Solid Floors - what to note

Rule of thumb: the width of a solid board should never be wider than 10 times the thickness of the board.

20mm thick means 200mm wide maximum, 15mm thick means 150mm wide maximum.

'Oversized' boards are very prone to buckle and cup.

Rule of thumb: the location of the Tongue and Groove should be as close to the centre as possible to give the board the best stability. Sold floors with the T&G below the centre are prone to buckle and cup.

The reason given for why the T&G is almost at the bottom of the board: floor can be sanded many times more might sound valid, running the risk of cupped boards before there is ever a need to have the floor sanded outweighs this 'benefit' many times over.

Rule of thumb: Solid floors can be installed floating if:
they are wider than 100mm,
if the room is not wider than 5 - 6 meter
and in cases with random length: maximum 15% of the boards are of 'short' lengths (see below: "Short end of the stick")

Rule of thumb: overall solid floorboards will expand and shrink more than wood-engineered boards. To allow this movement you have to calculate the correct expansion gap needed (and don't fill this gap with cork or anything else!).

Oak floors: for every meter width of the room leave a 4mm gap with a minimum of 10mm. A 2 meter wide area means 10mm gap; a 3 meter wide room needs a 12mm expansion gap.
Make sure your skirting board are thick enough to cover the movement of shrinkage as well - we recommend 18 - 21 mm thick skirting for solid floors.

Pine boards: 4 - 5mm per meter

Beech - a rather 'nervous' wood type - floors: 7mm per meter

Rule of thumb: moist content of a solid Oak floorboard must be between 8 - 11% when it arrives in your home. Leave solid floors - in their packaging - to acclimatise to your house climate for at least 1 - 2 weeks if they are supplied by a reputable company. (Will you ever know where your floor has been stored when you buy of Ebay?)

Take note in which season you are installing the floor:
winter, when your house climate is rather dry due to central heating effect, add 2mm extra to your calculated expansion gap
Late summer/autumn, when your house climate has a high humidity, your floor will shrink more when the heating season starts, this is a normal effect but don't reduce the standard expansion gap for this reason. It's better to add 2mm to your skirting board thickness (if you need to buy new ones - alternatively use flat beading to cover expansion gaps and leave skirting boards in situ).

General advice: keep the width of solid boards narrow, 150 - 160mm tops, for the best and trouble free result. If you fancy a wider board do select wood-engineered, much safer bet and in the end exactly the same look - you only see the surface of your wood floor - which with wood-engineered floors are definitely from solid wood - anyway.

When you search the Internet (or your local paper for that matter) you can easily find many cheap offers in solid Oak wood flooring.

Before buying into these offers, there are a few things you should be aware of:

Short lengths. Many of these offers contain over 75% short lengths (between 30 to 50cm) instead of a regular mix between short, medium and long lengths (or fixed length of minimum 1.5 meter). Many short boards mean many joins, plus unstable floor.

Difference in width. Real cheap offers are nothing more than bought over 'left-overs' from pallets. Sizes per pallet can vary, even if the packaging tells you differently. Some minor differences between the boards (0.5 - 1mm) doesn't effect the installation that much, but when you end up with a mix of boards all having a different, slightly off average width, you'll end up with one big jig-saw puzzle and nothing will fit tight together. Imagine one row of three meters with three different widths (board 1 110mm, board 2 109mm and board three 111mm). The next row has two boards (one 109mm and one 111mm). Board one in row two connects with board one and two in row one. Because there is already a difference in width between the boards in row one, row two will never fit tightly and so on and so on.

Remember: you get what you pay for. We have seen results of these cheap offers, coming from open sheds where temperature and moist/humidity control isn't one of the priorities of the seller.

Wood flooring is a very popular floor covering - besides being easy to clean and anti-allergic, it enhances your home and can even increase the value of it.

But.... being popular has its own down-sides: many are jumping on the 'band-wagon' of its success to make a profit. Nothing wrong with this when quality products are offered for what they are worth, we all know and understand the logic of 'value for money'.

'Value for money' not only means supplying decent products but also supplying decent information, correct and honest. And that is sometimes the biggest problem with 'Solid Offers' - too little information on what the 'offer' really contains.
Above picture was kindly supplied to us by one of DIYnot.com forum members. Besides problems with the pre-oiled finish and installation errors by the fitter (not the forum-member) the floor has many very short lengths and hardly any longer lengths.

Products like these (most with a proper finish) are sold as Solid Oak floorboards - Oak strip flooring - in random lengths between 300 - 1200mm (we 'fondly' call these products 'Master's Choice').

The correct and honest information missing in the shop and on the packaging is the amount of short lengths a pack contains. Sometimes as much as 50% of the contents of a pack is shorter than 400mm and only 1 or 2 boards - if your lucky - are the full 1200mm long.

Rule of thumb: if random lengths are offered, only 15% maximum should be short, where short means 1/4 length of the longest length. In the case described here this would mean 15% of the boards are allowed to be short - 300mm minimum (1/4 of 1200mm) - NOT 50%!

Since it is recommended to prevent a pattern of joins and to space the joins of connecting rows at least 300mm apart, with this amount of short lengths it is very hard to do. You create an unstable, prone to movement, floor - see picture above - because of the many joins where none of the short lengths can be 'sandwiched' between longer planks in neighbouring rows to counter-act this.
You will end up with a 'hinged' floor - one very good reason not to install a product like this using the floating method.

It can also give your solid Oak real wood floor a very hectic appearance, specially if all 4 sides are bevelled. This pronounces the many joins in the floor even more.

Value for money: if the information on the packs leaves you in doubt ask the supplier for specifications - he/she ought to know what he/she is selling you in the first place!

Don't end up with the 'short end of the stick' or in these cases 'short end of the boards'!

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