Wickes real wood flooring

I've just started to lay some Wickes real oak tongue and groove flooring. This has 2 grooves cut on the back of the boards and uses thin metal clips to hold adjacent boards together.

This is proving very difficult to assemble. You have to clip adjacent boards together, then slide the board along so that the tongue at the end of the board engages. This causes the clips to twist and bind so that they start to climb out of the groove or pull the bottom of the boards together and the floor bulges at the top.

Has anyone got any tips for this? Is it possible to abandon the clips altogether and just glue the boards instead. Or could it be laid completly loose and rely on the cork edging strip to keep it together. Room size approx 4m x 5m.

Thanks for any advice. Kit Jackson

Reply to
Kit
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Can you not dispense with the clips and glue the joints? Most T+G (as opposed to click-fit) floating flooring (which I assume this is) is usually glued.

Reply to
Tim Watts

Thanks Tim, that's what I started to do only to find dire warnings on a web site that glueing a floating solid wood floor was a no-no but no explanation of why.

The only alternative I could think of was to pin the floor lightly every few rows to allow it a little room for expansion but not enough so that the whole floor could walk. The underside of the boards is a fairly rough cut and I can see that as it expands and contracts a little bit on the fibreboard underlay it could start to travel in one direction. But maybe I'm getting too concerned.

Kit Jackson

Reply to
Kit

"a website"? Which one?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've not heard that before - and given all floating flooring has to be self-cohesive (ie joined and move/expand as a single unit) I fail to see why.

That sounds more likely to have issues than gluing.

Reply to
Tim Watts

Wood expands and contracts sideways as temp and RH change. Its also prone to warping a bit, cupping etc. Hence if they can be got to work, metal clips would be much better than glue or pins. If they cant, I'd take it back as faulty or unfit, and just buy real wood, its much cheaper and as good.

NT

Reply to
NT

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iii) Floating they say "ON NO ACCOUNT should floorboards be glued together and floated."

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Floating Installation they discuss gluing and then add "PLEASE NOTE: Due to the movement of a solid wood floor you should not use a floating installation."

Do you disagree?

Kit Jackson

Reply to
Kit

If you glue & float it, there's the likelihood of raised sections cropping up. Not good.

NT

Reply to
NT

I would love to know where to get the clips to do my Oak floor bought the flooring but they did not have the metal clips & no one sells them cannot even find them online everywhere states not available

Reply to
tyler4rachel14

Consider yourself lucky then because the clips are almost impossible to use as intended.

read the reviews on the Wickes website and you will probably see what other people have done.

I glued all my 18mm 'hardwood' t&G 'planks' (varying from 300mm to 1200mm in length) and 120mm width to create full size planks

480 mm wide and the full length of the room. Then I fixed these big composite planks with spax screws through the tongue.
Reply to
Andrew

Which clips are these? What type of oak floor? (i.e. solid, engineered, laminate etc)

Reply to
John Rumm

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