How to Pick a Floating Floor

Floating floors are not a new invention. For years floating floors have been used to help reduce sounds and vibrations in rooms. For many homeowners, installing new wood flooring usually involves expensive contractors and supplies. New innovations in floating floors have enabled do-it-yourself enthusiasts to pick floating floors in a wide variety of mediums and installation techniques, without the costs associated with traditional hard wood flooring.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Understand that a floating floor simply means flooring that is not attached to the floor beneath via glue or nails. Floating floors are installed and suspended over the sub-floor without connecting to it or the surrounding walls. A cushioning layer or underlay is placed between the original floor and the new floating floor to help protect both floors and provide extra stability.

2. Consider glued floating floor panels. Gluing individual floating floor pieces together is one of the earliest forms of floating floors. The panels can be made of nearly all floating floor mediums. One drawback to glued floating floors is they are messier to put together and messier to clean up after.

3. Try a snap or click together floating floor. The floor panels are joined together by a series of pegs and holes that are snapped individually. This type of floating floor is probably the easiest installation for the do-it-yourself handyman.

4. Pick a lock and fold floating floor. This type of floating floor is easy to install quickly and avoids the problem of some of the pegs not fitting smoothly sometimes associated with snap together flooring. Unlike the click and peg flooring, a lock and fold floor has a groove across the entire length of each panel for a smooth finish.

5. Choose cork floating floors. Floating floors made from cork are good insulators for both sound and weather. Cork flooring is considered the most earth friendly of the floating floors. Corks is generally taken from living trees without killing them, allowing them to be used again. Cork flooring is also the most hypo-allergenic of the floating floor types.

Tips & Warnings

• For the best results, be sure the subflooring is level before installing a floating floor.

Resources

• Find Discount Flooring

[FrazzledNanny]

on 1/12/2009 Great article. My parents have this in their kitchen, hallway, living room and one bedroom. My husband helped install it. :D