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I have 5/16″ thick 1 3/4″ wide face nailed oak strip flooring in my 1937 house. Most of the strips are 10′ and longer in length. I would like to install the same thing in a hall in the basement without raising the floor with an inch of plywood first to create something to nail these into. I don’t want to give up the head room, create an insulating layer over the radiant heat, or create transitions from the hall into the rooms which will be tiled. I’ve been thinking of putting down 1/4″ plywood on the concrete and then gluing/nailing (with short nails) the hardwood strip flooring to the ply.
Any cautions or alternative ideas? I’d go for a floating floor if I could find one that had strips long enough. Most of them seem to be only 3′ long.
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Dan: It'll be hard to find 10' stock anymore. In my own house, I used two layers of 1/2" CDX over my slab, powder-actuated hammered, one nail/square foot (48 nails per sheet) for something to toenail into and it worked well. Definitely added some insulation between the slab and the room, yet one more reason to go with more sophisicated controls when doing radiant. (Other reasons are the large thermal mass and, possibly, a smaller heat delivery rate. Solutions include controllers with PID logic and an variable water temperature based on outdoor temperatures.)
If using real wood, narrow strips are the way to go. The wider the strips, the bigger the gaps. All hardwood floors shrink in winter when the indoor humidity is the lowest. But radiant floors do that more so because the floor is the warmest (driest) thing in the house.
Even those manufactured wood-like products in short lengths can be used for a floating floor. For instance, the recommended way to budge the nearly assembled floating floor around is to run and abruptly land on the floor, without skidding. Your momentum is transfered to the floor and it moves a bit. It works. I'd use one of those systems to meet your goals (maximize headroom, minimize insulative effects). They also have very minimal shrinkage from low humidity.
I just could not bring myself to use semi-fake wood here in the middle of a forest. But I have the winter gaps and slower heating for having used locally milled birch.
1/4" ply would imply really short (and useless?) nails. If you glue the strips to the plywood, you are essentially recreating what Prego, et al already offer. And they have better equipment and experience than you or I. I'd go with a manufactured product and follow their installation recommendations. -David
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I have 5/16" thick 1 3/4" wide face nailed oak strip flooring in my 1937 house. Most of the strips are 10' and longer in length. I would like to install the same thing in a hall in the basement without raising the floor with an inch of plywood first to create something to nail these into. I don't want to give up the head room, create an insulating layer over the radiant heat, or create transitions from the hall into the rooms which will be tiled. I've been thinking of putting down 1/4" plywood on the concrete and then gluing/nailing (with short nails) the hardwood strip flooring to the ply.
Any cautions or alternative ideas? I'd go for a floating floor if I could find one that had strips long enough. Most of them seem to be only 3' long.