Oak Wood Flooring

Oak wood flooring can be an elegant addition to your home. Oak hardwood floors also add value to your home. Buying this floor covering can present many different choices. Let's take a look at the difference between solid oak flooring, and engineered oak flooring.

Solid oak wood flooring is what most people think of when they think of hardwood floors. A solid construction is 2cm thick and is a nail down product. The term solid means that the board is a single, solid board made from one piece of wood. This type of construction is extremely popular. The nail down installation give a permanent product. Solid hardwood floors can also be refinished many times over. In fact, they can typically be refinished all the way down to what is called the tongue. The tongue is the part that fits into the groove on the other board like a puzzle. Solid wood floors add the most value because they can refinished by numerous owners of the home for years to come. The only drawback of solid floors is that they can be susceptible to moisture and humidity. Typically, solid hardwood floors cannot be installed over a concrete slab.

Engineered wood flooring on the other hand can be installed over concrete as a glue or floating floor design (loose lay). This is possible due to the design of engineered floors. This design has a true oak veneer layer on top and then multiple layers beneath of standard wood. It is very structurally sound and performs better in basements than solid designs. Usually engineered hardwood costs less than solid, but it will not add nearly as much value to your home. One warning to remember, many of the large home improvement stores sell an engineered wood product that has 5 layers. The top is the true species (oak in this case), the middle and bottom layers are also wood. However, to cut the cost of the product, the two other layers are pulp fiber instead of a real solid wood layer. This decreases the cost of manufacturing but also greatly decreases the stability of wood. If each layer is not a solid wood layer and looks like recycled cardboard. The engineered wood flooring handles moisture better than the solid hardwood, making it the ideal choice if you want to install waterbased heating (radiant heating). This type of flooring also handles the heat from underfloor heating better than solid flooring would. read more

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