Hardwood Floors Oct/Nov 2019

AT HE SITE

AT THE SITE

Engineered Flooring Installation on Concrete PART 2

Best Practices for Nail-Down

This is the second article in our three-part series covering engineered flooring installations on concrete. Our first article focused on best practices for glue-down installations. In this article, we look at another install type – nail-down. Nail-down involves nailing or stapling the wood flooring material directly to a wood subfloor. Here are a few key points made in the first article: • E very on-grade concrete slab has moisture and will always have moisture. As a result, concrete will release moisture from deep within a concrete slab over time. This can jeopardize the stability of solid wood flooring resulting in warping, splitting, or curling. • T o avoid these flooring problems, the NWFA recommends using only engineered hardwood floors when an installation is to be made over below-grade concrete slabs. That’s because, due to its construction, engineered hardwood flooring is more dimensionally stable than solid wood flooring, so there’s less expansion or contraction. • I n addition, engineered flooring can be installed at any grade level, including below-grade.

1

glue - down

2

nail - down

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