Thread: floating floors

I don't think any of the different brands need to be glued.
The whole idea is to be able to pull it up and relay it elsewhere if you want to.

My daughter and her husband have just put down one called "quick step"
which is supposed to be one of the better ones. looking at it it appears to be made out of material which not only would take a good deal of wear but be pretty impervious to being wet. Some of the cheap ones are no more than chip board and I would think if you had a leak in the kitchen you would stuff the floor easily.

Get the sellers to show you how it goes together, normally you just hook one strip into the other and push it down flat. You can then slide it sideways to lock in with the one alongside. When you get to the end near the wall they supply a tool to hook over the end so you can tap it together.

If you can tuck it under the cupboards (you have to leave space for expansion between the outside edge and the wallls etc about 10mm) and put it under skirting boards it will look better but you can get moulding to go around the edge.

You can also get a special saw with teeth set on one side to allow you to cut the bottom of the architraves so you can put it underneath them also. I think you pay a deposit for the tools and return them when finished.

Quick step has a brochure showing colours and all the info for fixing. Others should if also they are any good.

We put down 1 strip ReadlyFlor - Ironwood. We used the click in one.

It went down really quick - no need for sealing, you can use it straight away. There was a little bit of creaking for a while, but all gone now. I've attached a pic of when it was being put down.

Thanks for that. Looks good Bin J. Did you do it yourself?

So you don't need to glue the T&G together? This bloke at the shop was saying you do...

He was saying that was the only trap if you apply too much glue..

Thanks
Gazza

I used a 19mm T&G pre-finished floor from P&M Timbers (Smithfield) - "WA Jarra". The floor is a standard 81mm width but is designed for fixing using a secret nailer (60mm staples). You have to glue when you get within 4 to 5 boards of a wall as you cant swing the hammer at the nailer any more - either that or knock out the wall .

The floor has come out stunning - one day I'll take some pics of it.

Originally Posted by powerbuff

Did you do it yourself?

No, we had our carpet layer friend do it. But, since it was the uniclick (I think that's what they call it), it was pretty easy. The worst part was getting the very first row nice and square, then the rest is a breeze. This would be much easier if you had a nice new house, but since ours was a renovation, NO walls were square .

Once he finished one row, he used the 'scrap' - the left over bit from the last peice (as long as it was over 30cm) for the first peice for the next row. This gives a nice random join pattern.

Originally Posted by powerbuff

So you don't need to glue the T&G together? This bloke at the shop was saying you do...
He was saying that was the only trap if you apply too much glue..

With uniclick there is absolutely no glueing.

Hmm..Uniclic sounds good then.

So you're not really to use glue with any type besides the solid 19mm ones?

14mm floating floors T&G do you use a small amount of glue?

Originally Posted by Bin J

With uniclick there is absolutely no glueing.

I had uniclic installed a few years ago - by 2 professionals
who do nothing else. Having watched them do it, I'm
glad I didn't attempt it myself. It's the kind of thing
which is easy to do poorly (or easy to do if your existing
floor is perfectly flat and there's no tricky bits), but
otherwise there'll be problems. I also had them do my
stairs, which are a challenge.

The first thing they did was to run a very long steel rule
over the floors in many directions to figure out how
flat they were. Mine were pretty bad in places. They
had to use quite a lot of surprisingly-expensive special
levelling compound (a bit like concrete, but not). If the
base if not levelled near-perfectly first, cracks will open
up between the uniclic boards over time as people walk on them.
I know of one person who was quite disappointed
with how much this was happening - I guess she
didn't have dedicated professionals doing the job.

I'm not sorry I coughed up the extra money for
these professionals. (I've also heard anecdotal
stories that the average carpet layer doesn't
necessarily know about all the subtle problems,
but I guess that depends on the individual.)

Like any thing get what you pay for, most cheap floating floors come from SE Asia, there timbers are very soft and dint badly, not recommended. Aust species (more expensive brands) are a lot harder and wear resistant. beware of companies selling imported species as Australian timbers ie North Box similar color to Brush box but soft as and dints bad. so ask what density the timber is.

Some brands "click/interlock" together and don't require glue in the tung and groves but others do require a small bead of PVA glue down the grove. Over glue is not an issue just clean up as you go.

The subsurface that the floor is being laid over needs to be +/-3mm over 3mt, using straight edge you can see if the floor is low or high. This applies to all wood flooring products not just floating floors. It is not expensive to level a concrete or timber floor with a self leveling cement, these are applied over a sealer and require to be "worked" to required heights not just tipped on and let run level.

Ask for a quality underlay, some shops supply poor quality which disintegrates under the weight of furniture.

Originally Posted by strangerep

The first thing they did was to run a very long steel rule over the floors in many directions to figure out how flat they were.

Yes, that's exactly what our guy did (it's called a "straight edge" I think ). Our floor needed quite a lot of leveling compound (about $200 worth :eek: ). It was a really sloppy cement stuff that kind of smelled like chocolate thickshake. It went off fairly quickly and the floor was laid over the next day.

Originally Posted by strangerep

I've also heard anecdotal stories that the average carpet layer doesn't necessarily know about all the subtle problems,
but I guess that depends on the individual.

Our carpet layer friend actually had to go to a Readyflor course in order to become a reseller, where they were to learn the laying technique.