WOOD & LAMINATE FOCUS ON


a bit about plywood. Essentially, plywood is several veneers of wood bonded together under high pressure with a very strong adhesive, thus, creating a stable sandwich structure with each layer glued at 90° to the adjacent layer. A good quality plywood will be made from birch and be water boiled-proof (WBP). This means that if you put the plywood into boiling water for a few hours it will not break down or delaminate. When you bond the 4mm layer of oak to the plywood you create a very stable board which when installed correctly will cope with normal fluctuations in RH.


Wood floors have


developed massively and the technology and research has brought many benefits.


Another benefit with a quality engineered board is that most of them are suitable for installation over underfloor heating. Whilst there may be a few manufacturers of solid wood who say their floors can be installed over underfloor heating, I would encourage you to read the small print and understand the implications of doing this because I believe you will soon start to read that you should expect movement in the floor through the year and movement often brings squeaks and gaps which most of us don’t want to see in the floor.


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However, there’s something more to understand in all this. Wood floors have developed massively in the 18 or so years I have been involved with them and the technology and research has brought many benefits. Mills around the world have invested huge amounts of resources into developing unique finishes such as hand-scraping, band sawing, UV- cured hard wax oils, smoking, weathered, burnt and many other processes to create special colours and textures which can only be achieved in a controlled factory environment. Some of these finishes are simply beautiful and others are extremely hard wearing, either way if you were to sand the floor down you would lose the finish. Also, with an engineered board you can have a much wider plank and still have a stable product, this means that most of the special finishes you see on the market today will be on an engineered floor.


Finally there are two main reasons why a wood floor will look tired or worn out. Number one is simply a massive footfall without good care and maintenance and this is often down to user error. A correctly maintained floor will last for many years providing the right finish is chosen in the first instance and the correct maintenance procedure is put in place. The second reason is because the floor has moved after installation and is no longer flat, thus creating high spots which are being walked on more than the rest of the floor and the floor is wearing irregularly. This is something which rarely happens with an engineered floor because they are more stable and hence they stay flat and stay looking great.


www.havwoods.co.uk Tomorrow’s Retail Floors | 21


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