wooden flooring

[pilpip]

I'm about to lay a hardwood floor over an existing one. I would like to lay in the same direction as the current one. Now I've seen it stated that I should lay a 6mm ply underlay first. However I can't raise the floor this much because of an adjoining floor. Now my queston is - can I avoid the problems by staggering the new floor along the length of the old one. ie the new edge in the middle of the old plank?

 

[WoodYouLike]

Are the existing floorboards level or a bit cupped? If the latter you will run the risk of a "rocking" floor when you don't level out with plywood

 

[pilpip]

Are the existing floorboards level or a bit cupped? If the latter you will run the risk of a "rocking" floor when you don't level out with plywood

Thanks for the advice - no the boards are flatr as far as I can make out.

 

[big-all]

anything over 2mm will cause rocking so take a strait edge off at least 2ft/600mm across the floor at different points in different areas and look at the gaps underneath
if you cant get down use a ruler /thick card an inch wide to try for gaps

 

[WoodYouLike]

anything over 2mm will cause rocking so take a strait edge off at least 2ft/600mm across the floor at different points in different areas and look at the gaps underneath
if you cant get down use a ruler /thick card an inch wide to try for gaps

A builder had a look at a floor (tiled) we said was way too uneven. (Dips and hills all over the place, 1.83 meter board on its side showed us it went in all directions in an area of total 40 sq m).

"Nothing wrong with that floor" he claimed, after placing a wee bit a skirtingboard on the floor.
(In the end we did it ourselves and used 200kg Level flex to get it sorted - yeap, nothing wrong with that floor!)

 

[pilpip]

Will a good 3mm foam type underlay not iron out any small differences

 

[big-all]

Will a good 3mm foam type underlay not iron out any small differences

no because off the weight on a small area the foam is fully compressed at the high point then still rock on the ridge as the foam either side wont be enough to support the weight

 

[pilpip]

"Nothing wrong with that floor" he claimed, after placing a wee bit a skirtingboard on the floor.
(In the end we did it ourselves and used 200kg Level flex to get it sorted - yeap, nothing wrong with that floor!)

Thanks for this - but what was the level flex you refer to. I'm assuming it wasn't a concrete floor and you refer to a screed. Is there an equivalent for a wooden floor or did you in effect use a flexible glue.-

 

[WoodYouLike]

High quality leveling compound:

Does what it says on "the tin".

Never use adhesive to try to level out a floor, that's not the purpose of adhesive (and is this case the wood-engineered floor was installed floating)