Wood flooring - glue or floating?

[Suffolk911]

Hello,

I have a third floor apartment, and am laying wood flooring. Does anyone have any experience on whether its better to float or glue the floor in place? I'm particularly interested in the acoustic insulation properties - we won't be walking around in shoes as its inside, but I'm still keen to try and minimise any acoustic emission to the flat below us and to a lesser extent without our flat as well.

Thanks for your help

Suffolk

[B17NNS]

Do you mean as in glue the floor to the subfloor with Sika or similar ie a hardwood floor over concrete as opposed to say an engineered floor laid over underlay?

[Suffolk911]

Wow, thanks for the fast reply. The two options I'm looking at are:

- an engineered floor (about 4mm of wood veneer on top of a supporting structure making for a total of about 15mm think) floated on top of an insulating underlay
- a similar engineered floor (not solid wood, but again a veneer) which is glued directly to the concrete floor.

I hope this makes sense - I'm don't know too much about wood flooring ...

Suffolk

[Nuisance_Value]

If you have a concrete floor between you and the flat below, I really wouldn't worry about too much sound travelling down as you've got one of the best sound insulation construction methods going. To stop footfall sound in your place I would float the wood floor on insulation. Glued directly to the concrete can come loose over time and start to 'clatter'

ETA: with insulation I mean the 3-4mm underlay roll

Edited by Nuisance_Value on Tuesday 23 November 11:41

[B17NNS]

As above I don't think there will be much difference with either. It sounds like you are going for a quality board anyway and not a clattery bit of laminate.

I'd go with an engineered board floated over a good quality underlay, makes a big difference to the 'feel' of the floor as well as providing sound and heat insulation.

[Piglet]

What does your flat lease say, some leases say you must have carpets because of sound insulation.

[jas xjr]

Piglet said:

What does your flat lease say, some leases say you must have carpets because of sound insulation.

a house is was doing a cheap refurb on had reasonable carpets. so i fitted the laminate over it. why rip up carpet only to put down a thin layer of underlay?

[Suffolk911]

Hi everyone, thanks for the replies - I think its ok with the management company, but will double check to avoid any disasters. Good tip on the carpet - actually, there is a carpet already (nice pink fluffy variety from the 80's !!) so I might at least leave the underpart of this - will talk with the floor fitters that I have lined up for the job.

Suffolk

[monthefish]

How flat is your concrete floor?

[rb5230]

i would remove the carpet and get some decent underlay and put the laminate on top. Easy.

[m4ckg]

rb5230 said:

i would remove the carpet and get some decent underlay and put the laminate on top. Easy.

+1 there is too much give in carpet and can result in the joints to break

[Suffolk911]

Thanks for the tips - not sure how flat the concrete floor is, but probably ok as the flat is in Switzerland where construction standards are usually quite high - was built in 1986. After the advice, I think I'm going to go with the floating floor and underlay, and possibly also leave the "foam" part of the carpet (which is glued to the concrete floor) as extra insulation - which is what my builder seems to be advising. Any problem in having these two insulation layers?

Suffolk

[monthefish]

You might find that the flooring isn't properly supported, allowing it to flex slightly giving an artificial feel underfoot, or worse (as has been said above) some of the joints breaking. Obviously any irregularities in the floor level will accentuate this. (I think the UK spec definition of a flat floor is no more than 4mm variance in a metre?)

Difficult to assess your scenario from behind a computer screen in the UK though!

If you are on the third floor, do you really want 2 layers of insulation? (is that not reducing the heat gain from the properties beneath?)

[Milky Bar Kid]

Having recently done what you're looking at in our hallway and kitchen, I would recommend you get all the old underlay and fittings off the concrete before laying a good quality insulation/underlay. This stops the floor bouncing around and lets the wooden boards move just the little bit that they need to. Any underlay will probably be so flat after this long that it won't do anything anyway.
I would suggest not scrimping on the insulation as I only got round to laying that in the kitchen one evening and it made a massive difference to the warmth of the room on it's own.

[Rs2oo]

Hi Julian.

I am a flooring contractor. Do not put your laminate on carpet or carpet underlay as has been suggested. If you do, you will be wasting your time and money as you can easily damage and distort your laminate.

On a concrete floor which are usually uneaven to different degrees, I would strongly suggest you use a fibre underlay around 5mm thick not a roll. This is good for noise insulation and a good base to fit the laminate. Do not use any adhisive. Make sure the boards ar tightly laid and close fitting. Not too sure your builders idea is a good one either, he may be trying to avoid a bit of elbow-grease ! 5mm Fibre-board underlay is the answer, loose laid onto you floor.
Good luck !

Edited by Rs2oo on Tuesday 30th November 00:25

[Suffolk911]

Thanks for the replies - will make certain my contractor removes all traces of carpet.

Suffolk