Installation of a solid board covering, its selection, preparation of bases for the device of wooden flooring, methods of laying its elements. Laying a solid board is the final stage in the installation of a wooden floor structure. Forming a topcoat, this material is ideal for most rooms. The ecological cleanliness of the board is due to the lack of adhesive joints, since piece products are made from solid wood. Its design, created by nature itself, lends a delightful appearance to the flooring. Wood decor is excellent at keeping warm, it is durable, durable and can be easily renewed. You will learn how to lay a solid board on a stone or wooden base from this article.
Features of the choice of solid floorboards
The choice of boards for flooring must be approached with the utmost responsibility, because the appearance and durability of the future cladding depend on its quality. Modern solid board has grooved joints and is made from dozens of wood species, including exotic ones in our understanding of the word. Depending on the financial capabilities, the purpose of the room and the requirements for the future floor, you can choose on this basis almost any wooden flooring.
The most common and budget option is solid pine wood. Products made from cedar and larch are also quite popular, but they are more expensive. Ash and oak floor coverings are exceptionally durable, but their price is much higher.
Aspen and alder floors have a healing effect, but the strength of their wood limits the use of the material in rooms with intensive traffic. If the floor covering will be varnished after installation, it is recommended to use boards of light shades.
When choosing floor tiles, their physical characteristics should be taken into account:
- First of all, you need to pay attention to the moisture content of the material. For massive boards, its recommended value is 7-10%, the maximum is 12%. Industrial drying of wood on modern equipment allows you to achieve such indicators. Too wet a board after installation on the floor shrinks during operation, forms cracks and fragile joints in the locks.
- Boards with grooves, cracks, chips and holes from knots should be immediately set aside. A material with traces of mold and mildew is also not suitable for work - it can ruin the entire floor.
- The wooden floorboard should be impregnated with an antiseptic, which will protect the future coating from the invasion of insects and the growth of microorganisms that are harmful to the wood. Data on such impregnation should be provided by the manufacturer in the technical documentation for the product. If a solid wood flooring will be laid on an existing wooden floor, all its structures, including logs, must also be treated with an antifungal agent before finishing.
- Impregnation of boards with fire retardants that increase the fire resistance of products must also be carried out in the factory. You should pay attention to this when buying this material.
- The geometric dimensions of a solid floorboard must meet accepted standards. Its length can be from 0.5 to 6 or even 9 m. This allows you to pick up the entire material along the length of the room or to perform its beautiful joining at the ends.
- The width of the board can also vary. Its maximum value is 450 mm, the minimum is 60 mm. The wider the board laid on the floor, the less durable the coating can be obtained, this is due to the number of its fasteners. The most optimal product width is 100-120 mm. Such boards are used more often than others.
- The thickness range of solid wood flooring elements is 18-50 mm. Laying boards of maximum thickness ensures the greatest strength of the floor, but the same parameter of the base under the coating should be much higher. The most popular boards are 20-25 mm thick. The durability of such a coating for home use is quite sufficient, moreover, it does not require a powerful substrate.
Currently, many manufacturers produce finished products with a protective varnish coating or impregnated with wax and oils. When buying such a board, you will not need to finish its surface, but in this case you will have to lay the wooden floor very carefully so as not to damage its outer layer.
Preparation of the base for laying solid boards
Solid wood flooring can be installed in apartments and private houses, in public and administrative buildings on stone and wooden foundations. In all cases, the principle of installation of external floor elements is the same, but the preparation of the base for them has its own peculiarities. Let's take a look at them.
Concrete base
Before laying a solid board on a concrete base, it is recommended to make an intermediate layer of moisture-resistant plywood. It allows you to easily and naturally attach a finishing floor covering to its surface, which will be perfectly smooth and protected from concrete moisture.
In order to lay the plywood on the floor tightly and horizontally, a leveling screed must first be performed. To do this, the concrete floor should first be cleaned of dirt and debris, and then check it for slopes and irregularities using a two-meter rail and a building level.
If there are more than 5 mm gaps between the measuring tool and the surface to be examined, a cement screed will be required along the beacons, which can be lifted to any reasonable height from the base surface. If the gaps are less than 5 mm, the base can be filled with self-leveling mixture.
The finished screed must dry completely. It is not difficult to check its required moisture content. To do this, after 2-3 weeks, you need to lay a piece of plastic film on the floor surface and press it tightly around the perimeter with tape to the screed. If after a couple of days condensation is not found under the film, you can continue working with the floor.
Its essence is as follows:
- The dried screed must be covered with a layer of waterproofing. The material for it can be a plastic film or a sealing mastic on a bitumen or other basis. Cloths of polyethylene film should be laid on the floor surface with an overlap of 10-15 cm, tightly gluing their joints with metallized tape. Coating waterproofing can be applied by brush and roller.
- Then the plywood sheets should be cut along the short sides into fragments of 500-600 mm wide and the finished samples should be placed on the waterproofing in a checkerboard pattern, keeping a 2-3 mm gap between them. An expansion joint must be left between the wall and the outer plywood sheets, which will serve to compensate for the linear expansion of the material during temperature and humidity changes in the environment.
- It is recommended to fix the laid plywood on the concrete floor using dowels and screws. 1 m2 the surface should have 15 fasteners. The caps of all screws should be sunk into the thickness of the material by 2-3 mm. If, instead of a film, a coating waterproofing was used, the plywood can simply be glued to the floor using a compound compatible with the sealing mastic.
In order to exclude all "wet" processes concerning the screed device, a log system can be used for laying solid boards. Usually they are made of timber with a section of 50x50 or 70x80 mm. Wooden beams can be short or correspond in length to the linear dimensions of the room. Logs with a section of 50x50 mm should be laid with a step of 250-300 mm, and thicker ones - with a step of 700 mm.
The timber should be laid in a direction perpendicular to the future location of the massive board. The top surface of all logs should be a single plane and the same level with or without a slope. The necessary adjustments to the position of the floor support system can be made using a level, cord and adjusting pads for the timber.
Fixing the lag to the floor should be done with dowels, screws and metal corners. The step of the fasteners is 50 cm. It is necessary to lay insulation in the form of plates or roll material in the cells between the logs.
Further work provides for two options for its development:
- On the logs, you can lay a waterproofing film, fix it on the beams with staple staples, and then mount and fix with screws a one- or two-layer subfloor under a massive 25 mm board made of moisture-resistant plywood.
- If the board has a thickness of more than 30 mm, it can be laid on logs immediately after waterproofing as a topcoat.
Important! On plywood, you can lay a board whose thickness does not exceed 25 mm, that is, the intermediate layer should not be thinner than the floor covering itself.
Wooden base
Even an old wooden floor can serve as a basis for mounting a solid board, if it is reliable and durable. In any case, before use, it should be examined before placing expensive material on such a base. During an external examination, it is worth paying attention to the presence or absence of cracks, rot, chips and severe wear on its surface.
It will not be superfluous to check the creak and wobbly of its floorboards. If they occur, part of the flooring in problem areas must be disassembled and the logs must be carefully examined. If they are rotten, it is better to dismantle such a floor and create a modern new base in its place.
In case of a positive result of the inspection, the existing floor should be treated with a belt sander, the grit size of its abrasive should correspond to values of 40 or 63. After that, the surface must be cleaned of dust and covered with a waterproofing polyethylene film.
Lay the solid plank in the direction of the base floorboards. When choosing a different direction, lay 12-15 mm moisture-resistant plywood sheets over the existing floor, sand them and remove dust. After that, a massive board can be laid on the resulting base.
Methods for mounting solid boards on the floor
A solid board can be laid on the floor in two ways. Let's get to know each of them better.
Castle method of mounting solid boards
It is used when laying products equipped with a thorn-groove fastening system, and is not particularly difficult. A massive board is usually laid perpendicular to the plane of the window openings, although another option is also possible, for example, along any diagonal of the floor.
3-5 days before the start of work, the board must be brought into the room where the flooring is supposed to be laid and released from the packaging. Over the next time, the material adapts to the humidity of the environment and will not deform during the installation and further use of the floor. The relative humidity of the air in the room should not exceed 60%, and its temperature should be 10-30 ° C warm.
The order of work is as follows:
- The installation of the first row of boards should begin parallel to the longitudinal axis of the room, placing the products with a spike directed to its long wall. All boards must be leveled and fixed with screws, with the expectation that then the fasteners can be closed with a plinth.
- The side of the board opposite the wall should be fixed to the logs or plywood base with screws, screwing them into the groove at an angle of 45 °. The length of the screws should be 2-2.5 times the thickness of the product.
- Each board of the next row must be inserted into the groove of the element of the previous row when laying with a tenon. The maximum density of joining the floorboards with each other can be ensured by fitting them with the help of special blocks.
- The last row of massive boards, like the first, must be fixed with screws, suggesting the ability to hide the fasteners under the skirting board. An expansion gap of 8-10 mm should be left between the walls and the outer rows of boards.
Important! If a solid board flooring is laid directly on the joists, all its elements must be attached to each beam in turn.
Glue method of mounting solid boards
The glue method of mounting a solid board is used in cases where the material is made of valuable wood species or there is a need to veneer a floor of a large area, an irregular complex contour, or to perform a coating in the area of entrance openings. A board of valuable wood species, as a rule, is always thinner, and its length often does not exceed two meters - the considerable cost of the material affects.
The essence of laying a massive board with the glue method is that wooden floorboards, tightly connected at the joints with each other, are glued to the base with a special compound and additionally attached to it with self-tapping screws. They are screwed into the side joints of the boards at an angle of 45 °, and the heads of the fasteners are sunk into the wood by 3-5 mm.
The finished glued floor made of natural wood is very durable and resistant to deformation, it absolutely does not need expansion joints. However, such a coating is completely unsuitable for "warm floor" systems. In addition, in order to replace the damaged area on it, all floor boards laid on the glue will have to be dismantled.
How to lay a solid board on the floor - watch the video:
Summing up, I would like to note that the practicality of flooring made of solid parquet boards has been proven by centuries of impeccable service, it is respectable, spectacular and, finally, simply beautiful. A board made of solid wood is always fashionable and easily lends itself to any processing, including artificial aging. Therefore, use this wonderful material that can become the main decoration of your home!
