What is Hardwood Flooring?
Hardwood flooring is the original, traditional and time-honored form of wood flooring. It is wood flooring par excellence, and Decoplus Parquets is the specialist in this kind of flooring. Durable and hard wearing, a solid wood floor is an astute investment both in terms of the comfort it provides and the value it adds to your property.
A single species of wood is used for the construction of each individual floor. The flooring strips are made exclusively from wood taken from the trunk of the tree of the chosen species. They are not produced through an assembly process, but simply shaped to the required form from a solid block of wood.
They are machined and dried at the factory to prepare them for use in a domestic setting. These treatments, and a moisture content of between 8 and 12%, mean the wood stands up well to use in heavy-traffic zones (the kitchen, the bathroom, etc.), depending on whether the chosen species is suitable or not for installation in a humid environment.
Strip thickness (which also determines wear-layer thickness):
The wear-layer is the thickness of the wood lying above the system of interlocking joints on the flooring strips. Solid wood flooring can be divided into three categories based on its thickness:
- Traditional wood flooring: over 20 mm thick. Laid by nailing onto battens, load bearing panels or joists. Wear-layer between 6 and 7 mm.
- Thin, interlocking solid wood flooring: 12 to 15 mm thick. Laid directly onto screed or onto a suitable insulating material. Wear-layer between 4 and 5 mm.
- Fine, solid wood flooring: 8 to 10 mm thick. Laid by gluing onto the substrate. The wood is often supplied unfinished, with finishing carried out on-site. Wear-layer between 1 and 3 mm.The thicker a wooden floor, the more often it can be renovated.
Note: expect between 1 and 3 mm of thickness loss per renovation.
The type of wood:
Solid wood flooring inherits all the original properties of the wood it is made from: grain, texture, colors, oxidization, color change over time…
The solid parquet is manufactured from a single frieze of wood.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parquet_(construction)
Parquet blades dimensions
- The wide and XXL blades are the big trend of the moment. From 150 mm to 250 mm wide, these XXL parquet floors are suitable for both large and small spaces. The wide blades reveal all the beauty and roughness of your wood floor.
- The blades of conventional widths (up to 120 mm wide) are suitable for both large and small areas but offer a more traditional look.
- Parquet floors with fixed length planks create a rhythmic and refined atmosphere: they make it possible to form installation patterns such as stone cutting, broken sticks, etc.
- Parquets with variable length planks are the most common: it is a random mixture of several lengths often proportional to the width of the plank. The wider the floorboards, the greater their maximum length. These parquet floors create a more traditional atmosphere and impose the most common installation pattern known as "English style".
Finishes:
Aged, stained, saw-marked, sand blasted, oiled, varnished, waxed… A wide range of ever more elaborate procedures now exists to create an extensive array of decorative effects. In most cases, solid wood flooring is delivered ready to lay. Certain finishes sometimes require a small amount of protective treatment before use. Bare-wood flooring offers the possibility of designing the floor yourself by choosing your own mix of tints and finishes. In doing so, the floor you create will be unique.
Laying methods:
- Gluing (most common): the flooring strips are joined and bonded to each other, then glued directly on to the substrate or isolating material: such a material is sometimes obligatory in blocks of flats and is itself glued to the substrate.
- Nailing: at less than 20 mm thick, solid wood flooring can be nailed onto battens. Battens are pieces of wood used to support wood-flooring strips. They are placed beneath the wooden floor in parallel and regularly spaced to fix it in place. This is the traditional method of laying wooden floors. You may require the assistance of a professional when laying solid wood flooring.
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