Suitable timber for floorboards

rudigarude

Hi Everyone,
The flooring of our landing and middle bedroom of the house we moved into over the summer is completely bodged using chipboard (not fitted correctly, not fixed down, cracked, warped). I'm planning on replacing it with floorboards however I'm struggling to work out what wood is suitable. Would this be suitable?
https://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-Whitewood-PSE-Timber---18mm-x-144mm-x-2-4m/p/9000036447
When searching for flooring I can only find chipboard or tongue and groove and I want to retain the ability to remove a floorboard for maintenance in the future. I should mention that the floors will be carpeted afterwards so I'm not trying to create hardwood floors or anything.
Does anyone have any advice?
Many thanks.

grumbler

rudigarude said:

When searching for flooring I can only find chipboard or tongue and groove and I want to retain the ability to remove a floorboard for maintenance in the future

I like your thinking. Most people don't think about removing. Use screws and avoid nails. With screws even tongue&groove boards can be removed easily, but not in a random place and not with nailed skirting boards around. 

Tongue&groove timber floorboards are usually 18mm, so any 18mm boards of thicker will do the job, including those you found. If they are shorter than the room then make sure the joints are on the joists.  If longer, don't forget about the skirting boards that can make it difficult to remove a board should you need this.

ETA: to screw the boards tightly you need to drill holes in the boards first - the same diameter as the screw - 3.5-4mm.

rudigarude

grumbler said:

rudigarude said:

When searching for flooring I can only find chipboard or tongue and groove and I want to retain the ability to remove a floorboard for maintenance in the future

I like your thinking. Most people don't think about removing. Use screws and avoid nails. With screws even tongue&groove boards can be removed easily, but not in a random place and not with nailed skirting boards around. 

Tongue&groove timber floorboards are usually 18mm, so any 18mm boards of thicker will do the job, including those you found. If they are shorter than the room then make sure the joints are on the joists.  If longer, don't forget about the skirting boards that can make it difficult to remove a board should you need this.

Thank you so much for the response and advice, I really appreciate it. The ability to remove and access under the floor is really important to me at the moment because I can't be 100% sure that the room is the way we will want it to be for the future. We've not been able to use the room for anything other than storage since we moved in as it was in a terrible state so I have no idea where we might want additional plug sockets or networking or maybe in the future pipework changes. The house is a 1930s ex-LA that hasn't been modernised upstairs since the 1970. A lot of work but it's exciting :-)

grumbler

As with tongue&groove boards support each other a little, I'd possibly go for a little thicker boards. 20.5mm?

FreeBear

grumbler said: I'd possibly go for a little thicker boards. 20.5mm?

A 1930s house would probably have had thicker boards - Mine are 23mm thick and 135mm wide.

A decent timber merchant will be able to supply boards planed to size, and PSE will be fine.

rudigarude

Thank you @FreeBear and @grumbler for the comments, this is really useful. There is only one floorboard upstairs that I think was an original one, a single board that follows the top step of the stairs. It's 18mm thick and 150mm wide. I take your point about the thickness and would prefer to fit thicker boards if I could but anything thicker than 18mm won't fit underneath the skirting boards (they are the original ones that we've stripped and sanded - we were advised not to remove the skirting boards unless we were going to completely take the rooms back to bare brick which is beyond our finances and tolerance for disruption this decade).

If I'm stuck with 18mm thickness, would it be advisable to go for a narrower board to distribute the load better?

grumbler

rudigarude said:

If I'm stuck with 18mm thickness, would it be advisable to go for a narrower board to distribute the load better?

I think the wider the better. Just imagine a bed leg standing on a very narrow board.

rudigarude

@grumbler very good point. I might get a single 20.5mm board just to see how much tolerance I have to play with and if it's not going to work I will just go with the 18mm x 144mm ones, what's the worst that can happen? 

dogshome

Rather than use made-for-job tongued & grooved chipboard flooring panels, go for 18mm shuttering ply - It' so strong it doesn't need T & G edging to spread the load

It comes as 8'x4' sheets and can be easily cut  to the sizes needed, and is fastened down with a couple of screws into each End Rafter, with the bonus that just one panel or several, can be easily lifted if required.