Hello all, I’ve got about 200 ft^2 of solid wood flooring to put down in my kitchen renovation. It is over radiant heat panels sandwiched on top of the subfloor (raupanel), and the finish flooring is quartersawn white oak narrow strips. The flooring gets nailed into 1″ wide spacer strips of plywood which run between the aluminum extrusions of the raupanel and are themselves screwed into the old 3/4″ softwood plank subfloor.
My question relates to how to install this flooring to minimize gaps. I’ve let it sit in the room for about a week and a half, and it seems to have adjusted to about 10% MC, which is about what the plywood part of the subfloor is as well. Different pieces are somewhat different on both sub and finish floor, species adjustment for the meter, etc., but it seems to be around 10% anyway.
What I’m wondering is if I should run an air conditioner and/or dehumidifier in this room to make the wood go in tighter. Obviously the subfloor and flooring should be the same temp and MC during installation, but is the absolute value important for the future gap size?
Waiting until fall or winter is probably not an option…
Thanks for any advice,
-Holly Gates
Replies
With a heated floor, the flooring will dry a little more than surrounding wood, so it's even more important to get it tight and as dry as the rest of your house. How dry does your subfloor get in the winter months?
The wider the flooring, the more important this becomes. What kind of wood is it?
At the very least, get the wood at tight as possible.
Your area is small so none of this might matter a great deal.
Good building
The wood is quartersawn white oak. I'm not sure how dry the subfloor gets in winter, since I've only just bought a moisture meter.Right now the flooring is as dry as the rest of the house, but my concern is that this isn't that dry...-Holly
The good news is your flooring should be quite stable. Quartersaw flooring expands little in width.
Those moisture meters are pretty neat. It's fun to watch the changes in wood moisture as the seasons change.