Installing hardwood flooring can be undertaken using one of several methods depending on the type of hardwood timber flooring that you have. If you have solid hardwood, you have to look at the type of timber you have. You can have:
- parquet flooring, which usually comes in tiles of sizes 150mm by 150mm or 300mm x 300mm; or
- you can use planks or floorboards that come in 1800mm, 2400mm lengths and also as mixed lenghts.
Floorboards are sold in various widths. The most common, “standard” width Australian hardwood floorboard is 90mm wide. Contemporary wide-boards are popular at 120mm or greater in width. Ultra-wide boards typically seen in commercial and retail installations can also be sourced in widths higher than 150mm. Please note this guide covers installation issues for hardwood timber flooring. If you have laminate wood flooring then you have to look at a different method of installation.
Delivery of your Australian hardwood timber flooring.
When the truck arrives to deliver your timber flooring you need to store it in a moisture free, secure place close to the installation site. Choose carefully, and you will only need to move the timber once. If you are using solid or re-milled hardwood timber floorboards, you cannot begin to lay timber flooring until you have opened the packaging and allowed the wood to become acclimatised to the humidity and temperature of your home. Failure to allow the timber to acclimatise has potential to cause much financial pain. If laying engineered oak flooring or an timber flooring engineered from recycled timber, like “earthwood” then you can leave the flooring in the packaging until you are ready to start installing.
Before laying engineered or solid Australian hardwood timber floating floors
The successful and trouble free installation of hardwood or engineered timber flooring depends upon careful planning. Even if you are installing hardwood flooring over an existing concrete or tiled floor, you do have to sweep and vacuum the floor to remove all the dust and dirt. If you are not sure of exactly how much timber flooring you will need, the directions for installing your timber flooring, should also include directions for measuring the room to calculate the amount of flooring that you need. When you intend to install an engineered oak, or floating floor or even bamboo flooring, you can always bring your measurements into Better Timber Flooring of Canberra and have our expert flooring staff do the calculations for you.
Engineered Timber Floors, Get your Tongue and Groove on
Have you ever wondered why a glue-less, or floating timber floor is still be able to maintain it’s position on the floor? It’s because each of the planks lock together using the tongue and groove design. When installing hardwood flooring like this, you cannot glue, nail or staple it in any way. When you start installing always consider the way the light shines into the room. Begin laying the planks toward the light and in a hallway always install floating floorboards lengthwise.
The directions for installing engineered flooring should advise that you lay the first plank with the grooves against the wall. Place spacers where they are needed when installing hardwood flooring between the wall and the plank to maintain ½ inch extension gap. You will have to mark and cut the floorboards as you are installing the flooring because they are of random lengths. Always begin in a corner when installing hardwood flooring and the first board in the row should be a full plank.
Don’t forget, you could always lay and install that timber floor many times faster if you were using an automatic timber floor laying machine like the QuikBrace floor installer.