Re: What's the best kind of flooring for the southeast?

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Have built two houses in past 10 years, one in

Feb 15, 2017, 10:07 PM

Western NC, one in Greenville, SC. Both were white oak. One was over a crawl space, so very standard installation, the recent one on a slab. We decided to not glue the wood to the slab, but to glue 3/4 inch subfloor to the slab, then standard installation of the wood to the subfloor. Both floors are white oak.

The key to both - which relates to your humidity question - was to have the flooring delivered to the house two weeks before installation. As this is one of the latter jobs it is easy to want to hurry it along, but don't. Acclimation is important. In our case the wood was milled in Greenville and warehoused only 6 miles away, but the mill owner said to acclimate nevertheless, so we did. Neither floor has been any problem at all, transitions from winter to summer and back without a blip.

We handled the subcontracting for the floors ourselves, and found a local mill that sold us leftover lots at a great price (I think I remember about $2.50/ft). This is required slightly different wood from room to room, but that actually worked out to be a feature rather than negative. We found an installer-finisher who installs gym floors and was between jobs, and I think his laying and finishing cost was about $1.50/ft. This was before the cost of the subfloor, glue, poly, etc, so when it was all done we have about $6.00 or $6.50/ft in it.

That is way more than you wanted to know. Have the wood inside the house two weeks before installation, you will be fine.

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and follow them to a tee. Your installer will be smarter than the instructions and will know it's okay to take shortcuts then he'll blame the problems on manufacturers' defects.

I'm an engineer and do structural inspections. I only get calls where there are problems. In winter I get calls for gaps in floors, in summer I get the buckling and cupping calls.

1. Very important - Acclimate the product 2 weeks minimum, but read the manufacturer's recommendation. You can not wait to long. This means the house is closed up and HVAC is running like normal as if you were living in the house.

2. If at all possible, put the floor down in fall or spring.

3. Make sure there are no humidity issues in the crawl space. Tape your vapor barrier joints. Check your foundation block. If it has a white chalky substance on it, then you probably have high moisture and may need to address this first.

4. Take moisture readings of your subfloor and make sure they are in the manufacturer's range.

5. Carefully inspect the vapor barrier that goes on top of the subfloor, especially at edges of vents.

6. Make sure that the moisture readings of the new floor are within manufacturer's tolerance as well. It should be very close to the sublfoor.

7. Gaps at the edges are required and important. Be careful around openings. This is where expansion is sometimes limited.

What's the best kind of flooring for the southeast?