Ipe Interior Flooring Recommendations?
willflysatellitesforfood
| Posted in General Discussion on
Final stages of our remodel and are ready for flooring. Bath tile’s done, cabinet toekicks are defined. Would like to install 2000 sqft of unfinished, 5″ clear grade ipe throughout interior (already have ipe decking on a couple of balconies). Planning to pnematic nail over 1/4″ rolled cork, sand smooth and apply penetrating oil/wax finish.
Anyone aware of a good southern California source?
Cautionary advice on nailing (ie., type of fastener to use, etc)?
Recommendations on penetrating oil-type finish? (tentatively planning on Penofin blue label)
Lots of previous articles on exterior applications, but painfully little on interior flooring.
Thanks in advance for all help…
Replies
This is more of a bump then any good advise.
I put some Ipe T&G on a finger pier. Used my Bostich flooring stapler to attach.
About 10% of the staples crumpled up, but were easy to remove and redo.
I was unable to sand it to a smooth level finish. I tried using my 4" wide PC belt sander w/60Grit to no avail.
The boards I used were called "trailer decking" and were mismatched up to 1/32"
I eased everything using a flapper disk in my grinder, and it worked great for my application.
I've picture galleries with beautiful Ipe floors indoor. My material just wasn't ready for that job without additional machining.
Good Luck
Ray
you dont seem to be getting a lot of responses, so I will add a few non-pro comments. Please check out the national flooring association for more info and links. I would search here a bit more too as I know there is quite a bit of info related to interior wood floors and many very very experienced finishers here.
That order is fairly respectible so you might want to take a look on the woodweb for the stock, place an add there or find a moulder company (not a tonka toy type moulder, the real deal, 6/7head wood eater). If IPE is anything like Jatoba to work with, they gotta have the right machine. The nice thing about going direct to the moulder operator is you may be able to convince them to optimize your lengths. I made my own 4.5" wide Jatoba (it looks exactly like the professional stuff) and was able to get up to 9' long pieces and could have made them 12' if I had enough infeed/outfeed space.
The cork must be a code req't for your state. I will leave that to someone else.
From my reading I found the staple was preferred by many, but it seemed to be almost a toss up between them and the nails. this is a very dense straight grained wood similar to the Jatoba and I found I did have a bit of splitting at the ends occassionally. Not too big a deal, you may have to watch the air pressure. I used a bostich. You can rent one or I see now bostich has a package deal that includes a 15g nailer if you do not have the tools. You will need a 15g nailer adjacent to walls. 18g brad nails will not go thru IPE without bending or causing you much headache.
I assume you are finishing in place to avoid the micro-bevel that pre-finished stock has. Personally, I prefer no micro-bevel too.
I finished with Bona Traffic to finish mine, but there a many manuf out there. The product I used was water based, but they have several oil based ones if you want oil. I did not find many benefits to the oil based floor finishes given the development of the products, but I know many still gotta use oil. I suggest you find a speciality floor finish company when you get to that stage. They will sell you the product, and I found a very knowledgable supplier that helped a lot.
Good luck
Brad
Ray/Brad - thanks for the responses. Hopefully others might chime in as well...
I've worked with ipe already - it's on 3 of our exterior balconies. I know all about heavy, hard, irritating dust, carbide tipped tools, pre-drilling holes, stainless fasteners, waxed end cuts, etc..
However, I have limited knowledge of its' use for interior flooring. Last floor I did was unfinished - went with Launstein's 3/8" unfinished maple and installed it myself. It was easier as it was all beveled, and I went with a basic polyurethane floor varnish.
This time, I want a better quality result. Am planning to install myself (I've got a compressor and a half-dozen guns in all the various gauges), although I'm negotiating with a flooring contractor whose crew needs work on a decent install rate as my time is pretty limited and we've got to get this house finished. Will probably get a refinisher specialist to sand it out - dust, hardness, and unfamiliarity with proper floor sanders are reasons pointing me in that direction. 2000 sqft with a hand-held belt sander would be a royal pain, and is not gonna give me the finish I'm after. I want it to look nice when it's finished...
Really want to do a penetrating oil finish - don't want the plastic poly look, mostly. Although I believe there are various issues with using polyurethane for "oily" woods like teak, ipe, etc.. as well. I want a close-to-the-wood look that will develop a patina with time. I'm not worried about scratch and dents, and I can clean and/or scuff sand and re-oil when it gets a little too beat up.
I've got an LA-area supplier quoting me $5.45/sqft delivered - am waiting for some sample sticks to verify quality.
I'm still at a loss for some solid advice regarding penetrating oil finish products. I understand Penofin to be decent, although I used TimberPro UV on our decks. I wouldn't use TimberPro inside, nor would I probably use it again for a deck as it seems to wear off too quickly (it's holding up better on my stained cedar siding). Before I commit to ANY kind of exterior-type penetrating oil for my interior floors, I'd sure like to get some positive comments by those who've done it before.
Would anyone suggest thinned Linseed? Or, polymerized Tung Oil?
Thanks again in advance for all comments...
Jim
BTW, our choice of cork underlayment is for acoustic reasons - nothing to do with code...
You should check out some of Frenchy's arguments with Floor finishers when he mentions to forbidden word that starts with S for floors. Many many chimed in on those ones and the discussion of many finishes came up. I am a bit surprised he has not suggested it to you.
Sanding unfinished is not that bad, but this would be a big job. The big wide belt sanders used by the pros that require the experience speed up the job, but you could do this with a less aggressive machine very reasonably. I bet you will have less than 1/64", maybe 1/32" differences to deal with. The varathane sander with three 7" random orbital heads and a great vac system worked well and would be really hard to screw up your floor.
No clue how well oil will hold up to traffic, so I will pay attention to learn. If you dont get a response, you might want to find one of the finishing gurus on the knots site. Those boys love there oils and several really know their stuff. I do agree the oil will look very nice. Sometimes the plastic sheen of mine bugs me.
Brad
LA-area supplier & finish
Jim,
I just received our material from an LA-area supplier also. Have you been happy with the material? Did you get a lot of movement after installation? Do you have any recommendations for installation (i.e. Glue, predrill) also what finished did you use? Any information would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Brad
There is a resin in IPE that repels many oils. Choose the wrong one and it will sit on top waiting to be easily scraped away- that is, if it dries in the first place.
Protect your investment by hiring an installer who knows what he's doing and has the wherewithal to warranty the product and his work.
We did a renovation in Manhattan and the HO bought the 1x8 IPE and hired the installer, he had to refinish the floor once and and I'm told it still looks like $18,000 worth of ####.
YMMV
The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
- Fyodor Dostoyevski
I question why.
Brazilian Rosewood or Lyptus are similar looking wood but far easier to work with for interior work.
Penofin is an excellent oil for IPE but it is an exterior oil, so the odor will take weeks to disapate.
And the sanding dust from ipe will be wicked.
But those are just hesitant questions rolling around in my mind. All surmountable.
But what really makes question marks pop up in my eyeballs is the cork underlay.
Why?
Has anybody ever laid naildown solid wood flooring over a compression layer like this? Seems to me that it would create a problem with loose nails and squeaks a few years down the road.
But I have never heard of it before so somebody educate me....
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Thanks for your post...
Am familiar with Lyptus - using it for various pieces in our MBR (frame, trim, dressers, etc.) Looks great and is really easy to work with. Pinker and lighter than ipe, though...
Good point on odor - haven't used it before so wasn't aware of that. It's just my wife and I in sunny SoCal so keeping the windows open for awhile would not be too inconvenient. Understand and concur the caution on dust...
However, you've succeeded in freaking me out on the cork query - I have ASSUMED that cork is a perfectly viable, and routinely employed means of acoustic underlayment for either wood or tile floors, AND over slab or wood framed substrates. I have now begun trying to dig a little deeper and have not found much on the internet regarding NAIL-DOWN installations. Plenty on floating, glue-down, etc.. References to the compromises in acoustic isolation realized by mechanical fastening. But nothing yet specific to nailing down wood through a cork underlayment...
We're in a hillside, ground-and-2-living-floors home that I've been trying to be sensitive to acoustic control, particularly from floor to floor (I've got a woodworking shop directly below some bedrooms).
The point you raised regarding loose nails/squeaks is freaking me out - more so in that I just placed the order for the cork rolls earlier today...
If this is a dumb-#&% move, please feel free to pile on mercilessly...
I just raise the Q because I have never heard of it before for naildown floors. might be fine. I have only known it for floating flooring.
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Hey, I appreciate you bringing it up. These guys seem to think it's an issue as well:
http://www.wecork.com/pdfs/corkunderlay.pdf
"Nailed Wood Flooring: Where mechanically fastened wood flooring is to be used, install wood flooring on double layer plywood substrate floating on top of WECU. After installation of WECU, install two layers of 3/8 in. thick plywood glued and screwed together at right angles. Do not mechanically fasten plywood substrate into WECU layer. Wood flooring shall be nailed or stapled to plywood substrate in accordance with wood flooring manufacturer’s recommendations; no nails shall penetrate through plywood substrate into WECU layer. "
(WECU is referring to the cork, presumably)
Sounds like I need to cancel a cork order ASAP!
Still welcome any suggestions for appropriate alternatives to Penofin...
We used ipe T&G throughout our entire beach house remodel a few years ago. We used Penofin for Hardwoods Exterior version:
http://www.penofin.com/products_exotichardwood.shtml
I talked with the Penofin people several times before choosing this. It boiled down to these reasons:
- There are very few products available that will truly penetrate ipe. This particular Penofin is supposedly made from oils extracted from the same family of trees that the wood came from.
- The only other product I really found that claimed to work well with ipe was Cabot's Australian Timber Oil. I found that it changed the beautiful color of the ipe too much for me, and after I was able to sand it off very easily I chose the Penofin.
I really like this product - it goes on so easily, just mop it on and wipe it off. The only thing you have to be careful of is going back about 30 minutes later and wiping up the excess. You will find that some areas of the ipe are so dense that the Penofin will just sit on top of it. Apparently this will leave a gummy residue if you don't get it wiped up.
It really has a nice natural look to it when it dries, and kind of develops a sort of patina over time. We have reapplied it on our outside porches once but have not had to inside yet. It is an oil, so it doesn't prevent scratches that a poly might, but the ipe is so hard that it doesn't scratch too easily. The best part is that it's so easy to apply that I would think you could just recoat your whole floor every few years.
After using this on all the covered porches I had, I was planning on using this interior version inside:
http://www.penofin.com/products_hardwood_interior.shtml
The Penofin people told me it was exactly the same as the other version I had used, but without the mildewcide. Apparently this is what would cause the harmful odors you are wanting to avoid. Our project ended up taking so long that I had enough time to use the exterior version inside and just let it air out for many months afterwards.
As far as installation, I found that my Powernailer worked well except on the last 12 inches of a board. It often split the tongue, especially if it was a really dark piece (the hardest). Maybe a stapler would work better in that regard. As far as the cork underlayment, I'm not sure if that will be problem or not. It probably depends on how thick it is. I used 30# felt and have had no issues, so you may want to just compare them and see. It does seem like if it was too thick and resilient you may develop some squeaks (motion between the nail and finished floor). That is not something you want to discover after the fact.
I found sanding the ipe to be pretty easy - I would think a pro would have no problem. Just be careful with the dust - I do think it is supposed to toxic.
Hope that helps - can you tell I like it?
Jamie
Jamie - exactly the sort of first hand experience I was looking for. Your description of appearance and maintenance are spot on to what I am hoping to achieve. Thanks for sharing...
I'll give the Penofin tech reps a call for final formula selection before I get started. (will also see if I can sand off the TimberPro on our decks and re-coat with Penofin!)
Did you warm the oil or thin it with anything to enhance absorption? Another Q for me to run past the Penofin reps...
If I end up installing the flooring myself, I'll use a pneumatic-assist hammer nailer. My understanding is they're the optimum choice for proper nail placement, consistently snugged boards, and adequate drive power. I didn't experience any splitting on my decking, but then I pre-drilled and countersunk all holes and used square drive stainless screws.
The installer I'm coordinating with for possible help recommended felt paper underlayment, but I presume it's primarily for moisture considerations...
Thanks again for your account and I'd love to see a pic...
Jim
http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/Deck_Construction_with_Ipe.htmlHere is another source where you could post this question.
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I'd be careful of ordering the ipe sight unseen since there are a number of closely related trees marketed as ipe, but the color variations seem to be quite noticeable.
Beer was created so carpenters wouldn't rule the world.
Ipe` is not toxic, just a great irritant."Ipe wood products contains no added harmful chemicals so it can be used near water without potential contamination, although its dust can cause a number of respiratory and contact dermatitis allergic reactions in humans."http://www.woodsthebest.com/ipe_decking/ipe-wood.htm
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End result?
Hi,
I am new to this site but found your post during a search for ipe flooring. I have a dining room I would like to install Ipe on and was hoping to get an update on your experience and final results, including finish.
I have ipe outside and have been finishing it with Messmer's UV. I have been interested in the postings about TWP 100 but they don't sell in California, so I have been informed.
Any feedback appreciated.
Thanks
jaime
General comment to Jamie's posting
Hi Jamie,
I have had pennofin used on redwood, fir and mangaris but have not found it to hold up very long. In fairness, it was applied by contractors (one deck was sprayed with the stuff) so I don't know if its failure is due to how it was applied vs the product. These decks were in two different areas of Los Angeles and applied by different people. In both locations the Pennofin allowed mold to set in and the wood became black and aged.
Regarding the Messmer's UV Natural, I have applied that myself, soaking the wood for 20 minutes and then wiping all excess off. The decks have held up fairly well. The last time I administered the product was 4 years ago to an outside east facing deck (much of it covered. The deck still maintains its color but not as vibrant as when the Messmer's was first applied. The outside walkway has taken more of a hit although it still has finish on it.
I would be interesed in your experience over the next couple of years in terms of appearance and durability.
Best .
Jaime