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A solid wood floor is usually less stable than an engineered wood floor. When we say less stable, we are referring to moisture and expansion related to that moisture. When you get climate changes in your home, which you absolutely will, wood flooring expands and contracts. With solid wood flooring, it generally expands and contracts a lot more than the engineered wood. Engineered wood flooring is constructed to be dimensionally stable.
Illustration
Excel Cinema/Theatre, Tipperary Town.
The solid wood floors expand more than the engineered, and they expand vertically as well as horizontally. While you get little to no vertical expansion with most engineered wood floors, you may get a lot of this vertical expansion with the solid floors. Vertical expansion is when the boards will actually grow up and shrink down in addition to the side to side or horizontal expansion and contraction.
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We are not saying that solid wood floors are bad or of lesser quality. In some cases, with certain species, you may have no choice because solid wood is all that particular species is available in. But, if you are looking at Oak, Maple, Cherry, Pine, or one of the other somewhat more popular species, you can most likely find it in an engineered floor
Over the past five or more years, the free float method seems to be the method of choice. Since the free floating wood floors do not actually touch the sub-floor, there is a near zero chance that you will have any problems with this floor.
With floating engineered wood floors, when they expand and contract, they do so as one whole unit, not as individual planks so you see no change.
No matter what type of wood floor you decide to use in your home, it will provide a warm and beautiful atmosphere. |
