Floorboards vs New Wooden Floor

I've been wondering about having an oak floor through the d/room, hall and l/room.

The problems I can see are:

  • Access to a burst pipe would surely be a nightmare. I have seen individual planks replaced by cutting the original out with a circular saw but knowing my luck with houses, there probably would be leaking pipe at some point.

  • Some of the floorboards have warped because of central heating pipes. Surely this might cause a new floor to lift as well?

Would it be worth changing all the floorboards for new ones (some of the existing ones are pretty bad).

Also, could I avoid the warping problem?

Thanks.

Reply to
Bill
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Well depends how many pipes you have running under it and what routes they take... praps you could re route some (in plastic) easily enough aiming to group them all in one or two areas that you would have to be prepared to gamble on taking up if worst happens.

you could buy a little extra floor and keep it to repair the damage caused by lifting the section to fix a leak?

warping - spose depends on moisture content of new floor vs humidityof subfloor area vs humidity of room - to minimise you should let the new stuff acclimatise before laying and tbh expect it to move a bit whilst it acclimatises and also with changing seasons - part of the beauty IMHO.

Where CH pipes are you could maybe fit some sort of metal heat shield/ spreader plates to spread the heat out away from just above the pipes

- tho if they are *that* hot esp under your ground floor you maybe could insulate them anyway?

cheers JimK

Reply to
JimK

Thanks Jim. Sounds good advice.

Reply to
Bill

I did this recently as well, and faced the same sorts of decisions as you.

Yes, so make sure that your plumbing is up to scratch! Burst pipes might be a problem if they aren't properly lagged, and you don't set your heating appropriately (e.g., use a frost-protection setting on your C/H or set it to run a little each day when unoccupied). Buy a few spare boards to provide replacements if the worst does happen, or even just to cope with a change in the pipework like a slightly different radiator.

If you have a suspended floor, are the pipes notched into the top of the joists? That brings them very close to the boards, and can cause localised heating, drying-out, and warping. Where I encountered notched pipework, I re-ran the pipes underneath the joists instead.

Because I re-plumbed a fair bit of the C/H when I did the floor, I did wonder about using plastic pipes. I had a long talk to one of the technical guys of a plastic plumbing company (Hep IIRC) though, and he said that the lifetime of plastic pipe (or more properly, the fittings, which are the weakest point) is realistically about 20 years. Since I was laying a very nice oak floor, with an expected lifetime far beyond that, he hinted that soldered copper might be a better option, but wouldn't say it outright!

dan.

Reply to
dent

Best bet is to ensure there are no fittings under there, just unjointed pipe. Probably not possible though.

One of the things I like about old boards that aren't T&G is the ease of lifting.

NT

Reply to
NT

indeed perhaps the OP can engineer those sectoins of floor above pipe runs etc to be easier to lift in future by mangling/adapting the T&G of the new oak floor ? a few brass screws countersunk in, add a bit of floor wax - who'd ever know?

JimK

Reply to
JimK

In our Victorian house lots of the boards had been severely chopped during repeated installations of pipes and wiring. We swapped these for longer runs from other parts of the house where the boards are hidden, and then we had the whole thing sanded and varnished. We think it looks great, but of course it does not look new.

I also like the abilty to lift individualy boards, so we screwed down quite a few of the new boards for easy access.

Robert

Reply to
RobertL

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