Labour and material costs: tiling vs engineered wood flooring

pengjn

My house is currently being renovated and the agreed plan was to install engineered wood flooring throughout the ground floor, with me being responsible for buying the flooring and the builder being responsible for the installation. I am considering changing to wood effect porcelain tiles with similar dimensions to the engineered wood floor planks. My builder is quoting me £30-35 per square meter for the additional materials and labour of tiling compared to installing wood flooring. I realise that tile adhesive and grout would be required and that porcelain tiles likely take more time to cut than engineered wood flooring but I'm surprised that additional costs would be so high. Does anyone have a view?

Doozergirl

Tiling is more labour intensive than laying a wood floor. Whether it's that much more is rather open to debate. Main contractor, including VAT then I'd say at least £20-25 extra.

Is it a concrete floor at the moment?

pengjn

Doozergirl wrote: »

Tiling is more labour intensive than laying a wood floor. Whether it's that much more is rather open to debate. Main contractor, including VAT then I'd say at least £20-25 extra.

Is it a concrete floor at the moment?

OK - that's reassuring, thank you. He is the main contractor, the 30-35 includes VAT and I live in London so it's always a bit more here. Also, the person who used him for their house said he was a very good builder, did good fixed prices but tended to sting him a bit for change requests, so I shouldn't be too surprised.

About half the floor area is wooden joists (living room), one quarter is existing concrete slab and one quarter is new concrete slab. Is there more work involved for non-concrete areas? Do tiles require a more precisely levelled surface than engineered wood flooring or no difference?

andyhop

You will need to use a decoupling membrane or expansion joints over mixed surfaces

Doozergirl

I was just thinking that if the engineered flooring was going to be placed straight onto joists as the 'actual' floor, then you'd also have the additional cost of laying another floor for the tiles to sit on, iyswim.

pengjn

Doozergirl wrote: »

I was just thinking that if the engineered flooring was going to be placed straight onto joists as the 'actual' floor, then you'd also have the additional cost of laying another floor for the tiles to sit on, iyswim.

I missed a point that is probably relevant - there is going to be wet underfloor heating installed, which the wood flooring or tiling will be installed on top of...

Doozergirl

pengjn wrote: »

I missed a point that is probably relevant - there is going to be wet underfloor heating installed, which the wood flooring or tiling will be installed on top of...

Then you definitely need a decoupling mebrane as well.

pengjn

Doozergirl wrote: »

Then you definitely need a decoupling mebrane as well.

Is that specific to tiling, engineered wood flooring or both?

Doozergirl

pengjn wrote: »

Is that specific to tiling, engineered wood flooring or both?

Tiling. You would float the wood floor, which means it's not connected to the subfloor and is able to expand and contract with heat. Tiles have to adhere to something.

pengjn

Doozergirl wrote: »

Tiling. You would float the wood floor, which means it's not connected to the subfloor and is able to expand and contract with heat. Tiles have to adhere to something.

So £30-35/sqm in London starts to sound less unreasonable than I'd initially thought. The extra cost might be worth it though because the thought of putting down engineered wood floors and then damaging them at the first house warming party breaks my heart.