Installations

Member of the

National

Wood

 Flooring

Association

This page talks about installations of the main body of flooring (also called the field).  For installations of medallions, borders and designs go to our showroom.

There are three types of installations:

Nail down

This is the most common type of installation .  Generally used for installing 3/4" tongue&groove flooring on plywood.  Depending on the equipment used, nail down is also referred to as "staple-down".  Besides 3/4" flooring, 5/8" and 3/8" flooring can be stapled down as well.

Glue down

There are two reasons for gluing a floor down:

1. The underlayment will not permit a nail down installation (i.e.: concrete)
2. The style of the flooring is designed for glue down installation (i.e.: small block pieces, not tongue&groove etc.)

We must be perfectly honest here.  Manufacturers have had a hard time producing adhesives that perform well while keeping with the new V.O.C. (Volatile Organic Component) laws.  If the flooring itself (parquet for instance) was designed to be glued down, then there is no choice.  However, generally speaking if the only reason for considering gluing down is because the the floor has to be installed over concrete then we recommend using a floating floor system instead.

Floating

What makes floating floors superior to glue down floors, is the fact that this type of installation is less dependent on what is underneath and the installation itself is more trustworthy than gluing.  Of course the common sense rules still apply (moisture still has to be within acceptable limits, the underlayment still has to be reasonable level), but there is no glue to come undone in a few years and it can be installed over numerous surfaces: