. eg.
http://www.wood-you-like-diy.co.uk/acatalog/Oak3.html

Thanks

Ian

 

[WoodYouLike]

Hi Ian

That one is a real wood engineered Oak rustic 3-strip board with normal Tongue and Groove construction. You glue the T&G, no hassle with damaging board, not fitting click bits, no hassle with the last row etc. Most click systems don't really work, the long sides do, but it's the top bits that give the most problems (breaking off etc because mostly made out of glued-on MDF)

We like to keep things simple and practical, so no click-systems (if we can avoid it, with our cork board we don't have a choice)

 

[ijc]

Cheers - that's interesting advice. Not something I'd hear in the big outlets.

Looks like I need a major rethink as well as a major refund from Wickes!

Enjoy your Easter.

 

[sneezy]

May I add an even more forceful warning against the engineered (i.e. 3-layer) flooring that can be bought in lots of places. (We got ours in Topps Tiles.) It claims to be ultra-fast to lay, thanks to its complex edge slots. In practice, it is a total nightmare. The problem arises (for a DIYer) because it takes time to cut up all the pieces necessary to fit an awkward-shaped room. Maybe a professional with all the right power tools can do it all in one nice warm, dry day, but an amateur will almost certainly spread the work over several days or weeks, during which time the flooring sheets will (like any wood) try to go propeller-shaped. Then it is simply not physically possible to link all the pieces together with a tight join. As soon as you try to push one end in, the other (or the middle) pops out. Also, each individual piece needs to link with neighbours on two sides of a rectangle.
In the end for us it was a very close decision, whether to take all £350-worth to the council dump (with much of it in unopened packs), or to soldier on using lots of glue and plastic wood to fill the huge gaps, then buy a band-sander to make it tolerably flat.
Our other bitter experience is that soft underlay is a mistake with this stuff. Laying it would have been easier (or rather, less difficult) if we had glued it down and locked it with lots of brass screws.