Hardwood floors over radiant

Don Regan

install floating engineered hardwood over crete-heat and levelrock.

Pete McCollester

Hardwood floors over radiant

We are constructing a residence with a large amount of hardwood flooring installed over a radiant heat, and a unico high velocity system. We are installing PEX tube bedded in 1-1/2" of gypcrete. There is a lot of conflicted information on the best method to achieve the most stable floor. I understand wood spiecies and on-site moisture are all considerations that will have to be addressed.Direct nail to sleepers? Single layer 3/4 plywood nailed to sleepers? I'm leaning towards 2 layers of 1/2" plywood "floating", independent of the mud slab. Anyone out there with some first hand advice would be very kindly welcomed!

Norm Harvey

I havent done wood floors over gypcrete, but have done wood floors over quick-trac.

In my opinion one of the most importaint considerations for not damaging the floor is installing slab sensors and controls with the ability to set a max slab temperature.

My wood floor radiant jobs are set to an 85 max slab temperature and Ive had no problems

Ed_50

1.5\" sleepers......

.... are another option. The gypsum is poured around them, then the wood is nailed to the sleepers. Pretty hard to hit a tube that way.

Look at engineered (not composite) wood flooring. It can be glued directly to the slab or floated on top.

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tim smith

floor makeup

I feel the double layer plywood laid out crossways to each other and left floating is the better way. This kinda makes the floor more like a engineered floor product if you are not doing engineered floor product. Watch your widths of flooring, any thing over appx 3" in width becomes more unstable in humidity/temp changes. Compounds the gapping at joints. There was a good read on radiant and hardwoods on the NOMA web site. Last job they wanted wider boards so we ended up w/ floating sub floor and I think 4" walnut engineered flooring. Tim PS, there will be others who have installed more jobs than I that will chime in also with good input.

troy_8

wood floors

We have done many wood floors over 1-1/2" sleepers with gyp poured between. We have found that you really need to sand the floor after the pour to have a flat surface. Then the wood gets glued between the sleepers and nailed into sleepers. The next most important factor to maintaining a wood floor is humidity control. Don't forget to add a humidifier.

st heat

hardwood floors

installing good hardwood floors over radiantgypcrete is old school and outdated with great liability if not done properly.the moisture level must be less than 9 % AND CONTROLLED PRIOR TO INSTALL. TOO deep for me especially when viegana.com climate panels are readily available. sure it can be done and at no bargain. who needs the headache.keep it simple.put the thought into the boiler ,piping and control system. GOOD LUCK