To have real wooden floorboards in the house or in the apartment, still arouses the admiration of guests.
Laying the floorboards has now become much easier and more space-saving, so that this noble covering no longer has to remain an unfulfilled dream.
Solid wood floors have always been thick. That's because, that the floorboards have to be laid and screwed onto a substructure, which usually consist of at least 4 to 6 cm thick slats, resulting in a construction height of 6 to 8 cm leads. This is very much, when it comes to renovation, i.e. laying on an existing floor. But there is a slimmer solution: Lay floorboards on chipboard. This leaves you with a construction height of approx 4 cm just within a reasonable range.
Chipboard as subfloor also have the advantage, that they offer the planks an absolutely even laying surface and not, as usual with the batten constructions, have to be brought into the horizontal position with wedges and washers. However, the panels themselves should also be sufficiently stable. Then they are, if their material thickness at least 22 mm and they are glued together waterproof at the joints in tongue and groove. No further pre-treatment is then necessary for laying the floorboards.
The solid wood floorboards themselves offer you the usual strengths of 20 (Nadelholz) and 21 mm (hardwood) no real choice. But with the optics: You can use them as one- or lay multi-strip floorboards, which corresponds to the country house floorboards or the ship's floor in the case of ready-made parquet. The single-strip plank consists of one piece of wood over the entire width, the multi-strip plank, on the other hand, is glued across the width from three strips of equal width.
Due to their structure, solid wood floorboards offer a virtually unlimited service life. They can be re-sanded much more often and easily than pre-finished parquet laid in a floating manner. No wonder then, that manufacturers such as Parador with a guarantee period of up to 25 advertise years. Incidentally, a surface treatment with a high-quality oil is always recommended for solid wood. Then you can partially grind out and re-oil any damaged areas, without having to process the entire surface at once.
A disadvantage of solid floorboards is their "diligence", because they work considerably more than multi-layer ready-made parquet floorboards. This requires a few measures when laying, so that over time there are no undesirably large joints or even cracks.
THE FITTING
So you have to connect each individual plank to the subfloor, so here with the chipboard, screw, in each case through the lower groove side of the floorboards. The plant wood is used, that the screw head is completely countersunk in the wood, so that you can push the next board cleanly with the spring. It is best to use the screws provided by the floorboard manufacturer, because firstly they have a special self-tapping thread and secondly a correspondingly small retractable head. It is imperative that you press the planks together tightly, before screwing them on.
Very important: Because the floorboards are only fixed to the subfloor on one side, they can be fixed on the other side, free to swell and shrink without tearing. However, a slight formation of gaps in winter is unavoidable with a natural material such as wood.
THE EDGE
As with all hard floor coverings, you also need a circumferential movement joint of 10 mm to the walls. Small locking wedges will help you with this. Feel free to leave them wedged between the floorboards and walls throughout the installation, so that the plank surface does not slip when tapping and pressing the next rows. In color and width (!) Matching skirting boards from the same range will later cover these joints.
1 Die erste oder zweite Dielenreihe müssen Sie mit einer Richtschnur sorgfältig gerade ausrichten und verschrauben, not here, as with pre-finished parquet, can be worked with glue and clamps.
2 Mit dem Zugeisen und einem Hammer fügen Sie die letzte Diele einer Reihe ein. Be sure to hold the iron firmly when hitting, otherwise the board edge will splinter.
3 Rastkeile, of which you slide two to three between the floorboards and the wall, keep the required minimum distance from 10 mm during laying.
4 Schlagen Sie die Diele mit dem Hammer und einem Zulageholz in der Längsfuge an die vorherige.
5 Erst jetzt und nur, if the joint is really tight, (see tip below), screw the board diagonally through the lower groove side with special screws. You must countersink the screw head flush with the upper edge of the spring, so that you can slide on the groove of the following floorboard.