help me get the facts straight before installing hardwood floor

14 years ago

I have learned so much here on this forum that I know someone will be able to explain some things to me. In my research I have decided on 4" prefinished Brazilian Teak 3/4" hardwood floor for our new build. We live in north Alabama and have humid summers and mild winters. Before I order these floors I have several questions. We will be installing over a crawl space. I know that we need to put down 6 mil black plastic in the crawl space. However we are planning on spaying the foam insulation on the block walls in the crawl space. Can we safely do this with hardwood? Also the crawl space will then not be vented as the vents must be closed up to spray the insulation. Will putting a dehumdifier in the crawl space help? We have also heard that putting a humidity control on our AC system will help us keep a constant level so that we have less chance of issues with the floor. Are 4" wide planks too wide for Brazilian teak? I appreciate any help and insight you guys can give me. I want to make an informed decision and head off any issue with the flooring by taking the proper steps in the beginning to get it right. Thanks!

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Comments (6)

glennsfc
14 years ago
There are different approaches to dealing with crawl spaces. Some involve venting and others use sealing of the space and environmental controls (HVAC) to keep the space dry.

No one answer to your situation.
riverspots
14 years ago
Well, if you want to be totally informed, then realize that by using exotic wood for your new house, you'll be forever eliminating a small chunk of rain forest.
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It's not difficult to saw out flooring at the toekick if it needs to be removed. And any water event that damages flooring will certainly damage the subfloor, or the plywood that the cabinets should be sitting on. Standard counter heights and cabinet alignment heights in kitchen design are all designed to begin at 0 as the finished floor height. Depending on the design, this can be an issue with tall cabinetry not being tall enough for the ceiling and needing to add a horizontal filler for the molding planned for it and the other cabinets. It all starts at the finished floor level. Appliances like DW's need the full 34.5 height or you may be restricted to only models that can adjust to much shorter heights. Slide in ranges are especially problematical because they aren't very adjustable and depend on the cabinets being the standard 34.5 above the finished floor. That's why plywood has to go under the cabinets and you have to know the thickness of the flooring being used during the design phase. Any other issues with doing the cabinets first mostly amount to the amount of damage that the flooring guys can inflict on the cabinets. Which can be considerable if a sander gets away from them. It's much easier to repair a hole in the drywall than it is one in the side of a cabinet. That has to actually be replaced.
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You need to do a little more archeological digging still. You need to know the whole construction of the floor before you can decide how best to install something new. I'd take up that plywood piece in the kitchen and see what's under it. It's higher than the surrounding floor, so needs to go. You should also be able to see from there what subfloor is under the original kitchen hardwood. It's too bad the space under your entryway is finished, but I'd still do some exploring from below to see what's under there, and to figure out the fix to stop it from squeaking. Is it drywall below or a drop ceiling? I know it probably seems like a pain to tear out drywall, but if you cut out a clean patch, like 2' x the width of the joists, it'll be relatively simple to repair. Just make sure to cut it down the center of the joists so that there's room to screw the patch piece to it later. Cut the hole under the area that squeaks the most, if you can. Have someone walk on and watch the floor from below to see what's moving. It might be as simple as pounding in a couple shims from below, or face-nailing a loose board from above. You want to find out what's underneath the hardwood. It might be laid directly on the floor joists, or there might be 10" wide boards that the hardwood is nailed to. Another thought is to take out a board in the hallway, since that's not original and you want to replace it. See what the subfloor is there. I am a bit puzzled at why, when you've stripped the kitchen down to the original hardwood, it's still higher than the hallway floor. Is your current surface perhaps not the original kitchen hardwood? Peeling back the plywood area will help determine that. BTW, I haven't heard of that stop squeaking product you linked to, so can't offer any personal opinion. And don't pour self-leveling compound over top of hardwood. It needs to go over plywood.
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Redroze, I'm just getting back online and seeing your questions, so I'll try to answer what I can. My new floor in the LR/DR was not pre-finished, it was all site-finished. I did put a pre-finished floor down in my office (no pics, sorry) because I work from home and didn't have time to be without my office for the week it would have taken to have floor sanded etc. The pre-finished does have a different feel to it than the site-finished. I wouldn't say it's grooved, just a more defined difference in between the individual planks. The office doesn't adjoin any other room, except the tiled hallway, so I didn't worry so much about the wood being different there. I see from your pictures what you mean about running the planks the same way and wanting to be sure things don't look odd. One idea might be to take up some of your FR planks, like the first 12 or so, and then put them back down interwoven with the new planks. That way there's not a clear line in between the 2 rooms, but rather a more gradual blending. Here's another couple of pictures, this time of my family room. The first one is a before shot of the hardwood floor + a rug-like carpet. The floor created a frame around the carpet. I had the carpet taken up and new hardwood put in where the carpet originally was, then everything sanded and refinished. You absolutely can't tell where the old wood was vs where the new started. In this case, the new is random width because it opens directly to the kitchen (as opposed to the LR/DR which is all the same width). So, one house, all new site-finished floors in the LR & DR, all new pre-finished floor in the office, original/refinished in the kitchen, and half&half refinished + original in the family room. Boy did we have dust! Hope this helps! New:
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Thanks Charles -- I did look at the guidelines that you mentioned. However, it refers to gaps 'at completion' of the job and not within the 1 year warranty period. Everything I've read indicates that installing hardwood without controlling the temp / humidity for what the living conditions will be is a big no no. Re: your comment about the 'difference in moisture content of the wood floor & subfloor' -- if they are both swollen from the high humidity, then they would both shrink under the normal living conditions right? Do they both shrink at the same rate, etc? There are numerous gaps, face checking (cracks on the tops of boards -- some with the grain and some against the grain), and gaps under the baseboards (where I can easily insert a penny). I thought this was a GREAT article that directly discusses the topic of installing with no HVAC: http://www.floordaily.net/floorfocus/challenges_involved_with_installing_hardwood_wood.aspx I noticed many installers recommended waiting or turning down the job if necessary. It sounds like my builder and the installer both made a bad decision. So, isn't this something their insurance would cover? I just want my floor fixed -- not with a band-aid for a short term solution (until the warranty runs out). I just want a good quality floor and to enjoy our new home. Sigh.........
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brickeyee
14 years ago
"Well, if you want to be totally informed, then realize that by using exotic wood for your new house, you'll be forever eliminating a small chunk of rain forest."

Or you can wait for the locals to simply burn the forest down for farm land, wasting all the wood present.
glennsfc
14 years ago
"Well, if you want to be totally informed, then realize that by using exotic wood for your new house, you'll be forever eliminating a small chunk of rain forest."
"Or you can wait for the locals to simply burn the forest down for farm land, wasting all the wood present."

Oh there isn't any real good answer here is there? Decimate the rain forest any way you want; once it's gone, it's gone for a very long time. Perhaps it'll be back when we're all gone from the planet.

It's not going to matter if the locals cut the wood down and sell it to the developed world and then use the acreage as farmland or burn it all and do the same; it (the land and soil) won't support farming for very long. There is not much in the way of useful soil suitable for farming beneath those ancient trees in that irreplaceable ecosystem. Once their land won't support farming or grazing and becomes a desert, then what is to become of them?

We've been raping the planet since we learned to walk upright. Unfortunately for the planet, once we learned how to use technology and industry to make us more efficient in our work, the destruction increased exponentially. Our technological development and industrialization will not save us from our grave mistakes here on earth. We either get our population growths under control or the 'quality of life' here on earth will suffer irreversible harm.

To quote Mick Jagger and Keith Richards "The fields of Eden are full of trash, and if we beg, and we borrow and steal, we'll never get it back."
brickeyee
14 years ago
You are invited to return to your hunter-gatherer status and live in a cave.

The rest of us are not going to stop you, but not many will participate.
jrdwyer
14 years ago
Well, if you really want Brazilian Teak flooring and do not want to promote the conversion of the rain forest to pasture or unsustainable agriculture, then source it from someone who does sustainable forestry and not just land conversion harvesting. This is probably easier said than done (especially with products coming from developing nations), as there are many people in the process between the tree and the retail flooring product and some will say/promise things that are hard to verify. Even some of the third party certification systems have found errors in their own verification in developing countries and have had to make changes to ensure integrity.

A/C systems, by their very nature, remove huge amount of moisture from the air and lower the relative humidity in a home in the summer to acceptable levels (45%-60%). This is necessary for solid wood flooring that has been dried to 6%-10% moisture content in order to prevent it from expanding excessively in the summer and then contracting again in the fall and winter with drier air.

When you say "putting on a humidity control on our A/C system," are you referring to adding a humidifier for the winter on your heat pump? We have a newer heat pump with no humidifier, a finished basement with sump pump, and a moderately tight house and the winter RH is generally the same as in the summer (40%-60%).

If you have natural gas forced air heat, it tends to dry the air out more because of the higher temps at the registers and so a humidifier might be needed if your RH gets too low (20%-30%) in the winter time. Again, this also depends on how tight/new the house is. Newer construction tends to be tighter and hold more water inside the home than older draftier houses.

The crawl space and related water drainage issues are very site specific.

help me get the facts straight before installing hardwood floor

Comments (6)

glennsfc

riverspots

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