We want to install new wood flooring in our cottage but the place isn’t climate controlled, what would be the best flooring to use?

Q:
We want to install new wood flooring in our cottage but the place isn’t climate controlled, what would be the best flooring to use?

A:

There are several choices that you can choose. It will depend on your budget.

The cheaper flooring to buy and install is the laminates. Laminate floors come in a wide range of grades, colours, textures, widths and our made so that they have very limited movement in them as the climate inside the cottage changes. Most laminates can be installed without actually nailing or gluing them down. This allows your floor to float. Also long as you have the ability to leave room around the outside edges and you do not fasten the floor at any point then the floor will have the ability to move. Laminates do not move as much as a solid wood floor when the climate changes inside.

If you do not like the look of laminates and you want a more natural look and a more natural product then you want flooring that is real wood. But you do not want to get a full bed wood floor, you want to buy what is called an engineered wood floor. Engineered wood flooring is real wood on the top but glued to a plywood backer. The plywood backer stiffens the floor and does not move as much as a full bed wood floor would when the climate changes inside.

The way plywood is manufactured does not shrink and expand like a full natural wood so changing climates in the home do not bother it as much, high humidity or extreme low temperatures have little affect on the floor. Since engineered flooring haves real wood on top of the plywood backing will make your floor look like a solid wood floor and most people will never be able to tell the difference. Engineered flooring should resist most cupping or warping due to high humidity or direct sunlight.

If you do buy a full natural wood floor you run the risk of the high humidity and changing climates in the home causing the wood to swell, shrink and even buckle. This could cause serious damage to the floor in a very short amount of time.

Stick to the manufactured stuff and you will not be disappointed.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.

Engineered reclaimed flooring the new hot trend

A hot new trend in custom home building is the use of engineered flooring.

This might not sound like a new thing, but it’s the type of engineered flooring that is being used that is changing.

For years people have been installing engineered flooring in places that they couldn’t install normal hardwood flooring, one of the most popular hardwood flooring is reclaimed hardwood flooring.

Reclaimed hardwood flooring is wood that has been made from old barns that are being torn down ever more frequently. The reason for the barns being demolished is a variety of reasons. Some barns that are 100 years old have just reached the end of their life, others are being taken down because they have been neglected and the weather has made them unsafe to put livestock or hay in anymore. There are barns being removed as former farm land is transformed into housing developments or into private residences that have no use for an old barn and have no idea how to care for one. But the biggest reason is that most farmers now have to be larger and to be larger producers to survive and this means that they need specialized buildings. They need buildings that are built for a purpose and not an old multi use building that was designed to hold square bails in the top and livestock in the bottom.

They have now taken the next logical step in reclaimed flooring and have created engineered reclaimed flooring. This allows them to expand their market to customers that wanted their product but couldn’t use it because of certain factors. Some of the factors that do not allow you to use reclaimed wood flooring are as follows;

• You are installing the wood on a concrete basement floor.

• You have in-floor radiant heat and are worried about the gypcrete or the heated floor warping the wood floor over time.

• Where you want to install it is a damp or high humidity area and you are worried about what the moisture will do to the wood overtime.

• You are looking for a product that will stand up to shifting or changes in humidity or moisture in the air and in the building.

These are just a few of the more common reasons why people end up choosing engineered flooring over the full thickness hardwood flooring.

This move toward engineered flooring was expected, one to increase their market and the other is so that they do not have to use so much of their limited product.

When you have a very limited product such as reclaimed wood from barns then the less you can use the better. Engineered flooring uses less than a quarter of normal hardwood flooring. Engineered flooring has basically a skin of reclaimed hardwood on it.

Even though it is just a skin of wood a lot of companies are making the skin thick enough that you will still be able to get one sand and refinish out of the floor. This will help prolong the life of the floor and it gives you the purchaser some piece of mind that if you happen to damage the floor you still have the option to repair and refinish it.

If you are thinking about new flooring in your home or building a new custom home, think about reclaimed engineered flooring, you won’t be disappointed.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.