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I have a dilemma (and several related questions) that I hope somebody can advise me on.
I am building a 700 sq ft addition onto my home in Pond Inlet, northern Baffin island (2000 miles north of Toronto/Ottawa, an isolated hamlet of 1300 people, 95% Inuit). I will soon have to install about 500 sq ft of pre-finished oak hardwood flooring (3 1/4″ W x 3/4″ T). I ordered the flooring last summer on sealift (a cargo ship that sails here from Montreal during our 2-months of ice-free ocean waters).
Because nobody else has ever installed a hardwood floor in Pond Inlet, I do not have a hardware flooring nailer (but I do have 2000 2″ flooring nails for a nailer). I am told that nailers are very expensive, heavy and require compressed air to operate. (Heavy is important because air freight from Ottawa costs about $8 per lb.) Are there any relatively light, inexpensive, mechanical or electrical hardwood flooring nailers?
If I install the flooring without a nailer, I have been advised to use
1 1/2 – 2″ finishing screws (7d or 8d), but I would have to pre-drill every screw hole. I would have to order in the screws by air and the work would be very slow. Also getting the proper angle on the screws may be difficult or at least inconsistent?
I have been told that I could nail the flooring manually as well, but again I would have to order the right kind of nails (?), predrill the flooring for every nail (?) and then the manual mailing would not be as tight as with a nailer or screws (?). I am also concerned that in manual nailing the tongues may get damaged. Any comments on this alternative?
Others have suggested that I could glue the flooring done, but the manufacturer does not recommend that in their brochures. Any comments? If glueing is recommended, what type of glue and how thick would it be applied? (Dangerous goods requirements on aircraft may restrict this option even if it would work. Oh… there are no roads to our community.. only air or ship)
Another question… In Modern Carpentry by W.H. Wagner (1987)it says to put “building paper” over the sub-floor before the hardwoord flooring. This may be advisable because there is no basement… Our houses are supported on wooden supports and wedges (for leveling) on gravel pads because of the permafrost. There is R40 fiberglass insulation under the 3/4″ exterior plywood subfloor but no vapour barrier (there is an exterior Tyvek air barrier and 3/8″ preserved OSB above the crawl space which is damp for 3-4 months a year). Would be adviseable to put Tyvek (the only “building paper” I have)between the oak flooring and the sub-floor? With all the holes from the nails/screws, I am wondering if it would be that helpful.
A final question… We used exterior plywood for the subfloor which is also quite rough (knot holes, etc. in the surface of both sides of the plywood). Somebody suggested that I level it off with levelling compond before installing the oak flooring. However, I am concerned that the levelling compound may increase the moisture content of the flooring and the subfloor prior to and while installing the flooring. That could lead to unsightly gaps in the flooring boards once they or the subfloor gradually shrink over the months after the flooring is installed. (This is a polar desert and the ambient air is very dry.) How level should the subloor be under the oak flooring?
Any and all advice will be most helpful. Construction this far north is very different for that in southern Canada and the US so I hope that I have described the situation adequately so some knowledgeable persons can give me some good advice and alternatives.
I have been subscribing to Fine Homebuilding for many years (6-7) and really enjoy it. It is fun to try adapting the many great ideas in it to our unique conditions in the High Arctic. This is the first time that I have written to the discussion on the web site.
Sincerely,
Mike Ferguson
PS: If you are interested in learning about this part of the world, check out my wife’s site, hp://www.tununiq.com
Replies
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Mike: I'm not as far north nor as far removed as you are, but we get -40C winters here and I am familiar with building practices in Barrow, Alaska. I've installed exactly the flooring you describe and given your constraints I would recommend:
Hand nail it. Works fine. The cheapest drill bit to use is one of the 7d or 8d nails you'll be using. Just chuck the nail into your cordless drill. It's good for about 30-40 holes before the chisel edges of the point get pretty worn. When hammering the nails, stop short. You don't want to bung up the flooring. Drive it home with a nail set. (Focus your eyes on the top the nail, not the top of the nail set.)
Snap chalk lines where your joists are. Or mark the walls and transfer to chalk lines on the tar paper / tyvek. If nobody has some tar paper laying around, I'd use the tyvek you have and be careful not to slip and fall on it.
Get the flooring as dry as you can before installation. Your indoor humidity is so low in the winter, you'll have big gaps between the pieces by late winter if it is not really, really dry when you install it. Ideally, you'd sticker it and store it in a warm room all winter and than nail it down in Feburary when it is at its driest. Just put half a sheet of plywood over the pile and cover with a table cloth. It will look like a coffe table. A fan at one end would be ideal.
Don't worry about the divots in the CDX. 3/4 T&G oak can span a hole of several inches, no problem. Patch anything structural or approaching 12 inches in radius, but don't worry about little dips.
It can take a surprising amount of time to dry out wood. A month or two is not too long. And with one side finished, there's only one big side to dry out through. I doubt anyone has a wood moisture meter on Baffin Island (I can borrow where I am). But someone may have a sensitive enough megaohmeter. Or the local drug dealer will have a sensitive gram scale with which you can track weight changes in a few representative pieces that you slide out of the pile every other week to check progress. But, hey! Why worry? Just do the best you can in the time you have to get it as dry as possible. Radio Shack has little air humidity gauges for about $30 that can be useful in determining your driest room and tracking the humidity through the seasons. Good Luck. -David
*There are mechanical nailers available powered by you banging on them with a big rubber mallet. They work fine and about five times as fast as hand nailing. Is time an issue on this job?
*Mike:High arctic floor manHand nailing seems like a torturous way to go. The mechanical nailer described by previous poster can be got for about $300? Who knows maybe then you can start Ponds first rental business! What about renting from a place in edmonton (or wherever you get regular scheds from) for a month. Rates are usually good for that length of time. Being a Northerner you probably are very patient,and you have a long dark winter ahead of you, but progress is painfully slow drilling and nailing by hand.I spent some time in Mould Bay, Res., and Igloolik in mid-eighties, and loved every minute of it. Really miss those long days. Hope this is useful, and good luckAndy
*I haven't nailed an oak floor since the 40s. Used square cut nails with blunt ends that severed the oak fibers instead of splitting them. Yes, the hammer flattened the edge of the tounge once in a while and it never seemed to matter. The nail head didn't have to burried in the edge of the tounge because there was a bit of rounding on the inner lip of the grouve. The trick to getting the grouved edge really snug over the tounge was to lift the tounge edge of the board as you startsd to nail it so that it pulled in as you nailed it down. For a real recalcatrant piece of flooring, we nailed a piece of scrap flooring to the subfloor to use as a lever while the warped piece was being nailed in. These were the common carpenters tricks we used then. I guess they are still good.BJ
*c'mon sombody must have an old porta-nailer they don't use anymore. i use to have one till i broke down and went pnuematic. after a day bangin' floors with the old one i walked like the hunchback of notre dame. i would send you mine good buddy but i gave it away a few years ago. and i thought erie weather was bad!
*Mike:Got so excited thinking about life up North that I forgot to answer many of your questions.1. Not all nailers are heavy and expensive. The porta nailer is a manual device that holds the nails at the correct angle,and sets them the proper diataqnce into the tongue. All you do is whack it good and hard with a mallet.2. As I said earlier, hand nailing/drilling sounds very slow to me.3.As for the tyvek, that's a good question. The way I understand it, the Building paper or felt that some (not all) floor layers use is there to reduce squeaking between subfloor and hardwood. That being said, I would want to have a vapour barrier in that floor assembly, and under the hardwood is the logical place for it. My local bldg inspector has advised me that exterior rated ply is already a sufficient v.b., but I am not convinced. As you mentioned, anything that goes down under the hartdwood is going to be essentially perforated by the nails, making its effectiveness as a v.b. questionable.Is there v.b. under the ply? Another note, I have seen old houses (60+) where they used a layer of newspaper under the hardwood. It might work for you.Keep looking around, someone smarter than me will give you the answers!Good LuckAndy
*Lord what a case for floating wood floors.Gabe
*Given that supply lines are so long, I would just go ahead and hand nail. It's only 500 feet - less than fifteen hundred nails. I've already done that much and more in my life. What else have you got to do this winter? Even if you had a porta nailer or power nailer, you would still have to hand drill and nail the first foot away from the walls.newspaper would also work if yopu layered a couple sheets under the flooring. Two reasons is to stop draft and to eliminate squeeks. Tyvek would work but is expensive - but if it's just layingf around anyway.......I've read nearly everything I could on arctic life. It was once my dream to emmigrate to Alaska. I settled for Maine. I liver on an island where isolation is part of lifestyle so I understand supply line problems to some degree.Enjoy the work!
*Thanks for the many suggestions. Today I was told by one person that I could just use an electrical or compressed-air finish nailer with 2" or 2 1/4" nails and just hold the nailer at a 45-degree angle without any pre-drilling for the nails. Do you agree?The same person also suggested that if I am concerned about the tightness, then I could put a thin bead PL400 sub-flooring glue between the subfloor and each piece of oak flooring. That would only work if I eliminated the building paper. Do you think I should use the glue or just the nails and tyvek?Sincerely,Mike
*I agree that if the nailer fits in the space, then you don't need to pre-drill anything. But the nose on many nailers is not small enough to drive the nails home on the top of the tongue. But try it on a test piece.The glue won't eliminate gaps from drying. Each piece will still shrink (if installed with higher than mid-witer moisture) and there will be gaps between the boards.
*A floor nailer will drive the pieces of flooring tighter together to eliminate ssspaces. Just using a finish nailer will hold the flooring down if you use plenty of nails but you'll likely need to have someone else use prys and levers to force the pieces tight. Finish nails from a gun are lighter gauge too so it might be wise to use the glue without paper to hold it. Using glue will also eliminate squeeks.
*If I used the nails to drill the holes as you suggested, wouldn't the nails tend to loosen over time since the holes would be the same size as the nails?Could I use the nails that are made for the nailer by hand? The problem that I see is that the heads are L-shaped from the nail shaft and it appears that it would be difficult to keep the nail set on the head. The nails are made by Primatech.Thanks,Mike
*Time is an issue. We've been at the project for two years and my wife wants to open a B&B. I only have evenings and some weekends because my job takes me out of town for 2-4 weeks at a time several times a year.Do you know of any suppliers of mechanical nailers in Canada? Ontario (Ottawa) is the closest. Perhaps I could find a place with a good used one that I could buy relatively cheap.A web search on nailers in Canada gave me only web address for them (www.primatech.ca) but my browser did not get a response from their web site. The nails that I have are Primatech.Sincerely,Mike
*For manual installation, exactly what size and type of nails would work. I.e., are there special nails for hardwood flooring or would any finish nail work?Length: 2 " or 2 1/4" ?Diameter: 7d or 8d? (Basic question: are "d" and "gauge" the same thing? The fellow that suggested the finish nailer suggested 16 gauge... much smaller than 7 or 8 gauge (if d = gauge))The nailer nails that I have do not indicate gauge (or d)... just that they are for 3/4" hardwood flooring).Thank you everybody for the ideas... and it is interesting to see where everybody is from and their experiences.Please reply but I can't get back to you until Wednesday night (internet is via long-distance to ottawa and connection speed is very slow so I connect only when the telephone rates are low... Monday, Wed and Sat nights).Thanks,Mike
*a new porta nailer is 219.99 and nails are 17.99 for a 1000 count box, 129.99 for a 10000 count box. even if shipping is a hundred bucks it's worth it. with your conditions and the fact that this is going to be a b&b do it right. why not go into the floor installation business? sounds like you have a captive market. order from tool crib: 800-635-5140 or toolcrib.amazon.com
*MikeTry OEM - Pro Am Tools in Ottawa. Haven't dealt with them but they do have a website and the prices are decent by Canadian standards.Paulhttp://www.oemproamtools.com/oem.htm
*Does your wife know that you are trading overnite stays for all this advice?;>)
*piffin:Isn't that more like 4000 nails? 2 nails per lf per board,4 boards per s.f. =8 nails per s.f.x500=4000. Am I wrong?Andy
*There is a better technique called 'folding wedges', where a scrap piece of flooring about 6" long is cut in half along its length, the cut made about 5 degrees from parallel so you end up with two wedge shapes. Another piece of scrap flooring is screwed temporarily to the sub-floor and the wedges are used against that.
*yes Ian the wedges are a good one man solution. I didn't know if he was equipt for all that screwing.andy my math checker - I was thinking one nail per lineal foot, three pieces per foot. 3 x 1 x 500= 1500 but I see that at 3 1/4" it would be 4/ft so I'll up it to 2000. Thanks for keepinmg me honest.
*Hey Piffin, I make it pretty near 4000 nails. At one every 8", 3.7 courses per foot gives 5.5 nails per square foot for 700 sq ft. Anyway, the man needs a portanailer. Hand nailing that much floor would be a job that would put me in the hospital. And knee pads, too. Don't forget the knee pads. The starting and finishing 3 or 4 or more courses will have to be predrilled and hand nailed. I forget how close you can get to a wall with one of them backbreakers. Ron
*This is on tool my wife actually wants me to buy (she wants the floor done).Any thoughts or comments on which of the following would be best:1. from http://www.oemproamtools.com, a bostitch manual nailer (mfn200)at $349.99 Cdn ($222.47 US) ... see note under 3 below.2. from http://www.primatech.ca (the site worked tonight), H300 (single hit) or H330Pro (multiple hit, ratcheting) nailers (anybody know which is better a single or multiple hit manual nailer? See note under 3 below) Prices not given on the site.3. from http://toolcrib.amazon.com, Porta-nailer 401P... according to one of the reviewers on the amazon site, this is a ratchet multi-hit nailer as well and easier to learn how to use than the single hit Bostitch nailer (except 2x the hits)... $219.99 US (about the same price as the Bostitch in Canada)... ordering from amazon introduces problems of waiting for customs clearances and that could take some time for a heavy metal object since the tragic events of Sept 11 and the new border security steps.Re: the number of nails... the Primatech site has a chart and calculator (for the number of boxes of nails)... one box of 1000 nails reportedly covers 225-275 sq ft of 3 1/4" flooring (10"-12" between nails) so my 395 sq ft would require 2 boxes. I'll probably get 3 to be on the safe side.The primatech site seems to have lots of good info on installing flooring (complete with animations) so you might want to check it out... http://www.primatech.ca I have no idea if their nailers are any good though.Re: Ian's folding wedge... I do not understand how it would be done/used???Thanks for the advice everybodyMike
*2000 is right then. Too many nails splits and splinters the tongue - not to mention making your tongue hang out. LOLwedge is not folding - you take a scrap of flooring material about 18" long and rip it lenghthwise at about 3-4 degrees so you've got two wedges that when held together form a piece of flooring a little narrower than normal. place them on the floor next to a piece of recalcitrant flooring that doesn't quite seem to want to tighten up to the previous. slide them apart in the lenghthwise directionabout halfway. Now screw a block to the floor on the outside edge. That block is approximately 2-1/2" away from the flooring you are working on now. Use your hammer to tap the two wedges together. As they slide between the flooring being installed and the block screwed to the floor, they are tightening up and wedging the flooring over tight. Then you can nail it.Another tip - as outlined above, you are covering 18" of the flooring edge and can't nail it there while the wedge is in place but releasing the wedge looses the gains. Solution? Use a short flooring scrap about three or four inches immediately next to the flooring and move the whole apparatus away by another 3-1/4" Hope this is clear. It's harder to describe in words than with a scketch.
*This might be clearer
*Way to go Ian! Yours is a shorter wedge with a sharper angle than I describe.
*My hardwood floor is nailed down with those square-cut nails, but I'm lucky to find one every 3' or so. Small pieces just floating in there, no nails at all. Floor actually has fairly tight joints still, some 50 years after it was installed.
*I drew it that way for clarity, but in fact I use about 5 degrees. I prefer a short wedge to get over the problem you've already mentioned about the wedge getting in the way of the nailer.I think a point to make here is that it is real easy for the inexperienced person using folding wedges to get a curve in the floor -- I only use them if there is no other way to drive the board up hard.
*Well like Dave I've nailed in the Northcountry using both hand nailing and a finish air nailer. Best was the hand nailing but surprisingly the air nailer did a decent job most of the time. I had to set the nails but getting them within a couple hammer blows of done sure did save the old wrists.You don't have that much to do so I wouldn't dink with it, I'd try the finish nailer with your specific lot of wood. Then use the way that was easiest for you. By the way if the building is ever going to have any temperature variation don't try too hard to make the joints tight. Sure will save on splits later.
*I'm kicking my own butt here, saw one of those hand nailers at an auction last month, and got out of the bidding at about $20, figured I didn't really need it anyway... If I see another one I'll send it to the arctic.
*Thanks for the written description and Ian's drawing really helped me. I've ordered a ratcheting manual nailer from Primatech in Quebec... Their price $300 canadian was good.Thanks, y'allMike
*Now when all your neighbors revel in the new floor and are dying to have one just like it you can either rent it out or earn invitations to many a potlatch! May all your nails come home!
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I have a dilemma (and several related questions) that I hope somebody can advise me on.
I am building a 700 sq ft addition onto my home in Pond Inlet, northern Baffin island (2000 miles north of Toronto/Ottawa, an isolated hamlet of 1300 people, 95% Inuit). I will soon have to install about 500 sq ft of pre-finished oak hardwood flooring (3 1/4" W x 3/4" T). I ordered the flooring last summer on sealift (a cargo ship that sails here from Montreal during our 2-months of ice-free ocean waters).
Because nobody else has ever installed a hardwood floor in Pond Inlet, I do not have a hardware flooring nailer (but I do have 2000 2" flooring nails for a nailer). I am told that nailers are very expensive, heavy and require compressed air to operate. (Heavy is important because air freight from Ottawa costs about $8 per lb.) Are there any relatively light, inexpensive, mechanical or electrical hardwood flooring nailers?
If I install the flooring without a nailer, I have been advised to use
1 1/2 - 2" finishing screws (7d or 8d), but I would have to pre-drill every screw hole. I would have to order in the screws by air and the work would be very slow. Also getting the proper angle on the screws may be difficult or at least inconsistent?
I have been told that I could nail the flooring manually as well, but again I would have to order the right kind of nails (?), predrill the flooring for every nail (?) and then the manual mailing would not be as tight as with a nailer or screws (?). I am also concerned that in manual nailing the tongues may get damaged. Any comments on this alternative?
Others have suggested that I could glue the flooring done, but the manufacturer does not recommend that in their brochures. Any comments? If glueing is recommended, what type of glue and how thick would it be applied? (Dangerous goods requirements on aircraft may restrict this option even if it would work. Oh... there are no roads to our community.. only air or ship)
Another question... In Modern Carpentry by W.H. Wagner (1987)it says to put "building paper" over the sub-floor before the hardwoord flooring. This may be advisable because there is no basement... Our houses are supported on wooden supports and wedges (for leveling) on gravel pads because of the permafrost. There is R40 fiberglass insulation under the 3/4" exterior plywood subfloor but no vapour barrier (there is an exterior Tyvek air barrier and 3/8" preserved OSB above the crawl space which is damp for 3-4 months a year). Would be adviseable to put Tyvek (the only "building paper" I have)between the oak flooring and the sub-floor? With all the holes from the nails/screws, I am wondering if it would be that helpful.
A final question... We used exterior plywood for the subfloor which is also quite rough (knot holes, etc. in the surface of both sides of the plywood). Somebody suggested that I level it off with levelling compond before installing the oak flooring. However, I am concerned that the levelling compound may increase the moisture content of the flooring and the subfloor prior to and while installing the flooring. That could lead to unsightly gaps in the flooring boards once they or the subfloor gradually shrink over the months after the flooring is installed. (This is a polar desert and the ambient air is very dry.) How level should the subloor be under the oak flooring?
Any and all advice will be most helpful. Construction this far north is very different for that in southern Canada and the US so I hope that I have described the situation adequately so some knowledgeable persons can give me some good advice and alternatives.
I have been subscribing to Fine Homebuilding for many years (6-7) and really enjoy it. It is fun to try adapting the many great ideas in it to our unique conditions in the High Arctic. This is the first time that I have written to the discussion on the web site.
Sincerely,
Mike Ferguson
PS: If you are interested in learning about this part of the world, check out my wife's site, hp://www.tununiq.com