Flooring types

hardwood flooring underfloor heating

Vinyl tiles have been popular for several years, especially for kitchens, where they provide a tough, practical flooring. Now self-adhesive tiles do the same job, with the added bonus of being even easier to lay. They are one of the simplest means of giving your kitchen a 'lift'.

Vinyl tiling is both durable and easily maintained. Normal household spillages can be wiped up with a damp cloth, and keeping the floor sparkling is a simple job with warm water and a mild detergent.

Preparing timber floors

A suspended timber floor usually provides a rather unstable surface on which to lay floor coverings.

In newly-laid floors the timber will almost certainly shrink, unless the timber is well seasoned and the builder has taken the trouble to cramp up (squeeze together with flooring cramps during the nailing process) only three or four boards at a time. Too often, the opposite is the case: the timber is on the 'green' side, or damp from exposure at the building site, and boards are cramped up ten or a dozen at a time뾞 system giving far too little pressure to get them really tight.

Older floors often show where the individual boards have 'cupped' through years of natural timber shrinkage, producing ridges across the surface and cracks between the boards. Even if they are not sharp enough actually to crack vinyl or lino, the ridges will cause uneven wear on the surface, which soon shows up as streaky marks. And air will seep through the cracks between the boards, in extreme cases making the house draughty.

In any case, timber is always subject to some seasonal movement. It expands during humid weather and contracts again when the weather is dry, loosening the floor covering.

To help counteract these problems, American homes are sometimes built with double floors. One skin of flooring is laid diagonally and nailed to the floor joists, and the other skin laid lengthwise and nailed to the first.

A less costly way of providing a double floor is to lay hardboard over the existing one. First, any loose floorboards are dovetail-nailed to the floor joists, and any 'proud' (protruding) nailheads are punched well below the surface. Then the floor is sanded to remove any bumps and ridges. For the odd high spot, you can use the rotary sanding head of a power drill, but the ridges on cupped boards require either an orbital hand sander or a larger commercial sander (either of which you can hire).

When buying hardboard, you need only the standard 5-6mm (iViin) thickness, but it must have been correctly treated to prevent moisture coming through the floor and making it warp when laid. In Britain, you can ask for 'flooring' grade, or buy standard hardboard and temper it yourself by brushing or sponging water on to the mesh side and leaving it for 24 hours to dry out. In more humid climates, however, you may need oil-tempered hardboard; ask your dealer's advice.

Buy the hardboard in whichever size (or combination of sizes) will be most eco춏omical, but you will probably find it easier to lay in 600mm (2ft) or 1200mm (4ft) strips than in large sheets. Stagger the joints so that they do not run right across the room. For securing the hardboard, use countersunk screwnails (threaded nails) in the standard 16mm (fin) size, at 106mm (4in) intervals.

Preparing solid floors

Hardboard is not usually necessary on a solid floor뾞lthough in some countries it is widely used to provide a slightly more resilient surface, less jarring to walk on, than the concrete would be.

However, solid floors, although obviously more stable and draught-resistant than wooden ones, must have a smooth surface if they are to act as the base for vinyl or lino. Minor cracks and indentations can be filled with a mixture of pva adhesive and cellulose filler, diluted if necessary with a little water to make it workable, and pressed firmly into place. Larger cracks should be chipped out to 12.5mm (Jin) wide and filled with mortar. Odd high spots will need to be chipped off with a heavy hammer and cold chisel.

Really uneven solid floors are a more difficult problem. In Britain and some other countries, you can buy a self-levelling com춑ound which neatly solves the problem: you apply a coating at least 12.5mm (^in) thick; and as it dries it levels out.

Where this is not available, you will need to surface coat the whole area to bring it into level. First, coat the floor completely with a proprietary bonding agent, following the manufacturer's instructions. Then use a mix of sharp sand and cement in a ratio of 4:1 by volume, mixing with just enough water to turn it to the consistency of brown sugar, and apply a coating at least 12.5mm (|in) thick; any less might crack and break, away.

To keep the depth consistent, use shallow formwork to divide the floor area into bays. After tamping and levelling off, wait for the concrete to dry before removing the form- work and making good.

New tiles on old

It is generally bad practice to lay new vinyl tiles on old, because an adhesive layer between vinyls produces a chemical reaction which causes movement between the two layers. Old lino, vinyl sheeting or tiles should always be stripped off before new flooring is laid.

Calculating quantities

Self-adhesive vinyl tiles are usually 253mm x 253mm (9in x 9in) or 305mm X 305mm (12in x 12in). To work out the number you will need, first measure the length and breadth of your room and 'round up' the measurements to the nearest foot.

Next find out, by dividing the length of the wall by the wall width of one tile, how many tiles you need for a row along the longer wall. Example:

Longest wall: 3.8 m(12ft 6in)

Rounded up to nearest foot: 4 m (13ft)

Width of the tile: 229mm (9in) Therefore the number of tiles per row is 4 m (13ft) divided by 229 (9)뾞nswer, 17J tiles. Or, rounded up to the nearest whole number, 18 tiles.

Now do the same for the shorter wall. If afterwards.

Floor installers in London

See video clips with our works here