It is quite often difficult to know which flooring type is best for your house.
There are actually 3 key types of hardwood flooring: solid, longstrip, and then engineered.
Solid wood floors are usually a single plank of wood, with “tongues” as well as “grooves” that enable the pieces to hook up. Solid floors are really moisture sensitive, and also usually nailed down to avoid humidity fluctuations. As we’ve mentioned before, seasonal moisture changes trigger the wood to contract and then expand—cold weather leads to wood to shrink, while more humid conditions trigger the wood to expand. Due to this, expansion space should be considered when installing your planks.
Longstrip and then engineered floors have a key trait: both of them are made of multiple sheets ( called “plies” ) of wood pieced jointly to make a single plank. For longstrip flooring, the core of the flooring piece is definitely a more pliable, softer wood. The top tier, yet, maybe a variety of hardwood species. Longstrip manufacturing makes an appealing effect, a board a few planks wide along with several planks long. Each piece appears like one pre-assembled chunk of the floor. One benefit of longstrip floors is the fact that they’re quickly replaced if they’ve sustained irreparable damage.
The layers which create Engineered floors are sorted in different directions. This is exactly known as “cross-ply” construction. This process effectively protects the flooring against moisture-related issues. The planks’ layout leads to the expansions as well as contractions to counter each other, reducing or perhaps minimizing the amount of cupping and also crowning a floor will display when subjected to varying levels of humidity. Engineered floors are extremely versatile, enabling them to be installed in any specific part of the home regardless if it is the basement or perhaps directly on slab. These types of floors can be stapled, glued, nailed, or maybe floated over existing sub-floors.
