https://diigo.com/0vou5m are under the impression that solid hardwood floors are superior in order to engineered hardwood floors and may even will not consider engineered flooring for their particular home. Having spent 25 years as being a flooring contractor plus the past 4 years as a merchant of both engineered and solid wood flooring, I have got found that right now there are a great deal of misconceptions about both sorts of floors. I would really like to share typically the following information in addition to my experience so that you can easily make an educated decision about the particular best floor with regard to your project.
Prior to I begin my comparison of engineered and solid flooring surfaces, let us first of all get rid of the misunderstanding that engineered floor is the similar as laminate floor coverings (ie-Pergo. ) Even more than a several people head into the showroom on this concept, which is not true. Laminate floor is not real wood, engineered floors is. The area layer of layered floors are a photo of wood materials on paper impregnated with melamine, not real wood. The top layer (also named wear layer) regarding engineered wood floor consists of (real! ) high-quality wood. Engineered hardwood floors are comprised regarding multiple layers regarding wood, which can be cross-banded for stability and even glued onto a plywood base.
Sturdy Flooring: Pro's
Solid wood floor is precisely that--a solid bit of wood from leading to bottom. Typically the thickness can fluctuate, normally ranges coming from 3/4" to 5/16". Solid hardwood is definitely certainly hardwearing and even resilient, and its main advantage is that it can be re-sanded a couple of times. However, it will be not necessarily outstanding to engineered floors in this respect. Solid wood floor, like engineered floor, has a "wear layer" or part of wood that can be sanded, and it will be only a fraction of the thickness of the floors. Even though solid floors are fuller compared to the wear part of engineered floor surfaces, you can only sand down so significantly before you would certainly hit a toenail with solid flooring. You may find one, possibly only two, additional sandings together with a solid floor compared to the engineered floor. You can find out more is the only possible advantage in order to solid flooring, i think, and it will not apply inside every case and generally does not outweigh the benefits of engineered floor.
Engineered Flooring: Plus
Engineered floors have several advantages. While solid floors usually are not a good solution within situations where there are high wetness levels or bright heat systems, the construction of designed floors makes these people stable enough in order to withstand certain adjustments in temperature and even moisture that may possibly produce a solid ground warp. Engineered hard wood flooring is designed to resist wood's natural tendency to change dimensionally over time. The particular grain of each layer runs inside of opposite directions, which often makes engineered flooring very stable. This means that the wood can expand and contract less than good wood flooring throughout fluctuations in humidness and temperature. For this reason designed floors are a new better choice for applications like above radiant heat installations, in kitchens, bathing rooms, and basements, or where a floors is needed to be able to span two different type of sub-floors like particle board and concrete.
One other advantage of built floors is a lot more flexibility of installation types. Whereas strong floors can simply be nailed along, most engineered flooring can be nailed or stapled into a wood sub ground, or glued along to a real wood sub floor or concrete slab. Only engineered floors can be floated, the only option when hardwood flooring cannot be attached to the particular sub-floor.
Lastly, when compared to solid wood flooring, engineered flooring is usually a more eco sustainable choice, as it may yield up to four times typically the amount of floors using the similar amount of good quality wood.
Having explained all of this, solid wood floors are usually certainly a good choice for several applications. They just are not necessarily the particular superior choice in most case, as a lot of people believe. If in doubt, the flooring contractor may evaluate your web site issues and counsel you while to the ideal flooring type with regard to your home.