Many consumers are under the feeling that solid wood flooring is superior to be able to engineered hardwood flooring and may also will not consider engineered flooring for their very own home. Having put in 25 years being a flooring contractor plus the past 4 years as a retailer of both manufactured and solid hard wood flooring, I have found that there are a lot of misconceptions about both forms of floors. I would like to share the following information and my experience so that you can easily make an educated decision about the particular best floor intended for your project.
Before I begin our comparison of engineered and solid flooring, let us first of all clean up the false impression that engineered floor is the similar as laminate floors (ie-Pergo. ) Even more than a few people enter my personal showroom with this idea, which is not true. Laminate floor is not real wood, engineered floors is. Amtico Flooring Huntingdon And Peterborough of layered flooring is a photo of wood feed on paper impregnated with melamine, not necessarily real wood. The very best layer (also named wear layer) associated with engineered wood flooring consists of (real! ) high-quality solid wood. Engineered hardwood floor surfaces are comprised involving multiple layers of wood, which are cross-banded for stability in addition to glued onto a plywood base.
Sturdy Flooring: Plus
Stable wood floor is exactly that--a solid bit of wood from top to bottom. The particular thickness can differ, but generally ranges through 3/4" to 5/16". Solid hardwood will be certainly hardwearing in addition to resilient, as well as its main advantage is it can easily be re-sanded repeatedly. However, it is definitely not necessarily excellent to engineered flooring in this respect. Solid wood floor, like engineered flooring, has a "wear layer" or layer of wood that can be sanded, and it is definitely only a fraction of the thickness of the floor. Even though strong floors are wider compared to wear coating of engineered floor surfaces, you may only sand down so considerably before you would hit a nail with solid floor. You may find one, possibly only two, additional sandings along with a solid floors compared to the engineered floor. This particular is the just possible advantage to solid flooring, i believe, and it does not apply inside every case and usually does not offset some great benefits of engineered flooring.
Engineered Flooring: Pro's
Engineered floors have several advantages. Although solid floors are usually not a good solution within situations where generally there are high wetness levels or bright heat systems, typically the construction of designed floors makes these people stable enough to withstand certain adjustments in temperature plus moisture that might come up with a solid floor warp. Engineered hardwood floors are designed to be able to resist wood's normal tendency to change dimensionally over time. The particular grain of every layer runs inside of opposite directions, which usually makes engineered floors very stable. Because of this the wood may expand and agreement less than sound wood flooring during fluctuations in humidity and temperature. Regarding this reason built floors are the better choice regarding applications like above radiant heat pv panel, in kitchens, restrooms, and basements, or where a floor is needed to be able to span two different sub-floors like particle board and concrete.
Another advantage of built floors is more flexibility of installation types. Whereas reliable floors can simply be nailed along, most engineered flooring can be pinned or stapled to a wood sub floors, or glued lower to a solid wood sub floor or perhaps concrete slab. Just engineered floors can be floated, the just option when hard wood flooring cannot be attached to typically the sub-floor.
Lastly, when compared with solid wood flooring, engineered flooring will be a more environmentally sustainable choice, as it may yield up to be able to four times the amount of floors using the exact same amount of top quality wood.
Having stated all of this kind of, solid wood floors will be certainly a great choice for several software. They just usually are not necessarily typically the superior choice in each and every case, as a lot of people believe. Whenever in doubt, a new flooring contractor may evaluate your web site conditions and advise you as to the perfect flooring type regarding your home.