Laying hardwood floor

[GARYF]

Hi everybody,

I am about to lay solid wood floor in my downstairs living room,dining room, study and kitchen (32 sq m).
The floor is a mix of concrete (20%) and floorboards (80%). There are a few dips that have made me decide against nailing, therefore i am intending to lay 7mm woodfibre (green) board underlay, then float the solid wood floor by glueing the tongue and grooves. I would like advice on this method and also regarding the use of ratchet strap clamps ie; how many and what size sections at a time. I have laid several laminate and wood floors but never glued and clamped a solid wood floor.
Many thanks in advance,

Gary.

[Trickydickie]

I have just laid a solid oak T+G floor in the Dining Room,Hall and Kitchen with a wooden sub floor and nailed them down.
I would advise that you get the sub floor as level as possible with some levelling compound and then use the green board underlay. I found that useing a string line along every run was needed as you will find that your line will "steadilly creep" leaving you with a bow in the length of your boards. I would also try to nail down as many as possible as glueing such a big area will slow you down waiting for the glue to dry on every run. Also board selection is important as I found that there were slight discrepancys in each one. Probablly due to how the boards were dried out ( maybe a bit too quick) and I found that a few were not perfectly machined as Laminate is.

Hope this helps

[GARYF]

Hi thanks for reply.

What is the best way to level existing wood floor? I keep reading about asphalt shingles and cannot fathom out what these are! Is it like roofing felt? Do you just lay it in the dips to bridge the dip? When you say nail as much as possible, what if i nailed majority and just glued over concrete sections and where i have to start going backwards with the boards so i cant get into the tongue? The line you mention, you dont mean to check the height do you? More likely you mean the front edge of the boards? How does it start to creep? If you push rows back to wedges at wall and knock the tongues into the grooves correctly, wont this ensure that the front edge is level?

Many thanks for advice,

Gary.

[Trickydickie]

Hi There,

If you need to work backwords you can nail thru the groove, I drilled a pilot hole through each board at 45 deg and used a nail punch to drive the nail below the wood, if it is oak or other hardwood nailing alone would split the wood.
You can buy floor leveling compound from wickes etc but generally wood sub floors are fairly level.
The creep comes in because you will have to tamp the boards together which will push them out of line. I started laying my boards in the middle of the floor as I worked out that when I moved into the room next door I wanted to keep my line as I crossed the threshold of the door. I found that the rooms were not perfectly square to each other and I wanted to keep the line of the boards square as I crossed into the next room.On your first line if you screw a straight edge down to the floor and start there when you tamp and nail the boards down you wont move the edge of your first line, as you add more boards,as they are nailed down they wont move.

Hope this helps and you can understand my explanation!!!!!