Engineered wood floors get blamed for a lot of problems that aren’t really their fault. If they creak, look uneven, or shrink – What’s actually happening is that they’re trying to compensate for a subfloor that was flawed from the start.
We’re talking here about the subfloor, the layer of plywood or oriented strand board that’s below your flooring. This is what the engineered wood floor sits on and what supports it. The invisible subfloor makes all the decisions about how the visible floor behaves. An engineered wood floor installed over a poor subfloor is a recipe for disaster.
The subfloor problems can be caused by too much moisture or not enough flatness. Both are fixable. Both are avoidable. But both are often overlooked. For advice on Engineered Wood Flooring, visit //www.irwintiles.ie/wooden-flooring/engineered-wood-flooring
Excessive moisture is the most common cause of subfloor problems. When a wood floor is installed, it needs to be able to handle moisture on the underside of the floor. The new wood should be protected from below, and the products used to install it should be able to handle moisture.
Usually, the subfloor will be made of concrete and installed using a surface preparation product that is designed to be durable and waterproof. The problem comes when the subfloor hasn’t been tested for moisture before the floor is installed.
The second subfloor problem is flatness. A floor can look perfectly level but still be out of flatness specifications. Usually, that means the subfloor is a little too high in the centre of the room. That might not be a problem for laminate or vinyl floors, but an engineered wood floor will creak and rock if it is installed over a subfloor that is not perfectly flat.