Real wood floor - ways to lay?

dollydiva

We've decided on some real wood oak flooring, but are absolute beginners and are confused by the various methods of laying.

Bloke in shop tells us we don't need any underlay with our existing wood floor and the best method is to screw the lengths using Tongue tite screws, put in at a 30 deg angle.

Looking online at just about everywhere, including YouTube, I can't for the life of me find anyone using this method or any instructions how to do it.

What I do find is everyone using an underlay and gluing or nailing the flooring. I do see the advantage of screws as it means that should we need to be under the floor in the future then we would just need to unscrew them rather than having to wrench them up.

But at the end of the day, which would best suit, bearing in mind we've not done this before?

Any advice welcome


dd

keystone

Its the same as "secret nailing" except you use screws. Screws/nails go through the tongue of the board then the groove of the next one slides over the tongue and so on. Its pretty permanent so forget any idea of gently taking it up to get underneath in future. It will almost vertainly have to be BF&I.

You do not lay solid wood flooring as a floating floor.

Cheers

ormus

there are two main ways of laying real wood flooring.
adhesive or secret nailing.

adhesive can be whole floor type or tongue glue only.
secret nail can be secret screw.

your wood supplier should be able to give the correct method for their product.

olias

keystone wrote: »

Its the same as "secret nailing" except you use screws. Screws/nails go through the tongue of the board then the groove of the next one slides over the tongue and so on. Its pretty permanent so forget any idea of gently taking it up to get underneath in future. It will almost vertainly have to be BF&I.

You do not lay solid wood flooring as a floating floor.

Cheers

Sorry to contradict, but as Ormus says, gluing can be to the tongue/groove only, creating a floating floor with solid wood. It is a perfectly good method of laying. I have done it myself with solid oak with no problems. I laid it on top of the thick green felt type slabs of underlay you can get (don't know the correct term), and it created a wonderful warm, slightly sprung floor.

Olias