Re-laying an engineered wood floor over UFH

kmmr

Hi all,

I've had a bit of a flood at home, and my flooring has started to lift up. Now, the initial installation was always a bit of a botch job, so I'm going to re-lay the whole section of flooring.

Basically it was laid without an expansion gap, and while it looked good to start, it has been starting to rise slightly anyway over time. The UFH is also very poor in that area, and a flooring guy has told me that they didn’t use nearly enough glue, so that could be why the heat transfer is so poor.

A few weeks back some water got underneath, not much, but it has caused the ‘tenting’ to get very bad, and we have now started to remove the boards. Most of them are fine - but I think as it was so tight anyway, the slightest bit of damp has caused them to lift up.

So, I would like to do some of this repair myself. Can you please critique my approach.

1. Remove all boards from the floor. They are coming up very easily once I got the first one out.
2. Identify undamaged boards and set aside.
3. Is it worth trying to dry out damaged boards? They only have a small discolouration on one end. If I either dry that out, or cut it off and use the board at the edges would that be ok?
4. Prepare boards to be relaid: The boards have some glue ‘splotches’ on the back. Not a lot (which is probably part of the ongoing heating problem), but there is some. Should this all be removed? And what is the best approach. It’s too much to sand by hand, but could I use an electric sander.
5. Remove skirting boards as neatly as possible.
6. Employ wood floor specialist to re-lay the floor, and put back skirting board with an expansion gap.

The initial quote I got was about £100psqm to remove, and then re-lay the floor, so I’m trying to reduce that cost by doing the initial stages myself, but want to make sure it’s not a false economy.

It’s 16sqm, and we have a spare 6sqm of boards, so there is some scope for losing boards, but I need to salvage the majority. Note that only about 2-3sqm appears to be actually damaged, but it’s right in the middle of the floor by the doors.

Thanks for your help

cyclonebri1

You need to dry all the boards, including the one's that don't appear damaged. If the moisture content is radically different the gaps will show that.

To be honest you can sand engineered oak flooring to about the same degree as solid Oak, 2 or 3 times usually.

"The initial quote I got was about £100psqm to remove, and then re-lay the floor, so I’m trying to reduce that cost by doing the initial stages myself, but want to make sure it’s not a false economy. "

!!!!in hell, you are prepared to pay that price for a water damaged floor to be relaid???

Your thoughts were correct, it's a false economy, new would be cheaper.

£1600 for a single floor?:xmassign::xmassign::xmassign: for some one.