Installing Hardwood Floors on Concrete Slabs

The next best choice for this application is the laminated or engineered plank floor. These look and sound just like a solid wood floor, but unfortunately don’t wear as well. They cannot be repeatedly sanded and refinished like a solid wood square edged parquet. But these laminated wood floors sure look nice. Read more about these pre-finished floors in the Pre-finished vs. Sand-on -site section. I’m sure that you can find an engineered floor that will also give you up to 50 years of light duty service, in say a living room or bedroom. This would be a poor choice in a kitchen or even a dining room.

You could also try one of the floating floors, these come in a thicker top lamination (less moisture stable), and like the laminated plank are not too much affected by temperature and humidity swings. Unfortunately these don’t sound like a solid floor when you walk on them, it’s like walking across a drum. And no amount of padding will quiet them, and these pads degrade in time anyway. The unnatural looking joints between the panels are getting some complaints.

But some people still insist that they want a real wood floor. What they really mean is a more traditional hardwood strip floor, either prefinished or sanded and finished on site. You will then need a wood surface to nail it to. The sports floor industry has solved this problem, albeit expensively. They have proven systems, that consist of a kiln dried wooden sleepers with a conventional plywood subfloor nailed to it. The sleepers are padded off the slab and bracketed to each other so not to damage to the concrete. With a well installed system like this you will be adding as much a 3″ or more to the surface of the floor. But these are warranted and time proven methods, that will give you the solid feel of a wood floor with just a bit of bounce, depending on the system you choose. There are various web sites out there and I’ll give you 2 to get you started. The two commercial sites have good illustrations, which will give you a good idea how these sports floors are laid up. Try www.maplefloor.org OR www.maplefloor.com.

For the die hard D.I.Y.’er you can instead install kiln dried 2 by 4 (laid flat) screeds either in a floated framework, attached to themselves or in random lengths fastened to the concrete. If you choose a floated framework you can lay them on 16″ centers and then install a 3/4″ plywood subfloor to that. Some companies suggest installing thinner 1″ by 4″ screeds, but this doesn’t give the subfloor much of anything to nail to. You can also glue the screeds down with the new urethane construction glues in a random lengths, about foot from center to center. These boards should cut in lengths of18″ to 4 feet. This will allow you to install a 3/4″ strip floor directly on the screeds themselves. You don’t have to have all the hardwood floor joints on the screed surface, but don’t lay more than two joints in between the screed less than 4-5 rows apart.