Glue on tongue and groove?

Cruixer

ANDY597 wrote: »

I've just fitted caber deck 22mm flooring, it's a sub floor that you carpet or wood on top.

It's glued with this amazing glue that's supposed to stop the squeek. It sort of expands like expandable foam and fills the gaps.

Thanks Andy, probably not applicable to my situation, but I am curious as to what this glue was called for future reference as it sounds interesting?

Kiran wrote: »

I've done engineered T&G wood floors without any glue, in reality the tolerances were so tight I wouldn't have got any meaningful quantity of glue in the joint anyway. Mine was installed with clamps and tapping blocks.

DigForVictory wrote: »

When dad & I installed a T&G floor, it was onto joists. We didn't use glue, we used clamps. It was a building that had variations in temperature & humidity anyway so we clamped it tight & hoped, & over a decade later, it's still sound.

I don't envy you worrying about plumbing access though...

Thanks both. I haven't heard of this. What do you mean by clamps, is it just to hold the boards together during the install, or do the clamps remain in place somehow? If not, what holds the boards together, is it just relying on the t&g joint.

Kiran

The clamps are for installation only, the T&G is a tight fit which is why you use the clamps or tapping blocks to pull it all tight.


They are easy to use but 5 minutes on youtube will probably be a much better explanation that I can type

Cruixer

Thanks Kiran, I had a look. In the videos and websites I saw the clamps were for pulling/holding the floor together, but they were ultimately going to be glued, either glued in the T&G or glued down to the floor. My installation is floating, with nothing connecting the boards to the floor beneath it, which is why glue is normally used in the grooves to hold it together.


The flooring has actually arrived today a few days early and it is not tight between the T&G so I don't think I will get away without glueing. The only way I would get away without glueing is if the cork was enough to hold it all together, but I think that's probably wishful thinking.


Thanks all for the replies.

Belenus

Cruixer wrote: »

.....My only reason for even considering this is that it would make the floor a lot easier to lift again to access the plumbing underneath if it wasn't glued

Why do you think you may need to access the underfloor plumbing in the future?

If there is a potential problem, perhaps you could replace it now with something that is unlikely to need any attention in the future.

Cruixer

Belenus wrote: »

Why do you think you may need to access the underfloor plumbing in the future?

If there is a potential problem, perhaps you could replace it now with something that is unlikely to need any attention in the future.

I am hoping that I won't have to access it, I can't access it currently because there are tiles on the floor, but the floor in question is above the main soil pipe, which runs under the kitchen on the way to the drain, so if there was ever a problem with that or the CH pipes, or water pipes etc then i'd have to lift everything. I'm going to try and create an access point and maybe leave some boards un-glued above that, but I don't even know whether there is a big enough crawl space to access from a hatch yet. Also might be able to get in from under the kitchen units at a push.