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Engineered Wood Flooring Technical Information

Jun 10

Posted by admin in Engineered, Flooring, Flooring Installation, News, Wood flooring | No Comments

Real Oak Floors discerning customers demand the most exceptional and innovative wood floor – some prefer a classic style whilst others prefer the most contemporary up to date chic look. Most importantly though, all demand the most exceptional standard and durability from their wooden floors.

At Real Oak Floors they are specialists in the wide plank timber floors. The large selection of solid and engineered wood flooring makes them one of the leaders in the market for exclusive beautiful wide plank flooring.

Due to the increasing popularity of under floor heating and the fluctuating changes in our climates our wood floors need to be crafted to precision to ensure durability and stability for years to come. Real Oak Floors bespoke finishing service can ensure that all boards are crafted to the exact precision of the customers needs. We have taken time to investigate and test our floors to the extremes to ensure they are adequate to fulfill the demands of the most extreme projects that we have undertaken. The environmental changes of temperature and humidity can often put solid oak floors under duress and cause damage and stress – this in turn can lead to cupping, warping and extensive expansion and contraction in solid wood boards. Flooring under this strain can be ruined within a couple of years so Real Oak Floors have ensured that all their engineered boards are tested against these elements.

What is a Wood Floor? There are different types of wood flooring but the current favourite is the oak floors. Due to the properties of oak they expand and contract depending on the temperature and humidity of their environment. The timber floor is derived from a living tree. During the life of an oak tree it adapts to its environment, expanding, contracting and growing with the seasons. Even after the milling process, the oak flooring still has these qualities and will expand and contract to match its environment. Engineered boards are machined with precision computerised kilning to give the correct moisture content for an indoors environment. This is usually between 8 – 12%. Flooring that has not been kiln dried correctly can cause unstability in the flooring so to ensure that our boards do not react like this, they are tested and guaranteed by the manufacturer.

Real Oak Floors have two different types of engineered structured boards available – a 3 ply and multi ply board. All boards have a birch ply centre which ensures that no distortion due to cupping and warping take place due to temperature or humidity fluctuations. The high quality precision engineering of our timber boards means that the softwood core can resist stresses and bending of the real wood layer without any movement taking place. This gives a superior wood floor in all situations and reduces large gaps appearing between each board. 3 ply boards are made from a top layer of hardwood timber, typically a real oak layer or other hardwood, which is carefully hot glued to the thicker layer of birch blockboard to ensure a stable board. The base layer is a thiner layer of birch ply which is laid at right angles to the main blockboard to ensure stability.

The multi ply board is made up of a layer of hardwood timber similar to the 3 ply boards, it then has a construction of several layers of cross birch ply backing – often between 10mm – 15mm thick. Each ply backing layer is laid at right angles to give an extra strength to the boards and minimise movement of the hardwood top layer.

Real Oak Floors vast range of engineered wood flooring varys in the width and thickness but they have ensured that all engineered planks over 18mm thick are also suitable as a structural floor. This enables the timber boards to be laid directly onto joists or battens, eliminating the need for extra plyboard or chipboard flooring and raising the height of the overall floor. These boards have been tested to the highest standards to ensure that even when placed on joists and used in conjunction with under floor heating they will give the same exceptional perfomance without movement or warping.

Real Oak Floors have one of the widest ranges of engineered wide plank flooring and can offer widths up to a staggering 450mm wide. These can also often be used as mixed width boards and the lengths are exceptionally long – to order they can obtain up to 8m in length. These boards are of the highest quality and milled to perfection mixed with the exact specification of the customers requirements. The extra wide planks are milled to the customers exact demanding specification for an exclusive look unique only to them.

The wide array of widths of wood floors is coupled with a unique ability to produce almost any colour, texture or finish of the clients request. Basic finishing such as lacquered boards, natural oiled and brushed and oiled boards can be mixed with a hint of colour to produce the perfect environment for the clients home. The high gloss sheen can be achieved as easily as the natural matt finish. Distressed boards, antique, smoked and rough sawn boards also complement a full range of finishes. All Real Oak Floors accessories are finished in the same high quality standards and are perfectly matched to the customers specifications of the floors.

Five common wood flooring installation mistakes

Feb 7

Posted by admin in Engineered, Floor Fitting, Flooring, Flooring Installation | 7 Comments

Not Checking Moisture

Moisture is the number one cause of problems when it comes to installing wooden flooring. With this in mind it need not be, take the proper procedure to handle it and it will not be a problem. The problem is that a lot of flooring installers do not take this into consideration.

What quite often happens is that wood flooring is delivered straight to the job site in the winter. The flooring came from a reputable supplier and the wood was stored in a climate-controlled warehouse. After arriving at the job site delays happen and the wood ends up sitting around for a while. Not knowing the affects on solid wood flooring the temperature is increased by the heating in the building. The flooring is fitted and everything is fine, the next winter the customer rings to say that the flooring has gaps between the boards.

The cause of the problem is that the flooring acclimated to the conditions of winter when it first arrived, when it then acclimated to the hot summer humidity it swelled up and the edges of the board was damaged, the next winter the swelling reduced and the gaps were much larger than they should be.

Prevention

The best way to avoid this happening is to install the flooring when the moisture content is at a good medium, between the two seasons. The other way to solve the problem would be to not nail the flooring as tight as you normally would and leave “washer rows” to allow some swelling in the winter months without damaging the flooring.

  • Make sure any controllable moisture affective work on the house has been completed such as installation of windows and doors.
  • Measure the temperature at the job site. It should be at what is considered as normal living conditions.
  • Make sure that gutters are in place and correctly installed so that all water drainage is going to go away from the house and not to the foundations as this will increase the moisture.
  • Use a good moisture retarder for your wood flooring. If moisture is of real concern to you an engineered wood flooring may be of better suit to you as it is a
    lot more tolerant to heat and moisture changes.

Unprepared Subfloor

Subfloors should be clean, flat and dry. Not doing so can lead to many problems with the flooring its self. These problems can be seen as loose flooring, squeaky joints, deflection and uneven surface.

The dry part of the Subfloor equations come from the moisture content in the air as discussed in the earlier point “check moisture”. The clean part means that all debris and general dirt from the work site must be clean and cleared away from the subfloor and also that anything that may interfere with the adhesive that is going to be used with the flooring is cleaned off. The floor must be flat to industry standards, subfloors that are not flat enough should be flattened before the flooring is installed. Many problems stem from
using an inappropriate sub floor for the flooring used, it is crucial to get this right the first time!

Rushing into it

The main aim of this point is to get across that you should not jump straight into the job and start laying the flooring straight away. Take the time to plan out the job exactly.

While it may work for some to just start laying the flooring straight away it can cause major cosmetic problems. As you move from room to room angles can change as rooms are never perfectly square this leads to crooked flooring spreading through the rooms, a slight change in angle from the required 90 can have major consequences leading trouble for the fitters having to trim down flooring and as mentioned earlier the cosmetics of the flooring will be harmed.

Bad Racking

There are many many mistakes that are commonly made when racking flooring here are some common mistakes that are commonly made.

  • End joints being too close together is one of them, the ends of the boards should be at least three times the width of the flooring apart.
  • H-Joints happen when end rows line up with one row between them.
  • Lightning Bolts/Stairsteps are joints that happen in the flooring in even steps for a number of neighboring planks.
    This often happens when flooring is supplied in even lengths.

A common mistake to make when racking is not to look at the bigger picture of how the floor is panning out and likely to look when it is finished in the current state. This does not just mean the problems described above but it also means observing the wood that is getting laid, for example light and dark planks, after all wood flooring is not going to be perfectly the same since its wood, but who would want it to be anyway.

Since variations can happen between packs it is often a good idea to open up a few packs before you rack and use them at the same time using planks from each box to get some variation.

Not nailing enough

Not nailing the floor is a common problem with some floor fitters, often they may only put a few nails in per board or even only nail every other board. Saving cost is most likely their reasoning as the customer can’t exactly see the difference straight away or even see the nails them selves a lot of the time.

The short fall of doing things this way is that the wood flooring
will be loose, which will allow them to move around and make a lot of noise when they are walked on.

There is a flip side of this which is of course adding too many nails which can cause cracked
tongues and also loose floors this is a problem in oak flooring or any flooring for that matter. The basic rules to nailing is that there should be a minimum of two fasteners per board and that each fastener should be 1 to three inches from the end of the board for. Standard strip flooring the fastening space should be around every 8 to 10 inches and every 4 inches for plank flooring.

Jan 25

Posted by admin in Flooring, Flooring Accessories, Flooring Installation, Wood flooring | No Comments

The Queen walked on WOCA oiled flooring

The Eurostar is a train of up-to-date design and performance. It competes well with any of the airlines uniting Europe. So its new St Pancras International Terminal was built in luxurious fashion comparable to airport standards.

For the flooring in the Eurostar departure and arrival halls, the 800-million-pound project used approximately 6, 000sqm of FSC accredited solid Jatoba wood flooring which is quite likely to be the largest, single space, solid wood flooring installation in the UK in 2007.

The architects chose to use surface treatments and maintenance products manufactured and supplied by WOCA in Denmark. The project thereby also sets a new quality standard for wood floor finishing in Europe.

On November 6th, 2007, Her Majesty the Queen opened the new St Pancras International Terminal in London. Queen Elisabeth II. Highlighted the importance of attention to detail and the quality of the completed terminal through which millions of people are expected to pass each year.

WOCA’s contribution
WOCA Denmark (known in Denmark as Trip Trap) is one of the world’s leading suppliers of real wood flooring treatment and maintenance products, in particular for heavy traffic projects such as St Pancras International. Before WOCA became the surface finish supplier, the architect team visited Copenhagen Airport with the design team, where a similar floor has been in service for nearly two decades, and which has been treated with the WOCA oxidising oils, and has been since maintained successfully using a variety of WOCA maintenance products, speciality chosen to meet the arduous traffic conditions.

WOCA UK, with the support from its Danish technical teams, and the UK oiled floor treatment specialists worked with the experience from Copenhagen Airport, and formulated an oil treatment and protection, and maintenance procedures for meeting the needs of the St Pancras project.

Surface treatment at St Pancras
After the solid FSC Jatoba solid wood floor had been machined to the customers exact specifications, and fitted. The ladder bordered patterned floor was belt sanded with 100 grit abrasion. The cross beams were then hand abraded to eliminate sanding marks and to achieve the fine finish required on the cross beams. Then two coats of High Solid natural WOCA Master Oil were applied, and finished off with the final coat of WOCA Maintenance Oil. The high quality finish demanded on this prestigious project required the development of a unique oiling and buffering technique using Dane Care special discs on the 2nd and 3rd wet coat to produce the fine, hard wearing quality finish.

Inevitably there were several weeks between the final floor finishing work and the opening date, and given that other trades were on the floor until the last minute, a complete re-oiling became necessary to achieve a perfect finish. So another WOCA innovation was introduced, which is the unique WOCA oil refresher product, applied the same way as traditional wood floor WOCA master soap, but having a two in one ability to remove the dirt from the surface and at the same both restore the floors natural appearance and ensure the appropriate protection.

The team was able to hand over the completed Jatoba flooring, dust free and in perfect condition in time for the Queen’s arrival. According to the WOCA team it was tremendous to see and hear her majesty confirm in her speech, how impressed she was with the attention to detail, after she saw and walked around the completed new St Pancras International terminal.

WOCA Denmark, of course, has also developed the future maintenance procedures for the project. With the use of the WOCA formula, the railway station floor will be perfectly maintained and remain in good condition and appearance for decades to come.

Real Oak Floors, now with carpets!

Apr 10

Posted by admin in Flooring, Flooring Accessories, Flooring Installation | No Comments

Up until now Real Oak Floors specialised almost exclusively in wood flooring and wood flooring accessories, however Real Oak Floors will now be offering to name a few; carpets, carpet tiles, vinyls, laminates, rugs, safety flooring, commercial flooring, residential flooring softwoods and hardwoods.

Not only that, but Real Oak Floors finance options now extend to cover purchase and fitting of these new products!

See more at http://www.realoakfloors.co.uk

Video Wooden Floor installation tutorials

Mar 9

Posted by admin in Flooring Installation | No Comments

Need a visual demonstration on how to install your wood flooring?

Here is a collection of step-by-step video tutorials to guide you with your installation of various wooden flooring types.

http://www.realoakfloors.co.uk/video_installation_tutorials.php

The tutorials cover the installation of Kahrs, Pergo, Quickstep and Witex flooring.

The Quickstep tutorials are in windows media format(.wmv, plays in Windows Media Player)

Pergo, Witex and Kahrs videos are in real Media Format(.rm, plays in Real Player)

The benefits of Envoy multi underlay

Feb 20

Posted by admin in Brand Name Flooring, Flooring Installation | 3 Comments

Envoy multi is a unique and novel underlay to use with wooden flooring. Envoy has an adhesive layer on its upper surface, which ensures constant adhesion with all types of wood flooring regardless of the thickness. Envoy Multi can guarantee that any joins between the floor sections will not show. When Envoy is used as a sub-floor the underside of the flooring is airtight and thus prevents sections from cupping.

The wood flooring is floated on top of the underlay removing the necessity of nails and glues and consequently installation times are much shorter and easier.

Envoy multi underlay remains elastic and resilient keeping your flooring neatly in place without any seams or cracks.

Benefits of Envoy multi

-Excellent thermal and sound isolation

-Warm and comfortable

-Suitable for under-floor heating

-Shorter installation times

-Floor is virtually seamless

-Moisture resistant

You can see the full range of Envoy multi products and other underlays at www.realoakfloors.co.uk .

solid wood flooring

Our guide to laying parquet floors

Feb 19

Posted by admin in Flooring, Flooring Installation, Wood flooring | No Comments

We would recommend the use of parquet 5760 adhesive for bonding the blocks to a suitably prepared sub floor. Do not apply more adhesive than can be worked in ten minutes.

To lay the blocks, a line is drawn down the centre of the room. This line is known as the Crown Line. Lay the first two lines of blocks down the Crown Line with the tongue facing inwards so that the apex of the joints between them falls in line. If basket pattern is required it will be necessary to specify special size blocks.

Continue to lay the floor outwards from the Crown Line until a space remains around the perimeter of the floor sufficient for a border of two blocks wide plus a provision for an expantion gap. Without adhesive lay the last two lines of blocks fringing the border area and mark and cut these blocks plus 12-15mm for expansion. The cut blocks and finally the border blocks are then stuck down.

Finally, sand and seal the floor using a suitable seal for the traffic conditions of the floor.

Any advice given is for general guidance only It is the responsibility of the floor layer to ensure that site conditions are suitable for Hardwood flooring.

If specific advice is required please contact Real Oak Floors on 0844 848 6840. For more help, tips, advice and information, why not take a look at the Tips, Advice and Info on our website?

Installing solid wood flooring

Feb 16

Posted by admin in Flooring, Flooring Installation | 1 Comment

Before installing any wood floor you must first make sure the sub-floor is free of loose materials, oil, grease etc and is also clean and dry. Before starting, lay out strips to determine the direction you would prefer to lay the wood, a good idea is to lay them parallel to the longest wall of the room or in the opposite direction to any joists. When the strips are placed down it is possible to arrange the patterns and shades into preferred positions.

The installation method used primarily with solid wood floors is the nail down method although other methods such as, staple down, glue down and free-float can be used. The installation method used depends on the type of sub-floor you currently have. If for example you have a plywood sub-floor, any of the above methods can be used. For a concrete sub-floor the nail and staple down methods are not an option unless a plywood sub-floor is added above the slab and attached with concrete fasteners.

Nailing

When installing solid wood with nails, a gap of at least half an inch should be left between the edge of the flooring and the starting wall, this allows room for expansion. The first row of wood should be nailed down with screw shank flooring nails (finishing nails). By drilling starting holes in the wood it is easier to insert the nails and avoid damaging the wood. A hardwood nailer can be used to nail down those strips not closest to the walls. Powernailers and mallets can be found at www.realoakfloors.co.uk.

Gluing

Gluing directly to concrete floor without a protective moisture barrier is not advised as wood will absorb any moisture present. Glue-down wood floors are installed similar to the way you would lay a flooring tile, with a trowel-spread mastic. The adhesive can be applied wet to the substrate and then immediately placed onto a wet adhesive or the adhesive can be left to turn tacky. It is very important that contact is made between the flooring and sub-floor. It must be remembered that adhesive does not prevent moisture-related damage to wood. Check out our massive range of adhesives, trowels, joint fillers, floor fitting kits and more at www.realoakfloors.co.uk.

Free-floating

The free-float method is very stable method, which has proved to be very popular over the last couple of years. Instead of installing each plank separately, the boards are glued together, not down therefore “floating” over the permanent flooring. This is suitable for any flooring and is the preferred method to use over under-floor heating. As the floor expands and contracts, gaps are not left between individual units. Elastilon is a perfect accessory for creating floating floors. The wood flooring is stuck onto the underlay but not the sub-floor. At www.realoakfloors.co.uk we provide a range of Elastilon of different thickness and strengths to suit any flooring type.

Solid wood floors are sensitive to moisture and should not be installed below ground level or directly over a concrete slab without a moisture barrier. Before laying a wood floor it is vital to ensure that the entire concrete floor is flat. Further installation tips can be found at www.realoakfloors.co.uk.