The floorboards fit together, creating a tight bond and allowing your floor to be stable without any actual attachment to the subfloor. Having floating floors in your home is beneficial for a multitude of reasons. Let's explore whether a floating floor installation is right for your home or apartment.
What are the problems with floating floors? Floating floors can be susceptible to moisture and humidity, which can cause warping or buckling. They also tend to be more prone to gaps between planks due to their lack of attachment.
Inadequate support: Floating floors need proper support around the perimeter to prevent excessive movement and bouncing. If the floor is not properly supported by a suitable transition strip or expansion gap, it can cause the floor to bounce or flex too much.
Solution: First, you need to check for obstructions, such as a permanently attached moulding or baseboards that do not allow floorboard expansion. Try to remove any nails or glue so that the floor can settle into place. This should stop the planks from moving up and down.
Floating floors are not designed to hold the extra weight of cabinets, and over time they can damage the floor and cause more issues in the long run. Therefore, we recommend that you install the cabinets before the floating floor.
Yes, you can put heavy furniture on laminate flooring, but it's important to take certain precautions to prevent damage to the flooring.
Hence, it is advisable to stick to items below 500 pounds for your flooring. While some manufacturers will warn you against putting heavy objects on your floating flooring material, most home furniture and appliances do not exceed 500 pounds, which is unsafe for your floating floor.
But, it can also be one of the big disadvantages of floating floors if you live somewhere that experiences extremely high humidity. This is also due to the space between the floor and subfloor. If a lot of moisture accumulates in there, it may contribute to warping, pitting, or mold growth.
This back-and-forth movement can wreak havoc on a floating floor if it's not installed correctly. The snapping sounds are almost always traced to an uneven subfloor. Laminate flooring materials don't tolerate humpy and bumpy subfloors. Subfloors need to be quite flat.
A floating floor with great materials, structure, and properly cared for may last anywhere from 40 to 80 years or even more. If you're using thin and low-quality floorboard planks, expect a shorter floor lifespan.
The quickest way to get new wood underfoot is to install a floating floor. Unlike traditional solid-wood strips, a floating floor isn't nailed down. Instead, the planks are either glued or snapped together. The planks go down fast, over virtually any material—concrete, plywood, sheet vinyl, even ceramic tile.
Moisture and water damage are the most common causes of buckling, as they can cause the planks to swell and lift up from the subfloor. Temperature changes can also cause buckling due to the expansion and contraction of the laminate planks.
One of the most common reasons why laminate flooring develops space between floorboards is temperature. A rise in temperature leads to expansion, while a decrease in temperature leads to contraction.
Usually nailing is the cheapest method but the subfloor is limited to wood. The floating method is affordable because it does not require too much labour, materials or time to be executed. Glueing is the most expensive and the rate is determined based on the glue type and the total square footage.
The answer will vary depending on the material used for the floor and the way that the boards are constructed, but, as a general rule, both laminate and engineered timber floating floors do need some form of underlay to have optimal functionality and longevity.
Underlayment for laminate flooring is a must. Since laminate is a floating floor, it must be evenly distributed across your subfloor. Underlayment is what allows the floor to float, gives it stability, support, noise reduction, and supports the locking systems in between planks to assure the sturdiest flooring project.
We'll show you three ways to stiffen up your bouncy floor—by adding bridging, installing plywood along the joists and adding a wall or beam under the floor. Any one of the three can solve your problem, depending on your situation. It's not a lot of work or expensive.
Most floating interlocking engineered wood floors often squeak due to movement between floor boards (in some cases T&G floating floors will also create crackling noises when insufficient amounts of glue are used and or uneven subfloors) . Uneven subfloors can cause flooring planks to dip and move when stepped on.
They can be a great value for the money, and easier to install. They can just tend to be noisier than a glued or nailed-down hardwood floor.
Aside from discoloration in the flooring installation, damage from water can cause planks to become loose. Over time, warping and buckling is an issue as well, due to excess moisture.
If you want a simple and easy floor installation floating floors are a good option. If you have a difficult subfloor to work with, floating floors are your best bet. If you want a more realistic sounding floor, glue down hardwood flooring options are best.
Nailing laminate planks down will cause damage that will not only make the floor useless, but also void your warranty. The proper way to install laminate flooring is to use the tongue and groove locking system to click planks together, creating a smooth and seamless floating surface.
Floors are usually designed for a nominal 30psf to 40 psf live load. Example: a 10x10′ room designed for 30 psf can handle 3,000 pounds of people, evenly distributed across it.
NO. Never install cabinets on top of floating flooring. Based on seasonal changes in humidity, the flooring material needs to expand and contract. If that can't happen, the weight of the cabinets can cause the flooring to buckle and damage the flooring's locking systems.
Perhaps one of the most obvious advantages is that it's not only cheaper, but it's typically easier to install. Boards can be connected together like a jigsaw puzzle, holding together in place to form one cohesive floor.