Wood is one of the best materials to use for flooring: it is long lasting, versatile and is aesthetically pleasing. In addition, there are so many options on the market. This makes finding the right flooring for your home an overwhelming task. Not all wooden flooring options are suitable for your needs. There are a number of factors you have to take into account.
One of the wooden flooring options catching the attention of homeowners is the floating timber floor. It is cut directly from the wood log and consists of one solid portion of wood and made from recycled timber. This is in contrast to the layered floorboards which are available with laminated or engineered floorings and use expensive species of wood in their making.
There are a number of reasons why you should consider floating timber floors, and here are some of them:
- Cheaper: As mentioned above, solid hardwood flooring is made of expensive timber species. It also requires specialized labor to install. All this makes installing solid hardwood flooring an expensive proposition. In contrast, floating timber floors are made of recycled timber from a single piece of wood and is easy to install. In fact, some floating floors come with instruction manuals for installation and “fixed length” packages, making installation an easy task. This also eliminates the use of professionals from the process, thus cutting down on the labor charges.
- Avoid that creaking sound: One single reason to avoid traditional solid hardwood flooring is the creaking noise it makes. This happens due to the gaps and the warped sections in the floor. This is not the case with floating timber floors. These floors are made with rigid quality controls during the process of manufacturing itself, thereby avoiding common issues like “lipping” and height differences between the floorboards.
- Smooth Finish: A smooth finish in floating timber floors is ensured. This is because these floors are fitted using a technique known as “cross-lamination”. In this technique, each floor layer is set at right angles to one another. This has the effect of dramatically reducing the bending, twisting and the moving around, which is the case with solid hardwood floors. These issues are common especially in humid/ tropical climates because solid hardwood floors are usually fitted when the floors are still damp. This results in greater warping and gaps as the floorboards expand and contract. However, floating timber floors are installed only when the wood is completely dry, thereby allowing each board to adjust and expand into a smooth finish.
- Allows for Expansion/ Contraction: Other flooring options such as laminated floors are contained on almost all the sides by walls. There exists an expansion gap which is needed around the perimeters of the flooring, implying that containment is not the only way of keeping the floating floor in place. This has the benefit of allowing the floor to move with changes in climate/ humidity.
- Environmentally Sound: Floating timber floors are primarily built out of renewable timber, as compared to hardwood floors which are made of a particular species of a tree. The hardwood floors also use a huge amount of wood and are usually up to 16mm thick.
\As floating timber floors become more popular, newer varieties are emerging by the day. They come in a variety of color options. Processes such as sand-and-refinish enhance the looks of the floor, in addition to adding a few extra years to the wood. These kinds of floors are long lasting and can last up to 85 years. In all, the floating timber floor happens to be the best alternative among all the other options, so you can be sure of your investment yielding returns.