Real wood on Concrete

Rummer

Hello

We are considering replacing our carpet with a real wood floor in our hallway. While speaking to different companies we have had conflicting information. Some have said that it is fine to fit a ply wood(?) floor and then the real wood on top of it however others have said you can't fit it this way over concrete and that we would not be able to have real wood.

I just wondered of anyone else had had experience of this and what the outcome was?

Jonesya

There's various ways of doing it.

You can use timber battens fixed to the concrete, normally with insulation between them, fixing the flooring to the battens by blind nailing or screwing through the tongues. I've done this, been down for several years with no issues and it makes for a nice warm floor but, it raises the floor height by the thickness of the flooring plus the battens, so at least 36mm or more. You need to replace skirting.

You can get flooring adhesives and glue the flooring to concrete - look up Sika liquid battens. I've read about it but not tried it myself, I was put off by the idea of what happened if you hit issues and needed to lift it, glue going everywhere etc. Also thought it might make a colder floor.

You can also get various products that lock the floor together, like adhesive sheeting that you kay the timber onto that binds the timber together to make a floating floor.

You certainly can have real wood, but it needs more thinking about and work than a floating flooring product like engineered flooring or laminate.

manda1205

We fitted our solid oak flooring onto concrete. We put a damp proof sheet down first, then used a self adhesive underlay to stick the floor to it (so it's a floating floor really, as the underlay is not stuck to the damp proof membrane). It's been down a year and we've not had any problems with it. I love it and would have it in every room given the chance. This was the way the flooring company suggested we do it.

Rummer

Thank you both for the advice

reeac

We had a lounge fitted with an oak engineered floor about10 years ago - done professionally. They used a thick (4 mm?) layer of two part adhesive direct onto the cement screed and it's fine.