Hardwood flooring.  The pros and cons of choice.

Hardwood flooring has, in our opinion, solid pros and cons.

• When you choose hardwood flooring in your home, you get environmentally friendly material for arrangement.
• The cost of hardwood flooring is quite economical.
• Install a hardwood flooring easier easy, if desired, can cope with this one person. It is quite possible.
• Service life of the hardwood floor tens or even centuries, with the right choice and care for wood.
• The hardwood flooring looks quite effectively, the wood in the interior of the house, it is an additional coziness and mental comfort. The drawing on the wood is never repeated. Therefore, the laid hardwood flooring can become a kind of masterpiece of art. And no one else can have such an image on the floor like you.
• On a hardwood floor can, if desired or necessary, lay ceramic tiles, wooden laminate, linoleum, carpet and many other types of flooring.

There are some disadvantages and hardwood floors (although compared to the pluses, we can say, almost no disadvantages).

• The wood is good at sound transmission. This should be remembered when laying a wooden floor in Toronto, if necessary, it will be necessary to install soundproofing materials under the hardwood floor.
• The floorboard should be treated with olive, paint, varnish or other water-repellent means, because the wood absorbs moisture very well. And when humidified, the wood changes its shape, may warp, and the floor will swell and become curves.
• Also, experts recommend that the wooden board be treated with antiseptics. Buying such means will not be any problem. In construction stores and markets of our country presents a wide range of such compounds. As a rule, the antiseptic composition will protect the board from rotting, fungus, mold, even some mixtures can protect against rodents.

How to make a hardwood flooring in Toronto with your own hands

It is not difficult to lay a hardwood flooring in Toronto. It is not necessary to resort to the services of craftsmen. If you want to save money on services and availability of desire and time you can easily make a hardwood floor yourself.

Choice of a board for the floor.

The best option for the floor will be a board of conifers. For children’s room and bedrooms, experts recommend laying on the floor aspen. Well, of course the most durable material is oak.

 But it is also the most expensive option. It is better to come from the budget when choosing a board. Where you should not save money, it is on the purchase of promotional wood, which can be wet. 

 If you lay a hardwood flooring, which will not be dry enough, then the gradual drying, the boards may crack.

One more important point.

• When choosing a floorboard it is very important that the board is the same party.
• Examine the marking on the boards carefully. This is important because if the boards are of different batches, they may be dried to different degrees.
• They may not fit on a millimeter-thick – two, but we need a flat floor.
• And one batch of boards guarantees the same delivery from the same manufacturer. From one and the same region.

Lay the hardwood flooring in Ontario on a concrete base.

You can lay the hardwood flooring in Ontario in an apartment, private house or even in the garage, if there is a concrete base. The most important point in this case is that the concrete was not in direct contact with the wood. For this purpose, you can lay the ground mastic.

It is possible to lay foamed polyethylene. This will also serve as a good and waterproofing.

Then we make a kind of frame from the bars, or in another way install the lags.

We put a bar on the perimeter of the room with a concrete floor. Then, across the room install wooden lags every half meter. Lags are attached to the concrete base with plugs or screws.

 Hats are always must drowned in wood.

Do not forget to check the installation of lags with the help of the construction level. This is an important point. The values of the level may differ by no more than 1-2 mm from the ideal value.

The installation step of the lags may be larger if the floorboard is thicker. For example, if the thickness of the board is up to 3.5 cm, the pitch of lag installation should be 0.6 m. If the board thickness is from 3.5 to 4 cm, the step may be no more than 0.8 m.

 If the board thickness is more than 4 cm, a step may be 1m.  All the bars shall be placed on the edge. We start to fix the board with nails or self-tapping screws on the lag. You can start the board flooring from any wall.

Try to hammer the nails into the board a little at an angle, so that the hat of the nail or self-tapping screws was drowned in a wooden camp.

Installing the hardwood flooring on the lags.

Let’s consider how to install a hardwood flooring on the lags without a concrete base. What to do – if there is no base?

In this case, wooden floors are placed on reinforced concrete posts. Or poles made of brick or wood.

At the bottom of the base of the columns must be laid waterproofing material. Then put a column, for example, made of bricks. On the column we put a levelling layer of the board.

Next, you can lay the soundproofing material, if necessary.

On the posts install wooden lags. On the legs attach a wooden board from any wall, nails or screws nailed a little at an angle, in order to drown the hat in wood.

Warm hardwood flooring in Toronto

You can install a warm floor system under a wooden base, it’s quite simple. And you can do everything with your own hands. It is important to know a few nuances of installation.

Underfloor heating is a modern system that can be installed under the floor of any material. The system heats the floors, thereby heating them.

In order to decide on the choice of a floor heating system, you must keep in mind whether this type of heating will be the only one or will additionally heat the floors.

The choice of heating system power depends on it. If this type of heating is planned as the main one, then choose a system with a power of at least 180 W per square meter. If, as an additional source, a system with a power of 140 W per square meter will be suitable.

On the market there are electric and water systems “floor heating”.

By the name of the water system, it is clear that the source of heat will be water. The system consists of tubes that contain water. Such a system is connected to a water heating boiler or to central heating.

Electric floors are divided into three types.

• Infrared film
• Heat cable
• Thermal mats
• Infrared film is a film at the edges of which the contacts are located. The power of such a system is represented in the range from 150 to 220 Watt per square meter.
• Heat cable is sold in coils, the power available on the market in the range from 120 to 180 W per square meter.
• Heat mat consists of a heat cable, on which a heat element is attached at a certain step.

All kinds of electrical systems will serve you for at least 50 years.

•     In the case of hardwood flooring, it is important to remember that wood is a fire hazardous material. And it can easily be ignited by a short circuit of the electric heating system.
•     Another disadvantage of electric heating systems is their high energy consumption. It is important to be sure of your electrical wiring when installing such a system. Will they be able to withstand high voltage.
•     In this sense, it is safer to use water systems. One negative thing is that the system can leak at joints. Therefore, you should pay close attention to the joints.
•     In general, water heating is the best choice for backup heating. The heating capacity of such a system is lower than that of an electric system, but for floor heating is just right.
•     Water underfloor heating is suitable for all kinds of coverings. Electric mats and cable system, as a rule, are laid on ceramic tiles. Infrared tiles are placed under the parquet or laminate flooring.

Scraping of hardwood flooring

Scraping is a renewal of the old floor, in simple words. The process of scraping is quite complex, but very effective.

Scraping can only be done on dry wood. Wet floors must not be scraped!

There are many different equipment for wood scraping. Their huge disadvantage is in their price. Good equipment flies in not a small amount. You can rent a special car for scraping.

Another cost-effective option is a manual scraping machine.  Such unit is economical in cost, but not in time. It will take a lot of time to do such work.

Be ready for it. But you will save money for the work of a master scraper or the cost of the machine for rent, and even more so for the purchase of the unit.

Scraping of wood must be carried out in a mask, because in the process, a layer of wood is removed, which turns into dust. There should be no furniture or other items in the room. There will be a lot of garbage left from work, do not forget that you will need a vacuum cleaner for cleaning.

If there are stationary objects in the room, which can not take them to a good few layers to cover the film. Bond the film in front of the floor with duct tape.  The dust from the scraping machine is very fine and can penetrate into the smallest cracks.

Renovation of hardwood flooring

Over time, even iron is destroyed. What can we say about natural wood. It, like everything else, has its own service life.

This period differs from the conditions of use, from the types of care that were used, from physical activity and many other reasons. Let’s not look for reasons. We will find opportunities to eliminate defects in the wooden floor in Ontario.

In order to update the coating, you can apply scraping . It was mentioned earlier in the article. This method of wood updating is suitable if there are deep and not very deep scratches on the covering, you need to remove the old paint layer, there are dents.

If there are gaps in the floor, you can use special mixtures for this purpose. If the cracks are large, you can move the boards. Or another option, to cover the entire surface with sheets of plywood.

 This option is suitable only for the room where it is dry. Since the installation of sheets, deteriorates ventilation of the floor covering. And the floors will soon just rot. And your work on restoration of the floor will be in vain.

Wide slots can be hammered with wooden staples, with a sharpened base of the type of wedge. If there remains a ledge of a staple, it is leveled to the floor with a planer. Staple before hammering, it is necessary to smear with glue.

For elimination of a squeak of a floor, as a rule, its replacement is necessary.  Or the insertion of wedges between the lags and the floorboard. But, it happens that access to the floor is quite difficult or impossible for a number of reasons.

 But it is also possible to do with half measures. You can make sheets of plywood no thinner than 1.2 cm from above. Replace the nails in the hardwood flooring with self-tapping screws.

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