Laminate or Engineered flooring?

[Sean Troy]

Wife says the living room carpet has got to go. We started looking at solid wood, laminate and engineered flooring. I don't want to install solid wood although I like that best. My back just won't take the swinging of the mallet for the pnumatic nailer. We have 500 sq. ft. to install. Anyone with experience in either of the other two choices care to share thoughts on why they chose one over the other? Thanks, Sean

[carl zietz]

We have Armstrong laminate flooring,chose it in part due to its being impervious to dog claws.

[Mike Schuch]

My upstairs living area is engineered flooring. My down stairs bedrooms are laminate. I installed all of it and they both take the same effort to install. Laminate looks like laminate. Laminate is much better than carpet but it isn't nearly as attractive as engineered flooring in my opinion. There are always repeating patterns in laminate because it is printed on a big press and the wood grain pattern repeats. The larger the opened uncovered area the more noticeable the repeating pattern is. Furniture and rugs do a pretty good job of breaking up the pattern so they are not as noticeable.

My upstairs is Hickory engineered flooring. I choose Hickory because I liked the look AND it is a very hard wood. I really like the way the hickory engineered flooring turned out and it looks much nicer than laminate.

Engineered flooring almost always has chamfered edges. These leave little V grooves between planks that invariably collect dust and dirt. The lighter the floor is the more noticeable these dirt troughs are. The chamfers are there to hide slight elevation differences in the hard wood. Because of the nature of Laminate they can usually make laminate without chamfers and not have a noticeable elevation difference. I refinished all the cabinets in my kitchen with maple and was planning on using maple engineered flooring in the rest of the great room. I started looking at flooring at other houses I visited and noticed all of the maple floors had VERY noticeable black lines between the planks even in the fanciest most well kept house. The variations in Hickory has done a nice job of hiding the dirty joints. The darker the flooring the less you will notice the dirt in the groves. I would never put any laminate, real hard wood or engineered flooring in a kitchen! All the kitchens with wood flooring looked awful if they were a couple years old. I believe in tile in the kitchen

I helped my parents lay a very expensive oak engineered floor throughout most of their house. It is one of the very few engineered floors I have ever seen without chamfers and the resulting V groves. It cost about 3 times what my hickory floor cost. My hickory floor has a hand scraped finish. I didn't really like hand scraped finishes on engineered floors but the end result is nice and it looks less like veneered laminate flooring.

The BEST THING EVER about engineered or laminate flooring is the ability to use carbon film underfloor heating!!!! I put this under my upstairs engineered floor and absolutely love it! I didn't put it under my downs stairs laminate flooring and REALLY wish I had! (I did the downstairs laminate first and did not discover the huge discount you can get by ordering the carbon film online vs a big box floor... I paid about 1/3 home depot prices).

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Carbon-Warm-...gAAOSwECZUnPge

006-LINOA-KOREA-Radiant-carbon-heating-film.jpg

Unlike what they show here you don't have to install the film wall to wall. When I ordered mine I wanted to make sure I didn't run out and ended up with way too much! You should leave 4" - 6" between the strips unlike what they are showing here and 4" - 6" around the perimeter. If you are interested I can give you some installation tips for the carbon film floor heat.

[Jim Dwight]

Sean,

I have installed about 600 ft2 of 3/4 thick pre-finished hickory on the second floor of our house within the last year. Before that I put about 500 ft2 of thin (3/8) solid oak, pre finished, in my wife's lake house. Before that, I put a couple hundred square feet of engineered oak in a basement. The engineered got glued down, the thin oak was stapled and the thicker hickory was nailed. I did the hickory myself carrying each 70 lb box up the stairs. I did the glued down engineered myself too. I had some help with the thin oak.

The stapler for the thin oak was a trigger actuator but I still like the regular flooring nailer better. I had to be down on the floor to do the thin oak so it helped a lot that one of our daughters got me pieces to install. I could bend over and use the flooring nailer but my back didn't love it. It was also easier to position the regular nailer. The glue down was stinky and messy but worked fine.

I've never done laminate. My wife has and liked the ease of installation. My guess is it's easier and quicker. We have 3 dogs, admittedly little, the largest is 35 lbs, but they don't seem to damage the oak or hickory at all.

[Howard Pollack]

Having put down pre-finished real hardwood, engineered flooring and laminate, I find laminate to be a very distant third. To my eye it never looks like real wood.
-Howard

[Fred Heenie]

I was a flooring manufacturers tech agent in a former life. The differences are significant and personal! Research the products in a setting that will allow a very broad range of products and brands. The sub floor and its condition may influence you decision. You will find a version or two of a "click" assembly in both. The laminate will always have a hollow sound and is a higher risk for moisture damage. Either type is available with an aluminum oxide wear top coat. If you will be below grade that will be a consideration. I am not up to date on the latest and greatest but I can suggest that you need to shop more than a big box for features and benefits Walk on both before you buy. I have had both and frankly prefer the engineer product but as said, it's personal.

[Mark W Pugh]

Take a look at CORTec flooring. I'm going this direction. More $$$$, but water will not damage it, according to all I've read and heard from sales people.

[Rich Riddle]

I have installed real hardwood floors (a lot), engineered wood floors (some), and laminate wood floors (some). Every laminate floor I installed has since been removed. I have also removed laminate floors for many other people. It's an inferior product that looks and acts like an inferior product. I even installed the expensive laminate. It still looks like laminate and behaves like laminate. I would choose engineered floors of the two you listed.

[Sean Troy]

Thank you all for giving me the info to think about. The floor is above grade on a sub floor. I didn't know about the pattern repeat. Good info. I think they have mostly gone to aluminum oxide finishes now it seems.

[cody michael]

I have never been a big fan of the laminate flooring, it does seem to be very durable, I installed a small area of engineered it went well, is pretty easy to do, my next flooring project (mudroom) will have vynil plank tile, it has a wood look like laminate but is solid rubber, and has a slight texture, I like it better then the laminate and should be super durable, water proof etc.

[Mike Wilkins]

Ditto on everything Mike Schuch stated with one exception. I have engineered in my kitchen, installed over 8 years ago and it has held up well. We keep a mat in front of the sink cabinet and refrigerator, so the floor does not get an abnormal amount of wear, and any water/fluid spills are captured.
Installation of each is about the same; lots of wear and tear on your knees and back. I was unable to use a pneumatic nailer to install the engineered floor due to the particleboard underlayment, so I had to use the adhesive.

Would I use the engineered material again. Not unless I can nail it to a plywood underlayment. Dealing with the adhesive is not my idea of fun.

The bedrooms in my home are laminate, and have worked well for many years. We do not miss the carpet nor the vacuuming every few days.

[Sean Troy]

Ditto on everything Mike Schuch stated with one exception. I have engineered in my kitchen, installed over 8 years ago and it has held up well. We keep a mat in front of the sink cabinet and refrigerator, so the floor does not get an abnormal amount of wear, and any water/fluid spills are captured.
Installation of each is about the same; lots of wear and tear on your knees and back. I was unable to use a pneumatic nailer to install the engineered floor due to the particleboard underlayment, so I had to use the adhesive.

Would I use the engineered material again. Not unless I can nail it to a plywood underlayment. Dealing with the adhesive is not my idea of fun.

The bedrooms in my home are laminate, and have worked well for many years. We do not miss the carpet nor the vacuuming every few days.

Engineered is not supposed to be nailed or glued to a sub floor from what I've seen. It is a floating floor. Glue only on concrete in certain situations. Anyone have thoughts or knowledge on this?

[Rich Engelhardt]

Glue only on concrete in certain situations

You use a special glue that is both an adhesive and a moisture vapor barrier.

And it's (the glue) expensive as a weekend in Vegas.....

The 4 gal pail I bought ran me $295.00. I got it at Lumber Liquidators. I was lucky - they usually have to special order it, but, the store near me is fairly new and they got a pail as part of their initial opening stock.

And, woe unto you if you run a half gallon short because it only comes in 4 gallon pails.

As a FWIW & FYI - I got the glue to use on my concrete steps leading up out of the 1/2 sunken family room. I spoke with a floor installer in Texas that does this sort of work almost exclusively. This was the stuff he said to get.
He also uses it on laminates.

I can get the name of it if you want. The pail is downstairs in the guest room waiting for me to get around to doing the steps.

[Sean Troy]

You use a special glue that is both an adhesive and a moisture vapor barrier.

And it's (the glue) expensive as a weekend in Vegas.....

The 4 gal pail I bought ran me $295.00. I got it at Lumber Liquidators. I was lucky - they usually have to special order it, but, the store near me is fairly new and they got a pail as part of their initial opening stock.

And, woe unto you if you run a half gallon short because it only comes in 4 gallon pails.

As a FWIW & FYI - I got the glue to use on my concrete steps leading up out of the 1/2 sunken family room. I spoke with a floor installer in Texas that does this sort of work almost exclusively. This was the stuff he said to get.
He also uses it on laminates.

I can get the name of it if you want. The pail is downstairs in the guest room waiting for me to get around to doing the steps.

Mine will be floating. Thanks

[ian maybury]

Hi Sean - several rooms of solid oak hardwood, engineered and laminate done here.

Much like everybody laminate just doesn't feel like wood when you walk on it. Doesn't look awfully like it either. Some of the more recent slightly better varieties (there's quite a difference between quality levels and price points) have a non skid grit in the coating that makes it very hard on whatever tooling gets used to cut it too. It's been relatively stable. I used it in a rental house, it's probably a good choice where traffic will be heavy and uncaring.

Engineered timber floors still feel different to solid, are cheaper but look very good and are a bit more stable. The floor i put down (an upstairs corridor) was edge glued over a layer of polyethylene foam laid first to provide springing - over T&G floorboards. It has held up very well.

It's very hard to beat a solid wood floor over timber battens (shimmed to level them up) for look and feel, but it brings more installation/wood movement risk with it. Pre-lacquered may be not quite as nice as a good sand and varnish job, and it leaves very little margin for error - but tends to be a really tough coating and very convenient.

It's really important no matter what the floor that the boards are very accurately machined. There was e.g. a fair amount of poorly processed and sloppy fitting especially for some reasonin US originating oak about over here that was next to impossible to get dead right. (out of spec material being sold on the cheap?) The tongue and groove has to be snug but not so much that it won't go together - while loose (as can be the case) means that level/height differences between boards become possible. The good/more precise stuff tends to cost more. We ended up returning a big shipment of oak and switching to a better quality product for this reason - luckily i was working with an experienced installer who immediately picked up the issue.

It's really important too to put the time into doing a thorough levelling job on the battens (laser leveller?) before going flooring - and figuring out how board direction, batten spacing, patterns, centring, door opes, expansion/movement strips etc will be handled. Especially if there are minor level differences. Make sure the packing is stable, tight and the battens well fixed as it may otherwise drive everybody crazy with squeaking. We used hammer fixings which seem 20 years later to have been fine. Watch out for concealed water pipes or cables.

Some sort of damp proof membrane is best under a floor going over a concrete sub floor - just in case the sub floor isn't fully damp proofed. Water getting to a floor can produce scary amounts of movement over the width of a room. It goes without saying that underfloor heating, rad pipes or any other plumbing must be rock solid and reliably leak free.

Moisture content of the flooring matters too. The practice here using dry timber is to space the joints with an appropriate coin or washer - it's a bit scary, but the gaps close up in a day or two. Then all you have to do is get through the first few years where every little mark (solid tends to mark more easily it seems) sticks out like a sore thumb. Solid doesn't mix well with doorways that bring in grit (install a mat well?), dogs, high heels etc.

For all the complications i have to say that looking back the solid timber floors are one of the best things we did with the house… We did bedrooms too. Tiles are a very good alternative in high traffic areas like hallways and kitchens - they can if chosen well mix well with wood too.