Serving the Greater Portland-Vancouver Area

Subfloor Preparation

A Hard Wood Floor is possibly the most beautiful floor in your home and can add significantly to the overall beauty and ambiance of your home. However if a hard wood floor is not installed on a properly prepared subfloor it can lead to problems that can cost you money and frustration.

Failure to address subfloor problems can lead to spongy, creaking, and popping sounds. Nails or staples will fail to hold over time and problems will start to compound on eath other as time goes on.

80% of Hard Wood floor failures are due to inadequate subfloor preparation.

CEMENT SLAB SUBFLOORS PRESENT SPECIAL CHALLENGES.
Hardwood floor installers are often confronted with special challenges when dealing with Cement subfloors and if not handled properly by a highly skilled hardwood floor installer will lead to the eventual failure of the hardwood floor. Described below are the conditions that may be confronted by hardwood floor installers.

• Soft or deteriorating slabs surfaces will determine the primer and adhesives product types to be used. Soft or deteriorating slab surfaces will require special priming and possibly a more flexible type of adhesive to handle natural expansion and contraction of wood. Certain slab material types may require an additional cementratious layer or leveling material to be applied to insure the surface integrity for a wood floor installation.
• Subfloor Moisture Content and Relative Humidity during installation will play determing roles in the success or failure of a hardwood floor installations.
• Vapor Emission or upward moving moisture from the subfloor will have a long term effect towards the failure of a hardwood floor installation.
• Radiant Heat Systems have special preparation requirements compared to common concrete slabs. Our wood floor adhesives are approved for radiant heat applications.
• Slab Flatness has to meet certain standards for a wood floor installation. There should be no more than a 1/8 inch in ten feet deviation. Low spots can create a hollow sound effect. Proper leveling, smoothing and priming slab substrates promote optimum adhesive application and banding and insure a long-lasting, professional installation.
• Surface Contamination, there are many types of cement slab surface contaminates may be encountered. The best way to insure all residues and contaminates that may interfere with adhesive bonding are removed is by mechanical means however some contaminates and light residues can be "sealed in" with surface primers. The correct primer can save much of the expense and time it takes to totally remove contaminates while insuring secure bonding of the adhesive.

We have the solution

We have Know-How and Experience to properly prepare cement subfloors plus we use a system that was developed and perfected in Germany. Why Germany?, because European structures are overwhelming made of cement slab floors so this has led to the development of a line of products that together work as a system and provide a complete solution that will allow for a long lasting hardwood floor that can be enjoyed for many years.