I’ve recently torn out the floor system in a section of our house and will soon be re-installing new trusses and subfloor. In order to get the eventual new floor height identical to the old, I’m wondering how thick new solid wood flooring is?
The old floor was down to 13/16 and appeared to be originally 7/8″ as evidenced by the pieces pulled up under some built-ins. I’m guessing I’m not going to find anything in solid, long length flooring that is that thick today, so I’ll need to set the trusses and new subfloor at a height that accommodates the new solid flooring.
FWIW, the old flooring could not be salvaged due to extreme water damage and many random deep gouges.
Replies
Unfinished oak flooring is typicall 25/32" and you will probably want to use a 3/4" t&g subfloor that is glued and screwed to the new floor trusses. This sounds like an older home. Why do the joists need replaced?
Chuck
live, work, build, ...better with wood
The room in question was a 1920s addition put onto our 1916 bungalow. The existing floor system consists of 2x8s spanning 18' with 3/4 pine subfloor and the oak on top. The room bounces like a trampoline. The basement below will become my office and thus I want an open floor plan, so no support posts. I already tried sistering a few of the existing joists and adding more blocking, but it did little good at those lengths. Thank you for the info on the oak floor thickness.
We live in a 1921 bungalow and I know about the trampoline effect. You will lose some ceiling height.post pics.There are a lot of us out here that live in older homes looking for good solutions. It sounds like you plan to do it right. How do you plan to support the Joist system on the out side walls. The original joist are probably on a mud sill.Chucklive, work, build, ...better with wood
I am cutting out the old joists a few at a time back to the wall bottom plate. Then I am nailing 2x material planed down and cut to fit snug under the bottom plate, on top of the mudsill and against the rim. This should keep the walls from wanting roll on the rim. After the joist bays have been filled in, I'm lag screwing a PT 2x10 ripped down to sit flush at the top with the rest of the 2x I pieced in. I'll probably need to cut a filler of plywood or planed down 2x to fill the mudsill out flush. Essentially, I am created an 8" beam sitting a top the mudsill and CMU foundation. Then I'll attach truss hangers and pop in the new 2x4x11 wood trusses. The bottom few inches of the trusses will bear against the CMU walls.I've already dug the basement floor deeper than the original. This was the result of an unexpected need to underpin the existing basement walls. I'll post some pics as I move forward.
You can get new T&G flooring in a variety of thicknesses, some 'nominally' 3/8, 1/2, or 3/4, and some exact, depending on country of origin and whether metric or imperial. I've seen some odd thickneses i stuff like purpleheart. The ply you put down can also vary in thickness if metric, so before you set your trusses, you may wish to suss that out ahead of time. If you sand the new floors, you'll lose some height that you won't lose with pre-finshed flooring.
If you have acccess to below, i was wondering if you considered new I-joists between the old joists? I have 12" ones on 24" centers for my carport/deck...i can cha-cha out there, and that's before adding a covering below to increase the torsion-box effect.
Here are a couple excellent forums for flooring Ian preferred:
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/flooring/
This one has some valuable cautionary tales about ordering from Chinese suppiers by paying up-front.
Floormasters.com has a forum as well, modded by the founder, Bill Price, a really nice man.
I had considered adding in new i-joists as there's plenty of access below. But using the trusses allows me to easily run my HVAC.I'll post pics soon as I hope to begin setting the new trusses in a few weeks, as soon as my workload eases.Thanks for the info.