Installation Guide

Nailing Down solid wood or strip floor This type of method is used primarily when installing a solid wood floor. This option requires that your home have either plywood or wafer board/OSB on the sub-floor. The name says it all. Nailing gives you a deck-like style floor. Generally speaking, whether you opt for a glued or nailed floor is a matter of personal preference, except for the rare cases when the wood type requires nailing rather than gluing. Using nails to fasten down the flooring is advisable in the case of hardwood with thickness of about 3/4 of an inch. Getting the flooring stapled down in place is just another type of nailing. The advantage of having your floor stapled down is the process is easier and much quicker and is vastly preferred.

1. Nailing Down solid wood or strip floor

This type of method is used primarily when installing a solid wood floor. This option requires that your home have either plywood or wafer board/OSB on the sub-floor. The name says it all. Nailing gives you a deck-like style floor. Generally speaking, whether you opt for a glued or nailed floor is a matter of personal preference, except for the rare cases when the wood type requires nailing rather than gluing. Using nails to fasten down the flooring is advisable in the case of hardwood with thickness of about 3/4 of an inch. Getting the flooring stapled down in place is just another type of nailing. The advantage of having your floor stapled down is the process is easier and much quicker and is vastly preferred.

2. Gluing Down

This method is most common when installing an engineered strip or plank wood floor over concrete sub-floor. With plywood sub-floors glue down installation can also be quieter than a staple down install with less creaking when the floors expand and contract with time. Gluing down with a professional Wood floor adhesive can sometimes be the only way of installing wood flooring. This will be when we are installing wood floors on concrete or onto sub-floors with the possibility of having running pipes below. To be on the safe side we have to do the installation with Wood floor adhesives. This method is appropriate as well for Hardwood floor fitting or deco/pattern flooring.

3. Floating Installation

This method has grown tremendously popular over the last few years. It has become known as one of the most stable and forgiving installation methods available. The reason this installation method is so stable, is because it is not attached to the sub-floor whatsoever. In this type of Wood floor fitting, popular with engineered wood flooring and laminate flooring, the floors planks can fit/click together directly without gluing or nailing. That type of floor fitting, not bonded directly to the sub-floor, allows installation of specific types of underlay - for sound insulation or dampening insulation. Each plank connects to the others through grooves and tongues, much like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This method allows installation of floors over surfaces that cannot be made perfectly flat.