Problems with floated floors / and doing repairs to floated floors

Floating is a very common method of fitting for engineered wood floors. This is done using an overlay placed over the existing floor, and then the tongue and grooves of the new floor are glued together meaning the whole floor floats over the original floor.

The underlay is there to cushion the floor and support the base also to provide sound proofing.
However there can be big issues with floors that are floated. This should be avoided in all domestic properties where the area is covered by two or more rooms.

When walking on a floated floor you will notice a slight amount of “bounce”, this is normal as they have not been fixed directly to the sub floor.

Floating a solid wood floor is not recommended because the amount of expansion and contraction in a solid wood floor would cause the floor to push up and distort. For this reason we recommend that a solid wood floor should always be secret nailed or screwed.