Hardwood Flooring Installation: Should You Float, Nail, or Glue It Down?
Hardwood flooring is a huge deal, and with good reason: it looks and feels great, isn’t hard to clean, and lasts a long time. Many homeowners install hardwood flooring simply for its aesthetic value and durability, but these qualities often increase a home’s appeal to buyers, which merits extra consideration by homeowners intending to sell and investors.
You’ll notice we went out of our way to point out hardwood flooring’s appeal to buyers rather than its potential to measurably increase a home’s value. It’s hard to say what kind of return you can expect on your investment when installing hardwood floors because the fact is that very little data exist on the subject. It’s pretty easy to find studies and ROI analyses on the value of roofs or a kitchen renovation, but similar information on hardwood flooring is surprisingly sparse.
In other words, if you’re considering installing hardwood flooring, you should be thinking about its durability (and what savings that entails for you as a homeowner should you keep the home) and its ability to increase your home’s appeal to buyers.
The big question for most homeowners or investors is precisely how they should go about installing their hardwood floors. There are actually several ways to accomplish this, each with their own set of pros and cons. Before we explore those, it’s important to talk about what’s going to be underneath your new hardwood floors, or the subfloor.
The subfloor is what lies beneath the flooring of all homes, and it varies from house to house. Not all are created equal, and a subfloor that supports one type of installation may not support another.
If you have a concrete slab, you can float or glue your floor but you won’t be able to nail it down unless you first install ¾ inch plywood first. Unfortunately, that will significantly increase the labor and material costs of your new floor installation because you would be installing two floors.
A plywood subfloor will accommodate a floated, glued or nailed wood floor. If you have a lightweight concrete or gypsum subfloor (like most condos and apartments), floating your floor may be your only option depending on the softness of the subfloor. Glue would be an option in such a case, but nailing down the floor on lightweight concrete may not work because installing plywood might not be possible on gypsum floors.
So you’ll need to determine what your limitations are before settling on a method of installing your new hardwood floors. If you can lay plywood above a concrete slab, you’ll have a lot of options. If you’re renovating a condo, you may be more limited in your choices.
Now we’re able to take a look at the most common methods of installing hardwood floors:
Nailing down wood floor is the most common and preferred install method for hardwood floors, provided a wood subfloor is available or able to be installed in advance. When installing 3/4” solid hardwood flooring, 2″ long nails or staples should be used, while shorter 1-3/4″ or 1-1/2″ nails might be used for thinner wood flooring like engineered wood floors. Each plank or strip has to be nailed every 8″ and 3″ from both ends of the plank.
Between the floorboards and subfloor, a moisture barrier such as silicone is needed to keep things dry. Other than that, the only materials needed are nails.
Nailing down the floors is the simplest and most cost-effective install method, so it tends to be the go-to option when possible. Most professional installers consider this type of installation as a permanent method. With the correct installation, environment and maintenance, hardwood floors can last for 100 years.
Nailed down installations also have the improved look and feel of having a flush mount transition, which is more durable. However, it may not be suitable for your home if particleboard subfloor, or the wood floor needs be installed over a concrete slab such as in basements or condos. If that’s the case, you still have other options.
Gluing down your hardwood floors requires a high performance adhesive and correct size trowels and is often associated with increased labor costs, but these increases are comparable to the cost of, say, installing a wood subfloor so you can nail down your new hardwood floors. Overall, though, gluing tends to come with higher costs.
Like the nail-down install method, you’ll still need a moisture barrier and proper drainage away from the subfloor. What’s different here is that you have to choose a quality adhesive because you don’t want to find your floor peeling away or shifting in a few years.
Hardwood flooring adhesives are made to embrace natural characteristics of wood, so they’re specially formulated to be more elastic than other adhesives. The elasticity in hardwood flooring glue ensures that the hardwood will have an adequate amount of space to expand and contract without causing the glue to crack or separate.
Flush mounting is possible with glue, much like nailing down your floorboards. However, you’ll want to only apply adhesive to the subfloor as you go when laying floorboards, because if you try to apply adhesive to the entire area at the same time, most of it will dry before you’re able to lay your boards.
Floating installation is by far the fastest and more versatile of the bunch, mostly because it can work on just about any subfloor and with just about any material, although engineered floorboards – a hardwood veneer over pine or plywood planks – are best.
Engineered flooring goes down over a thin foam sheet, which provides cushioning and sound dampening (extremely important for multi-units and condos). The planks glue or snap together to create a floor that “floats” or moves freely as a unit. A gap between the flooring and the baseboard or wall around the perimeter of the room to allows the floor enough space to expand.
While an especially handy homeowner without the aid of a professional installer can use this method, it’s less durable and permanent than other methods, mostly because solid hardwood floorboards aren’t usually an option with floating installations. This is because the entire floor needs to have space to move, and tends to be best for engineered boards or even laminates.
On the whole, there’s a reason everyone loves hardwood floors. Well-maintained hardwood floors can last a long time while being especially easy to clean, which is a huge plus for most homeowners. It’s easy to see why durability alone increases the appeal of a hardwood floored home to most buyers. With minimal maintenance required on a good install, most homeowners won’t have to worry about their flooring for several years.
Wood floors also provide great insulation and reduce energy consumption, and their overall cost is much lower than most other forms of luxury flooring, which is compounded by their longevity. They’re also hypoallergenic, unlike carpeting, so they don’t breed allergens like mold, mildew, or dust mites.
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- Get It Right Solutions