Solid wood floor - will it work on my floor?

[Sam Dickinson]

Advice and comments from experience please...

I'm about to lay an 18mm thick x 120mm wide solid oak floor (tongue and groove) onto a concrete base. The floor salesman recommended that I use a self-adhesive foam underlay to stick the boards to. The room is about 3.5m x

4.5m. I don't want to lay straps as I have a low ceiling already and the floor needs to meet and adjacent floor which is about 20mm above the current concrete level.

My concern is that the floor isn't level (it's an old house and this is the basement). I have used self-leveller but it's still not 100% flat. The main concern is that there's a slight run from the centre of the room out to one wall which would require me to lay about 15mm depth of self-leveller all along one wall to get it right. There are a few other areas where the floor is up to 5-10mm out although there are no "steep" changes in height anywhere.

Will the floor go down? Will the boards take up the slack?

Thanks in advance, Sam

[Andrew Gabriel]

Sit one of the boards on the floor such that it straddles one of the depressions between a couple of peaks. How much force is required to press it into the depression, and do you think the glue will hold? (I rather doubt it.) You could make up some thin spacers to support the boards across the depressions.

My brother had a maple floor layed on a rather uneven concrete base (had been two rooms, and when knocked together, the floors were different levels and there was a slope between them). IIRC, they epoxed battens to the floor, and screwed the boards into the battens where it was necessary to make the boards follow the curve of the floor (screw holes were plugged). This seems to have worked very well, but probably loses more height than you want to.

[im]

120mm oak boards cannot be cheap so dont spoil the job by saving a few quid on latex the tolerance will be on the board packaging---probably 1 or 2mm in the metre get yourself a long straitedge---go to your timber yard and ask them for an 8ft offcut of 18mmmdf that has got a manufacturers edge on it an offcut between 100 and 150mm wide is a handy size and should cost about £3

the floor doesnt have to be level but it does need to be a single plane as these boards will not take up any "slack"

if you need 15mm of latex ,then apply it

of course if you want a diy bodge.....