Laying a wood floor what adhesive?

i aquired a lot of brand new oak flooring from work (peak oak if you want to google) it's tongue and groove but not click together like laminate, i'm told you can glue it down but at the moment i have those old marley? stick on square tiles on the floor under the carpet, can i lay on those? if so what about the odd area where they are broken? (edges mainly where griprod has been) will it draw moisture? what adhesive etc?

 

nail it? there's no option to hide the nails? as for evo will going straight onto concrete not draw moisture and ruin the wood?

 

the living room!

 

Ideally clean the whole area & get it as level as possible, put down the lightweight underlay stuff on a roll (Wickes, B & Q or wherever) & lay on top, glueing each plank to the next using PVA woodglue. Secure the edges/perimeter with a new skirting board, quadrant or purpose made edge trim (usually in 8' lenghts) & job done.
Fit plastic spacers against the wall, to keep it tight, but allow for expansion while carrying out, obviously remove when edge trimming.
Make sure the T&G joints are as tight as, a wood block & hammer should suffice.
I'm no expert, but know more about wood than engines - Good luck!

 

@berpit so you suggest letting it "float" like laminate then?

 

If it's solid wood as opposed to laminate you can glue it down. If it is solid then it will breath and subsequently expand and contract with varying moisture contents as humidity changes over the year. So tip one, use a non water based glue to stick it down otherwise it will swell badly and when it sets/dries you'll have gaps all over the shop. A bitumen based glue is what you need, trust me on that! Leave a 10mm expansion gap all round and cover with some beading, you can partially fill with cork if you want but only where the beading is borderline not covering the gap

The Marley tiles will be fine as long as they're really well stuck down otherwise scrap them up

 

Do what the supplier/manufacturer recommends?

 

yes it's solid oak flooring

 

no instructions.... "aquirred" website wasn't much help

 

Having ripped up a few parquet floors, they had used bitumen-like stuff underneath. As for drawing water from the concrete, are your carpets usually wet?

 

Then it will need a bitumen based glue with some thickness to allow for variations in floor level and thickness in the wood. Buy plenty of white spirits

 

no but i "guess" underlay and carpet doesn't show like wood, i know nothing hence the bone questions!

 

the flooring has grooves cut into the bottom face by the way

 

I've used self adhesive underlay on the last couple of solid wood floors I've layed.

E.g. this stuff:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Acoustic-Underlay-for-Solid-Wood-Floors-Self-Adhesive-/190770365716

Is really easy to use and I've been very pleased with the results.

Floor does move a little bit if it's not 100% level underneath as it's only stuck to the boards and not the sub-floor, but not really a problem - in fact worked quite well on the last floor because the sub-floor wasn't very flat and glueing/nailing wouldn't have worked because of this.

Nick.

 

Bitumen is traditionally used to reduce moisture transfer and was ideal over old floors with no damp proof membrane. The grooves are there to help facilitate levelling without glue oozing up between the wood strips

 

Over to you Ricky, sounds like you have the floating option or the stuck down version. I layed mine 3 years ago & have had zero issue, but you know your Living Room, whatever you plump for 'happy laying'

 

I've only done this type of floor once, we used Bona R850 and took the old floor back to screed, no bitumen left on it. We used it like a tile adhesive spread it on and lay the floor, bit like doing parquet. The grooves in the bottom btw are supposed to stop boards cupping.

Don't lay solid oak direct to screed if you have even the slightest hint of damp around, it will fail.

I've never tried floating a solid oak floor so can't comment on that.