Types of hardwood flooring

Posted by: InstallGuru on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

Hardwood floors have been around since the late 1600’s. During the early 1900’s with new production means they began to be mass produced in factories. Most of the floors installed that still survive are 3/4″ tongue and groove strips. However, in the last 15 years or so pre-finished flooring and new installation techniques have helped to propel hardwood floors into one of the most installed floors. This is why to install hard wood floors!

Hardwood flooring is available in strips or planks. It comes in solid, engineered, or parquet composition. Installation methods include nailed-down, stapled, glued-down, floated. It comes pre-finished or unfinished.

First, the most common type of harwood floors in the 1900’s was strip flooring available in 2 1/4″ strips. Strip flooring is typically any flooring available in 2 /1/4″ widths or less. Plank flooring is usually flooring that is available in around 3″ or greater widths. Some types of flooring are also avaialable in random or alternating widths usually of three different widths installed in a pattern.

Woods are available in many different thicknesses from usually from 1/4″ up to 3/4″. The thickness of the board is more often than not determined by its composition. Solid woods are just that: soild. The whole strip or plank is manufactured from one board. Engineered woods are typically made with a hardwood veneer on top and other wood layers oriented in a perpendicular fashion beneath. Parquet floors made today are similar in look or patterns to some of the first made hardwood floors. However, they are now manufactured and are many pieces of wood put together to resemble old parquet flooring designs.

There are advantages to each type of composition. With solid floors, you can almost always refinish these floors depending on the thickness. However, these types are usually not available for below-grade installations due to moisture issues. Engineered floors, because of their construction, can usually be installed in places that most solid floors could not be installed. However, many of these cannot be refinished.

Wood Textures

Traditionally the most popular installation method for hardwood floors is nail-down and glue-down installation. However, new techniques have propelled floating installations to comparable install rates within the last 10 years. Nail-down installation is the process of using nails, usually from a pnuematic nailer, to install hardwood floors into a wood subfloor. Glue-down installation is the process of using glue to install hardwood over a wood or concrete subfloor. Floating installation usually involves using a moisture barrier and/or pad and locking or gluing planks together over almost any subfloor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardwood_flooring

http://www.woodfloors.org/consumer/whyTypesStyles.aspx

http://www.flooringguide.com/how-to/hardwood/hs001.php3