Can You Lay Engerierd Flooring Across Or With Floor Joints

If you are planning an engineered wood flooring installation on a ground floor it is important not to install your flooring directly over a ventilated cavity.

Can you lay engerierd flooring across or with floor joints. If you re laying your new floor in an older home that has a plywood sub floor the first thing to consider is the direction of the floor joists that support it. This is because the flooring will absorb the moisture from the air in the cavity and will expand and contract too much as moisture levels fluctuate eventually causing damage to your floor. How you arrange these planks in size is up to you and the result has little effect on the functionality of the floor. Most flooring installers will lay the flooring parallel to the long length of the room to avoid the ladder affect.

The goal of this process called racking is to stagger the end joints randomly across the floor s field. The maximum floor length you can install without expansion joint mainly depends on two things. If the room is more or less square and if there aren t too many indoor climate changes between weekdays and the weekend or during the day then you can lay up to 13 running metres without extra expansion. Stagger the boards at least 6 inches from each end to add strength to the floor.

Taking a break while most rooms are smaller than 66 feet or even 40 feet in length the total distance for laying floating floor planks can easily stretch past that if two or more adjoining rooms are linked together with doorways or arches. You may have to cut the first board using a circular or miter saw with a blade designed for engineered wood flooring. Lay out the next five courses on the floor and fit the ends together. Step 9 final fitting photo by kindra clineff.

When you are ready to lay the floor bear in mind that in general engineered flooring looks best when laid parallel to light entering through the windows but you can lay it whichever way you think works. Before you install your floating floor check with the specific manufacturer s instructions. When you run into columns or doorways cut the planks to fit on both sides taking care to maintain the expansion gap. Be careful not to spill any of the water as you don t want to add any moisture to the flooring.

When installing a floating engineered hardwood floor it can be tricky to snug up the tongue and groove joints. Offset the end joints in adjacent courses at least 12 inches and the joints of every third course at least an inch. However if you have 3 4 plywood or osb you can change the direction. In these cases the conservative choice is to go perpendicular across the floor joists and allow them to support the new floor as well as the sub floor.

But aesthetics matter and that means you should stagger the joints while laying out your flooring. The shape of the room in which the floor will be laid. You can use five gallon buckets of water to put pressure on the floor to keep the boards in place. The only restriction is on boards laid over an existing hardwood floor where the boards should be laid at a 90 angle to each other.