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float or glue an engineered wood floor over radiant heating & slab

Andrea Soberman

last year

We are building our first home, with hydronic radiant floor heating. We are considering engineered wood floor- however our builder wants to glue it. I have heard if we ever want to change that in the future, it will be very difficult and he should float the floor- Is one better than the other. We are also considering tile (but at this time might be out of our budget) any other recommendations.

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Comments (3)

User
last year
last modified: last year
Glued down engineered is the only way engineered should be done over slab. If you pick wisely, and care for it properly, it is a 60 year floor. However, hydronic heat and a warm enough climate to require a slab foundation is double the hvac expense for poor control and a lagging response. And, you get knocked out of having any but the most expensive wood, as most wood is incompatible with most hydronic. If you live in a cold enough location that your heat stays on for 9 months, and you don’t need AC, then pouring a slab just to have radiant is also flawed thinking and an unneeded additional expense. You really ought to be using tile for sure then, if you’re going to the expense of a slab for radiant. Wood is an insulator against heat transmission. . Or skip the ultimate 100K add on hydronic upgrade.
dan1888
last year
Smart Core Naturals that you can see at Lowes, Geowood and others use SPC core with wood veneer as the wear layer. These would work for hydronics without regard to wood species. Flooret has a Swedish product, Silvan Hardwood,
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engineered floors on concrete slab - radiant heat or no?
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Electric floor warming systems are for floor warming only. They do not heat the room. If your slab is uninsulated, then in your cold environment your floors won't even really get warm as the heat will be sucked out through that slab into the outdoors. It'll be a waste of money. I'm really surprised that you actually have slab construction in such a cold climate. Slab requires footings to be dug down below the frost level so it won't heave, and in your area, that's down low enough that it's not that much further to do a basement. And to do a slab without insulating it is also strange. I would not put hard surface flooring in such a situation where you cannot install the sleepers and additional insulation. Your best bet for comfortable flooring will be for carpet. The padding will give a small amount of insulation between you and that freezing cold slab.
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Floating floor over radiant heat.
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IMO you should go with a allure vinyl plank flooring or enginered floor. Laminate Wont hold up well reguarless of the brand.
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Question about glue down cork floors and radiant heat.
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If the manufacturer says it's OK over radiant, I'd trust that. Duro Designs told me in writing [via email] that their glue down was fine as well, though I don't know if they've changed the website to reflect that. When you think about it, there's no less flexible material than grouted tile, but that's commonly used over radiant. I think the reason there's so much trouble finding radiant approved flooring is that once the floor and heat system are installed, the homeowner is in the drivers seat: there's nothing to stop you from trying for a little greater efficiency by turning the water in the pipes up to 120 degrees if you like, and that can cause a lot of materials to fail. So the flooring industry tries to limit it's liability by saying 'fine over radiant, so long as the water in the pipes is kept at 85 degrees'. When you think about it, that's just silly: every floor gets hotter than that when the sun shines through the window or the fireplace is burning or near a heater. So why 85? Because it 'feels' warm to your skin. There's no materials testing, no scientific standard in play other than that. FWIW, I have radiant accross my main and upper floors. The tile is noticeably warm under barefeet, the laminate less so, the floating cork less, the carpet [despite special pad] not at all. I think a glue down cork will transmit heat at least as well as the floating, and would have used it if my heat pipes weren't the sort that rest on top the subfloor, rather than below. It isn't that the cork feels cool at all, it's just that the warmth doesn't make itself known in the same way. BUT be sure to insulate well below the heat: we all know that heat rises, but it also follows the path of least resistance. Cork is a resistor, a 'dam' for the heat, so you'll want an even bigger heat dam below it.
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Can I glue down a floating engineered wood floor?
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Comments (11)
If these are Torlys engineered click together floors (with the HDF core) you are going to have concerns gluing down. Only if this is SOLID CORE hardwood engineered flooring can you look to glue down. The problem: HDF moves A LOT. It LOVES to expand and contract (as much as 1" over 25 linear feet....that's a LOT). The hardwood on top DOES NOT! If you glue down the HDF core product, you restrict a DYNAMIC plank. That plank will have problems. It will eventually rip itself away from the adhesive....the expansion forces will break the glue bond. And the glue is NOT grabbing the HDF....it is grabbing the CORK UNDERLAY. The cork underlay is the weakest part of the plank. Go ahead and pick at it with your nail. It crumbles after a few strokes. That's what the glue will be grabbing. It would only take one full "heating-cooling" cycle (winter-summer) for the bond to break. If you have installed floating floors with T-moldings before and "had no problems with it" then I suggest you keep going with that successful approach. Remember: "If it ain't broke; don't fix it," is something we all live by in the building industry.
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Candace
last year
We had this in our mountain home, over a slab with engineered wood - and LOVED it (it was glued down). Yes, it was more expensive up front, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. We didn’t need AC - that was key. We did have to have an ERV unit (we also had foam insulation). They ran it up to the 2nd floor and encased the tubes in Gypcrete. The warranty on the wood floor insisted on a whole house humidifier (we are in CO - very dry). The utter silence of the heating system is gold - no vents to get crap down into either. The only thing I would have done differently is put a separate thermostat on the primary bathroom - so you can keep the bedroom cool and the bathroom a bit warmer. Had to plan ahead if we were going to use guest bedrooms, as it takes hours to heat up, but that wasn’t ever a problem.

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