In this short video Sally Warburton, a director of leading wood floor business, Ted Todd and Sons explains about the subfloor when installing wood flooring.
Video Transcript
Hi, I’m Sally Warburton from Ted Todd & Sons and I’m going to talk to you about subfloor ideas on behalf of floorideas.co.uk. It’s so important to make sure that your subfloor is absolutely well prepared before you think about having a delivery of timber flooring.
If you have a concrete subfloor the concrete needs to be absolutely dry, flat and clean, if your concrete subfloor is still damp you can use a DPM or damp-proof membrane which is available from most good flooring suppliers. This is a paint on product it takes two coats and twenty four hours to dry and then you can start fitting your floors.
If you’re laying over existing joists or subfloors you of course need to check for moisture or any damp ingressed there, marine ply as its name suggests prevents moisture coming through or builders paper can be used and then the floor is fitted over the top.
When fitting solid wood floors never ever use an underlay; timber expands and contracts naturally and what will happen is that your underlay will end up in a big heap underneath the floor.
When you have engineered floorboards always use an underlay – and I’ve got two types here this is a 7mm fibreboard which is very good for reducing sound and noise it has a resistance to 23 decibels or there is just the 3mm foam underlay this one actually has a heavy gauge polythene which can act as a damp-proof membrane as well.
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