solid oak wood flooring?

There are several options:

1. Screw down battens then nail the boards to them. This is the traditional method, and works very well.
2. Bed the boards down on a special rubber based adhesive. Most places selling solid wood floors seem to carry this adhesive. You apply it in parallel beads, running perpendicular to the boards. Works well, but can get messy during application.
3. Lay the boards onto a double-sided adhesive foam underlay. This is a fairly recent development, I've only seen it at one floor supplier so far. It is quite a cunning idea, and seems to work well on their demo floor, but long term performance is uncertain.
4. Glue the boards together and lay as a floating floor over foam underlay.

This is largely down to personal preference, around 5-6" would be my choice.

Can most engineered woods be laid as a floating floor over a membrane?

Basically yes, but the feel and longevity of the floor will be affected by the thickness and the board-board bonding.

However, it makes a very big step at the doorways.

Methods 2 and 3 seem to imply keeping off the exposed adhesive, and working only off the boards already laid, or at best needing to be incredibly careful when moving about. Having just finished laying a floor on concrete by method 4, it's very hard to imagine how I'd have done that.

Seemed about right here too.

Have you any experience of this self adhesive underlay that is supposed to bond a floating board together, removing the need for adhesive. Mind you at =A36 a square meter its not cheap.

Only in that I've seen it demonstrated in a showroom. It does seem to work, but I'm not sure I'd want to use it until it's been around a decade or two.

Fine for engineered wood floors, but with planks, any cupping can cause real problems.

NT

They can, and often are, but its not the same 'feel' as properly glued or nailed down.

And the phrase 'solid oak wood flooring' does not evoke and 'engineered wood floor' to me either.

I assume he has t & g planks of pure machined oak..this is highly dimensionally unstable and will move all over the place if not well tied down.

Good grief. I actually believe you have said something sensible!.

This gives room for insulation too. It makes a big difference.

Its looking like engineered wood is my best option, who makes the best quality?