Hardwood floors 101

[pashag]

Hi,

Do new hardwood floor materials come polyurethaned or is that step required post installation? Also, Is sanding required post installation?

Thanks,

Aaron

[RickH]

Both, you can get pre-finished hardwood or unfinished, unfinished is usually 3/4 inch thich T&G strips. Prefinished can be engineered (multiple layers of various materials) or solid wood, or veneer on simple pressed board, prefinished can snap together or glue together.

If you get unfinished "real" flooring, you have to sand then finish. Most pre-finished flooring does not equal the beauty and integrity of a real unfinished job IMHO. The pre-finished stuff frequently has an ugly relief on the board edges that leaves V grooves on the floor, unfinished is perfectly flat and smooth with no unsightly V grooves that capture dirt and feel weird when walking.

I suggest you visit a store like Lumber Liquidators that has all types of flooring on display.

[pashag]

Hi, thanks for the response. I would definitely prefer to go the "real wood" route to match the rest of my beautiful old house. What kind of sanding are we talking about? A random orbit or a finishing sander OR something more heavy duty like belt, disk or drum? Also, I will have radiant floor heating. What type of would is the best conductor?

[SteveBell]

You'll use a walk-behind drum sander designed for floors. It takes a little practice to prevent sanding divots. That will be followed up by a hand-held sander to get in the corners and behind objects. The process makes _lots_ of dust, so you have to cover the whole room in plastic.

You'll then want three coats of finish. That will take at least three days to apply, depending on what finish you choose, with another week or so before you put anything back on the floor.

That's one I can't answer authoritatively, but I'd think the denser the wood, the better the heat conduction.

[RickH]

The type of wood for radiant heat conduction is not important, any hardwood is fine. For wood floors the important thing is to not short- cycle your radiant heating system over the winter. IOW never use a "set back" thermostat on radiant, you want to set it to a comfortable temperature and simply leave it there all winter. This will be infinitely easier on the wood shrinking and swelling with the thermostat, your boiler will last longer, and it will run just as cheaply as if you turned the heat down then back up each day. As long as your return manifolds feel cool and your send manifolds feel hot (for any given loop) then you know that loop is releasing all that energy efficiently into the house. If a return manifold is warm then it could be that loop is too short to give up its heat for the amount of water its getting, in that case you just close the manifold valve on that loop a little to give it less water flow.

[HeyBub]

Before you use real hardwood over a radiant heating system, do a lot of homework. It's possible, but risky.

Start here: