Installing Engineered Oak flooring

Installing Engineered Oak flooring can be a job for the DIY enthusiast but different fitting methods require different levels of skill and knowledge.

There are detailed instructions for laying engineered Oak boards on the stone and wood shop website.

See our installation page for more information.

Here is an outline of the most common installation methods

Engineered Oak boards as a structural floor

In this situation the engineered Oak boards are fixed by 'secret nailing' (see below) them to your timber joists to form a new floor or to replace existing floor boards. The engineered Oak flooring must be suitable for the task, so normally 20 mm thick and the joists should be spaced no wider than 400 mm centres.

As a floating floor

Engineered Oak boards are built in layers rather than machined from one solid piece of Oak. There are a number of ways of doing this but the result is an 'engineered' board which is sufficiently stable that it does not need to be fixed down as you would for a solid board. The engineered boards can be glued together and laid on an underlay. This is a 'floating floor'.

By secret nailing

Engineered Oak boards can be fixed to existing floorboards, plywood or chipboard decks by 'secret nailing'. This involves using a nail gun which fires special nails at an angle through the tongue of the board and into the subfloor beneath. The 'groove' of the next engineered board, when installed hides the point where the nail is driven in- hence the term 'secret nailing'. Nail guns suitable for fixing engineered Oak flooring can be found at most hire shops. Use 38 mm nails for 15 mm thick engineered boards and 50 mm nails for 20 mm boards and don't be tempted to use the ' Paslode ' type builders gun to fix your engineered Oak as these smooth, non serrated nails are not suitable.

Stick down method

This method can be used on plywood & chipboard but when laying Engineered Oak boards on a timber background the ' secret nailing ' method is the most straight forward way of achieving a ' fixed down ' floor. Similarly if you want to 'fix' your floor but have a concrete subfloor you will need to 'stick down' to the subfloor.

We recommend a method which combines an acoustic underlay with a very powerful flexible adhesive, details of which are on the stone and wood shop web site.

When sticking any solid or engineered Oak board it is very important to ensure the concrete or sand and cement screed is fully dried.