Oak Flooring

Solid oak flooring has been used in buildings for millennia.

It is durable, warm under foot, easy to clean and maintain, hypo-allergenic and looks damned good into the bargain.

The past few years have seen a flood of solid oak flooring coming into the UK from China and the Far East. This flooring tends to be supplied in narrow widths with open grain and short lengths - fine if you want to replace a laminate floor cheaply in a modern home.

At Peak Oak we're passionate about "paying forward" to future generations and it excites us that in a couple of hundred years, a builder restoring a building containing one of our floors would be grateful for the quality we supplied centuries before.

The solid oak flooring supplied by Peak Oak is available in 7 grades from the knotty and fissured Barn grade up to the exquisitely figured Quarter Sawn oak flooring.

Like most solid wood, oak is sensitive to changes in atmospheric humidity and will shrink or swell as its moisture content fluctuates - the effect is more marked the younger and less well seasoned the wood.

This inherent behaviour makes solid oak flooring unsuitable for use over underfoor heating, where the drying effect of constant heat will make the oak shrink and potentially crack.

Conversely, solid oak flooring should not be used where liquids are likely to be spilled or where air moisture varies regularly - this rules out kitchens and bathrooms.

Most of the solid oak boards Peak Oak supply are tongue and grooved all round, grain end matched for a more pleasing appearance on long runs of boards and have stress grooves cut into the back side to reduce warping and movement.

The standard oak boards are 19mm thick and range in length from 500mm up to 4000mm.

Finally, all of the solid oak boards supplied by Peak Oak are unfinished.

They have no oils, stains or waxes or artificial coatings applied and are supplied to you as they came off the saw mill.

Engineered oak flooring is created by bonding a thin (usually 6mm) veneer of solid oak to a backing of plyboard to produce a floor board approximately 19mm thick.

These days, most oak floors sold over the internet and in DIY stores is engineered flooring, often with the oak veneer made up of several strips and more often than not, stained and coated with polyeurethane for protection.

This can give an effect not dissimilar to laminate flooring and is something we vow never to sell at Peak Oak.

Our engineered oak flooring is made with a single, wide, oak plank veneer which is supplied unfinished i.e. with no coatings or stains applied.

When laid, our engineered flooring is indistinguishable from its solid oak counterpart.

The sole reason for Peak Oak supplying engineered oak at all, is to satisfy customer demand for flooring which is stable over underfloor heating.

The plyboard backing of engineered flooring makes it dimensionally very stable and much more resistant to fluctuations in air moisture, so as well as being good over underfloor heating, it is also a great choice for kitchens and bathrooms.

Having a real oak surface, the same durable, hypo-allergenic properties of solid oak flooring are also carried over.

Much like the solid oak flooring, our engineered boards are supplied in lengths from 500mm to 4000mm, tongue and grooved, grain end matched and have stress grooves in the underside.

Laying an oak floor in your property does not have to be difficult if you follow a few basic guidelines.

These 5 tips will help to make sure your installation goes smoothly:

1. Acclimatise your wood

Possibly the most important tip and often the most overlooked.

Wood flooring, especially solid oak, is susceptible to changes in atmospheric humidity.

If you fit your floor as soon as it arrives on site, there is no time for the wood's moisture content to balance with the prevailing conditions at your site.

If you have a damp environment, your new floor will most likely absorb moisture and expand. If you have fitted your floor and it then expands, you may find that it is strong enough to push down concrete walls!

If on the other hand, you lay flooring with a higher moisture content than that of the site in which it is being laid, the moisture will leech out of the wood causing it to shrink and leaving you with large gaps between boards or even worse, splits and cracks.

Acclimatise your wood flooring - you have been warned!

2. Ensure that you leave an expansion gap around the outside edges of your room.

In most cases this gap can be covered by skirting boards and will thus be invisible, but it is crucial that there is somewhere for the wood to expand into if it becomes slightly damp.

3. Do not glue the tongues when laying tongue and groove wood flooring.

The temptation is to create a lovely tight fit between your boards to give a smooth pristine finish by gluing the boards together.

Doing this will create "raft" which, if the floor expands, may pop up off the sub-floor and buckle or bow. This is not a good thing.

If you plan to glue your floor to a sub-floor, only apply adhesive to the underside - not the grooves or tongues.

If you are nailing or screwing your floor down, do not use adhesive or glue at all.

4. Keep your workspace clean and wear non-marking shoes.

It is amazing just how many floors can be ruined at the laying stage by a fitter's training shoe leaving large black marks on the unfinished wood.

Although this damage is not terminal, you can waste a huge amount of time sanding out marks.

The same goes for tiny pieces of grit or errant nails and screws.

Keep the area clean and tidy - it will save you hours in the long run.

5. Don't rush

The temptation is to get a job done as quickly as possible and then gaze upon your glorious new floor.

Take your time!

The old carpenter's saying "measure twice, cut once" is never more apt than when laying flooring.

It's so easy to get confused as to which board you're laying, which way round it should go, etc., etc.

Proceed in a careful, methodical way and no room should prove too much of a challenge to an experienced DIYer.

We very much hope these tips are of some use to you.

Good luck with your floor fitting!