laying a wood floor onto concrete

covcouple

We have a cottage which at present has a concrete floor. We want to lay a wooden floor. We have been told that you can either glue boards direct onto concrete or screw joists into the concrete and then nail the boards to this as you would do normally.

Can anyone give tips/hints on which is the best solution or any video links on how to do either?

many thanks

teneighty

Making a couple of assumptions, you are talking about solid timber floorboards, not laminate flooring and the existing concrete floor is sound and dry with a fully functioning damp proof membrane.

I would suggest fixing treated timber battens to the concrete slab, 50x50mm ideally but 25x50mm if you are pushed for height and then screw or nail the floorboards to the battens. As an added extra I would fill between the battens with insulation and lay a polythene sheet between the floorboards and battens to act as a vapour barrier and prevent "sweating" on top of the concrete slab. If you use reclaimed floorboards you can create a very pleasing traditional timber floor effect for an old cottage.

I wouldn't try glueing the floorboards directly to the slab.

tuttifruiti20

:)I'd go with battens and then fix the boards to these. This way you can also place insulation between the battens for added warmth.

Ionkontrol

andrew-b wrote: »

Gluing wood to concrete won't work as the wood and concrete expand/contract at different rates.

http://www.woodfloors-online.co.uk/Adhesives_Bona_R850_15kg.asp

vax2002

I would suggest you employ a tradesman, the advice you receive will not be the advice of a tradesman because no tradseman of any sense posts detailed instructions how to do his job on a forum, not unless they are looking to move out of the trade in to flipping burgers and any advice about such a specialist trade will be inaccurate and as a money saving forum often the best advice to save money when using expensive materials is only do it once and get it done right.

bobhawke

vax2002 wrote: »

I would suggest you employ a tradesman, the advice you receive will not be the advice of a tradesman because no tradseman of any sense posts detailed instructions how to do his job on a forum, not unless they are looking to move out of the trade in to flipping burgers and any advice about such a specialist trade will be inaccurate and as a money saving forum often the best advice to save money when using expensive materials is only do it once and get it done right.

There is at least one website / forum that says otherwise:
http://www.pavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/ib3/ikonboard.cgi

covcouple

Thank you very much everybody. I thought Battens would be the way to go.

27col

I was going to use battens when I converted a double garage into a small flat for my son to live in. The building inspector said that it was not necessary and suggested the following. We laid a slab of 50mm insulation boards onto the concrete and then polythene DPC on top of the insulation. The 2400mm x 600mm T&G boards were laid on the polythene and the edges glued together. This rapidly produces a very heavy floor, which has shown no sign of moving in the 20 years that it has been down. I am glad that I took the building inspectors advice. Actually, he said that he was not really supposed to give advice, so he made some comments that I was free to accept or ignore.