Floating Hardwood Floors

Floating hardwood floors actually refers to a type of installation used with many engineered wood floors. Rather than gluing-down, stapling or nailing down the planks to the subfloor underneath the floor "floats" freely over the subfloor. The wood planks are interlocked together but never secured to the subfloor. Some require gluing the tongues and grooves together while others incorporate a special tongue and groove locking system that requires no glue. Glueless floating floors have a specially designed tongue and groove that locks the planks together. This is the same locking type system used with many laminate floors.

The advantage to a floating hardwood floor is you can install the wood planks over a wider variety of subfloor materials, such as: OSB, plywood, fully-cured concrete slabs and some existing hard surface type floors. You can also install floating floors on all grade levels. Floating wood floors are offered in all the species, colors and widths as other engineered wood floors. The only difference is how the floors are installed.

For do-it-yourself installation the glueless floating wood floors would be less labor intensive to install and requires less skill. This means you can buy a better grade engineered wood floor because you are saving the installation costs by doing it yourself. You will still need some wood cutting tools to cut planks and cut under door jambs. Any trims and moldings are attached to the walls, never secure moldings to the floating wood floor. A thin plastic padding is required to be laid on top of the subfloor before installing the planks. This helps the floor float freely over the subfloor. To reduce noise levels there are other dense pads available to be laid down on top of the subfloor as well.