Hardwood Floor Solid or Engineered?
 

The ground floor of my house is solid hardwood, finished in place. But now I'm looking at doing the upstairs rooms.

Looking at the products available it seems to me that the engineered wood products are probably superior to solid hardwood, I don't see a downside. The flooring is basically 'plywood' with a solid layer of hardwood about 1/16" thick on top.

My preference would be 3/4" hardwood, unfinished, then sand and finish, but my wife does not want the mess (and admittedly it will take a while to do four bedrooms and a hallway).

So now I'm looking at a pre-finished floor, at which point engineered wood seems to be a bit cheaper (cost isn't really in the equation) and probably superior dimensionally.

Any reason not to use this stuff?

Engineered wood is far more stable. Solid wood is more susceptible to humidity levels and temperature changes. I have solid oak flooring that moves with the seasons. Solid floors can be sanded and refinished many times. Engineered floors maybe once.

At my age refinishing won't happen in my lifetime....plus, a prefinished floor is more durable than a DIY finish in place (in general).

Also, I would consider wear a factor on the main floor, but not on the second floor.

Just did over 500 sq/ft of prefinished flooring in our living room and dining room, no mess and easy to put down. Way cheaper than anything else we could have done.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1603810041.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1603810041.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1603810041.jpg

Solid hardwood?

My entire main floor has engineered, really happy with the product and how well it has held up. The only advantage of a true hardwood in my opinion is the ability to refinish, but even little nicks can still be touched up with engineered. My family isn’t hard enough on our house to really worry about a full refinish.

Most of our house has oak flooring. I bought the 2.9K s.f. of it in 1978 for $1,800 and carried it around with me until I built the house. If I didn't already have it, I would have chosen engineered flooring. I'm hoping the stuff I have doesn't ever need any parts replaced. I found out ten years ago it was quarter sawn oak & had to be special ordered at $11/s.f. at that time.

I'm a traditionalist. I went with solid wood.

I just went through the same thing, went with engineered, more stable, wide planks available. How stable is your humidity in the house?

Was looking at finishing on site, doing it myself and after speaking with a supplier realized it was going to be way too much added work and time, can only sand a couple hundred square feet in a day if you want really good finish, then add three or four coats of 2 part urethane top coat, cost and time add up. With good quality engineered the top layer above the groove is almost the same thickness as solid T&G about 3/16, so up to 4 refinishes. You can also get unfinished engineered product, if you want to stain and finish on site. I can look for my quote on materials and rentals for finishing to give you an idea on price if you want.

One thing to look for is average length of planks in the box, the longest I found were up to 84" in engineered in solid you can order much longer, wide solid should be full glue down, ended up with 7" wide maple and I did a full glue down, glue down adds some cost and harder to work with but is a really nice floor, you can do nail down with partial glue out of a tube. The proper glue turns into soft rubber.

One advantage to finish on site is no micro bevel on edges, and if going solid the long random lengths that are available.

I just went through this.
Solid only went up to around 3" wide.
We went with engineered around 6" wide.
Much nicer floor in our opinion.
Not cheap! Solid was less money.

engineered

That's a good point. We have very cold very dry winters and hot humid summers.

Another reason to lean towards engineered.

Our installer made a call and had a humidifier installed on our furnace.
He said it was mandatory.

I have a humidifier, and we run the AC most of the summer, but the wood will still see varying humidity.

My living room has real oak floor in a mix of 10", 12" and 14" widths and rustic grade timber so plenty of character

Wanted the 200 year old look, anything narrower or engineered wouldn't have looked right. It's been down for 15yrs suffered a real beating from dogs, kids, furniture and open fire embers but just looks better and better for it

Installed it myself, stored the planks in the room for a couple of months to acclimatize to the room humidity, nailed sheets of high quality plywood to the concrete floor and then glued and nailed the planks. Used traditional rose head nails so the heads are slightly proud. Only treatment was a wipe with a hard wax oil

If I owned a modern North American style home think I'd go with an engineered oak flooring as the style needs to fit in with the general decor

Engineered gets killed if you have proper dogs. We had some of that guaranteed for 50 year stuff in the last house. It lasted 18 months.

This house has solid oak. We put it down in 2007. It hasn’t needed refinishing in 13 years.

Solid or engineered they can both have surface finish problems, if you have a soft wood like cherry and large dogs it does not matter what coating is on it, better quality engineered will have tougher cores and thicker top layer. From what I can tell, an aged wood floor also gets harder, or just start with a wood that is hard.

We installed floors about 8 years ago. We went with engineered because it is wood over concrete. We tested the concrete for moisture and found 95% of the floor was fine, and fixed the drainage issue next to the bedroom. Real hardwood does not work well over concrete. We used the same floor up our stairs in the front hall so everything matched.

If we were in a conventional house with wood-subflooring, I would have gone with standard hardwood flooring.

About the only thing man has improved on nature is plywood. Engineered flooring is true and consistent. If you go with the sixteenth inch veneer pre finished stuff make sure it has an aluminum oxide finish. 1/16" can't be sanded and re-finished. Aluminum oxide wil give you 30 years and hold up to dog claws. A good test: if you can't make a mark with your fingernail it's a hard finish. And I always use aqua bar paper under all wood flooring as a vapor barrier. I'm a flooring contractor, been doing it since '69

I used that aqua bar on my floor... prefinished 3/4" Hickory (much harder than oak), nailed to floor over a crawl space. Holding up nicely... dawg proof :D.

Speaking of dogs...

I recently moved to another state and am renting a house for the time being. It's been re-fiitted with some sort of engineered wood floor (it was built in the 80's and originally had mostly carpet.)

I think the floor is crap, as is the installation. But, my point is...

It's like an ice skating rink for the dogs. They have to move really slowly to walk across it, especially around corners. If they lie down, they struggle to get enough traction to stand up again. I've had to buy area rugs and the like, just so they can get around.

Of all the people here, you are one of the few that could pull this off.

My parents conveniently went on vacation when they had their oak floors installed over concrete slab. Vapor barrier, 3/4 inch plywood, oak planks. I watched it all go in place. It was super dusty, but came out spectacular. My dad and I did red oak treads on the stringer for the stair case from rough. Plane to stain and urethane. It all came out gorgeous!

We have wood floors in our home, but it is over layed with engineered. 1950's home, had hardwood, carpeted over, then removed, but it was too much work to refinish in a home that never had climate control until last year.

Only pic I have of the floor and stair case.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1603892424.jpg

no expertise here, but we have installed engineered in our current and previous homes. We have been happy with the results.

I love the traditional thin plank oldschool hardwood floors. Every vendor I visited said that these would be a bad Idea for ground floor on slab install in the Houston region. Seems like most people I know around here are installing wood look tile these days. Too loud and hard for me though.

I had laminate floors in a past house, they were slippery as hell. Way worse than wood but that stuff does wear like iron.

I installed some ceramic tile that was almost indistinguishable from hand hewn wooden flooring in the kitchen of my last house. Not a big fan of that, either.

For durability and 'grip' I would go with vinyl plank. I have that in a house I rent. It's not right for my current application, but in the right place it is really good.

A huge part of my business is Luxury Vinyl Plank. I'm a believer. The new generation click looks and installs so much better than the crap I used to glue down 40 years ago. 100 percent water proof and damn near scratch proof. The better quality is guaranteed for life. I haven't sold laminate for 25 years. It's crap. MDF or particle board core. Ponding water finds it's way into the cracks, swells at the joint and looks like hell in the reflection of the light. Even back in the day I refused to install it on stairs. Some kid in socks is bound to get hurt

If you do go the Engineered route, stay away from MDF and Particle board. The one we used was basically plywood with a hardwood top.

On concrete you have to level the floors by using a leveling compound. Then you have to use a glue that seals the concrete like a vapor barrier.

In our business, we went with floated laminate floors. Cheap, look good, stand up to traffic. If they had the vinyl stuff when we put the office together, I would have used that. It is even better looking and impervious.

We used solid wood, a distressed Teak style. It came prefinished so putting it down was pretty easy. We did 3 bedrooms, a hallway, a study and the den. It's been down for about 10 years without any issues.

This. The more I see of it, the better it looks.

I had one experience with a 'particle board' based flooring product. Never again. I'm only looking at 'plywood' type construction.

Just purchased 1050 sq/ft of Acacia 3/4 solid hardwood. Delivering next week for install first week of December. I believe this is some of the hardest wood out there....

After a good bit of research I am going with solid hardwood floors for several reasons.

- really good, engineered floor is more expensive
- the Chinese products have questionable quality, and it's not always apparent before you install
- getting the same color a year form now is a crapshoot, I bought from a local supplier that's been in business for a long time
- I am not installing on cement, that's where engineered wood is clearly superior

Look for posts in one of the before/after or repair threads of my prefinished ash floors.