FREE DELIVERY ON ALL ORDERS OVER £1500 What are Engineered Wood Floors?
There are two main types of manufacture for an engineered wood floor.
The first and oldest method is used in the production of most 14 & 15mm thick boards such as the Magnum and Boen engineered floors found for sale on this site.
Below the top layer of hardwood are solid spruce fingerstrips to ensure the necessary stability. This layer is cross glued to optimally distribute the innate tensions acting within the individual layers. The parquet remains stable. The bottom layer comprising the softwood backing veneer ensures lasting dimensional stability. This is why 3-layer parquet is excellently suited for floating installation; the individual parquet boards and tiles reliably retain their shape and stability. The exception proves the rule: The particularly top-class parquet strips can do without a third layer as they are always glued down to the subfloor, which in this case also performs the task of the backing veneer.
How does it work exactly?
With an increase in moisture wood floors will attempt to expand across the width of the planks, rather than down the length of the boards. To avoid this becoming a problem and to create stability engineered planks manufacturers place each ply with the grain in the opposite directions to each other. This is called cross-ply construction. These wood layers all try to move along the grain and as each layer has the grain set at right angles to the one above and below it the plies counteract each holding the plank formation and preventing large scale growth or shrinkage that would otherwise occur with normal climate changes. Engineered wood floors are generally designed for the floating installation and are either T&G which are glued together or they have a glueless click system. Some engineered floors are designed to be stuck to the subfloor using an adhesive such as Rewmar MS Polymer wood floor adhesive. Click here for details on Rewmar Adhesive
Click here to see a range of Boen engineered floors
Click here to see a range of Magnum engineered floors
Hardwood floors come in numerous different species, widths and thickness'. Hardwoods give you the chance to install floors with deep rich colours that provide you with an end result that will be the envy of your friends, familly and neighbours. With so many different types of hardwood flooring now available it can be difficult to make a choice so it may be worth bearing in mind that Oak is the favoured choice for flooring in the UK.
The second and latest method used in the production of 20mm thick structural engineered floors. The best of these are made using waterproof birch ply with a 6mm layer of hardwood (oak) on top. Because the product has been designed to be one of the most stable hardwood products available and reduces much of the risk associated with movement in wooden floors. Additionally all of the boards we sell are 180mm wide giving that wide plank appearance and all of the boards are a minimum 2000mm long so you get a truely impressive floor.
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The floor is constructed using 14.5mm Birch waterproof ply with a real 6mm Hardwood Wear Layer with bevelled edges giving the strength and appearance of a solid board without the associated problems caused by instability in the solid wood boards. Using our recommended adhesives the installation of this floor is a genuine DIY product but one that is increasingly being used by professional installers due to its significant advantages over totally solid boards.
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6mm French Oak Oak wear layer onto 14.5mm ply Pre-Sanded and ready to receive an Oil or Polyurethane floor sealer.
Click here to see Signature flooring
Click here to see a video of a wood floor fully bonded onto concrete
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