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Hardwood flooring project - Particle board subfloor

14 years ago

I am going to be installing 3/4 inch solid prefinished hardwood floors. I will be nailing the hardwoods down. I pulled up the carpet and saw that my subflooring is made up of particle board. It looks like about 3/4 inch particle board. And underneath the particle board is probably another 1/2 of plywood. I have talked to many different people and heard many different methods on what I should do. I know that I shouldn't install the hardwoods directly on the particle board, everyone agrees that is a bad idea. I am trying to determine if I should pull up the particle board and put something in it's place, or if I would be ok to run something on top of the particle board. I would prefer to run something over the particle board, because it will be much less work, but I want to do it right. Is it worth the extra effort to pull the particle board up? Next question, what should I put down? Plywood? OSB? I have heard different things here to. If I pull up the particle board, I was thinking of putting down 3/4 inch ply. If I left the particle board in place, I might just use 1/2 inch ply. This is a multi level house and underneath this flooring is another living space, do I need to put any type of moisture barrier, etc.? Would glue down be an option? Or do I need to nail? I know this is a lot of questions, I have never done hardwoods and want to make sure I do it right. Thanks! Carl

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stp1
14 years ago
Yuck particleboard. You have my sympathy. We just went through the exact same thing. We took bids from several flooring co's and contractors. In our opinion, the best solution was the following, and that's what we did. The floor planks are just now being installed and look great:

1. Remove the particleboard using a skilsaw and crowbar. Also remove any felt/paper below it. This took 2 guys less than an hour per 100 square feet.

2. If your subfloor is less than 5/8" plywood, add an additional layer of 5/8" CD/X plywood. Lay it down in the opposite direction of the existing subfloor, glue and screw it, probably into the joists (ask someone about that). We used exterior fir plywood, not advantech or OSB or interior underlayment. This took 2 guys about 3 days to do 1000+ square feet.

3. Install the hardwood planks the standard way. Our contractor said no need for any vapor barrier, for us. I get the idea from experts that paper may have been more useful back when subfloor was 1x6 boards -- it would have given a smoother installation surface and also prevented dust from falling through the floor into whatever was below it.

I personally hate particleboard so I advocate removing it. The time-consuming aspects of the overall job are installing the additional plywood and the floor planks -- removing the particleboard is comparatively not much work. If you leave it in, you will have to put at least 5/8" ply on top to conform to wood floor manufacturers' warranty requirements. And that will lower your ceiling height, which may be an issue if you're in a 1960s/70s era house. Plus, a particleboard sandwich on ply just doesn't seem very stable (or nutritious).

I'm no expert but I trust my contractor and he has a pristine reputation. Hope this helps!
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I think the key word is "floating". This isn't a floating floor, it's a naildown. I don't believe it's going to be nearly as effective in a naildown situation, as most of the noise that is "muffled" in a floating situation is from the fact that there isn't good solid contact with the subflooring, as in nailed down. WHen there is good solid contact with a subfloor, the majority of the noise produced is from the reflective (rather than absorbtive) nature of the hardwood surface itself. Sound just echoes more into the air from a hardwood floor than it does from a sound absorbtive carpet floor. No amount of underlayment is going to alter the nature of the sound echo produced because the flooring is a hard floor product and not a textile based flooring product. It may be possible that installing a manufacture approved for naildown installation sound barrier can help with some of the percussive sound transmission from floor to floor, but it'll never be as quiet downstairs as if carpet on padding was the second floor material. And, you'll still get sound echoes upstairs that travel through the walls and open areas, simply because the wood surface reflects sound. You can't alter the basic nature of a hardwood floor. You can use rugs and additional soft furnishings to moderate the sound absorbtive properties and mitigate some of that reflectivity, but you'd have to practically cover all of the rooms wall to wall with rugs to make it be as quiet as carpet could be.
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I am a DIYer, so any pro responses could override my thoughts. 1/32" is nothing, IMHO. I installed engineered flooring several years ago over vinyl tiles glued onto concrete. The tiles were thin, but likely thicker than 1/32". Some of the tiles were loose, and I removed them. I did nothing to even the floor where the tiles were removed, because, as I recall, the installation instructions allowed me to ignore such minimal variations. The composition of engineered or hardwood flooring allow it to bridge over these. Also, because your unevenness is near walls, there will be minimal repetitive forces applied there. You could be double safe by applying a mortar-like product made to feather such variations. To me, this is easier and less messy than feathering by sanding.
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