Ease of removing hard flooring for future electric works etc

[spidershavetoomanyknees]

A question for anyone who has hard flooring throughout the house, especially upstairs: how easy is it to remove if you need work doing?

We currently have carpets in the lounge, stairs and landing, and bedrooms upstairs. We're considering changing these to hard floors to make it easier on dust mite allergies, but I'm wondering if that makes it super difficult to access the floor/ceiling below for any future electrics works or similar.

This is an infrequent occurrence at best, but still. With carpets you can just roll it back, remove the floorboards as needed and then put the carpet back down you'd be none the wiser... that's not going to be the case if we go with hard floors is this?

Undecided on wood/vinyl plank type things. I do not like the look or feel of "roll lino" iyswim so it's unlikely we'd go that route.

Click fit wood or laminate flooring unclicks if you need to lift it. But you need to work from the end, so if the expansion gap is hidden by skirting board that will need to come off too, and if access to the middle of the floor is needed, then half of the floor has to come up. Don't forget the underlay/sound proofing will have to come up too. From my own experience, it is an easy enough job to do.

....and easy enough to re- lay it!

Provided you don't glue it down it should be simple to take up, but as the pp says, you do have to take it up from the edge (probably one corner) and work backwards.

Probably best to sort your electrics before you lay it.

With LVT I think one of the issues is the undelay you can use with it is often thinner. Which means you don't get as good insulation on the floor.

Slightly off topic. We have no carpet upstairs, it's engineered wood flooring. The noise that carries between floors is horrific. It's put me off not having carpet for life.

Idk if dust is easier to control either? If you are not on top of it all the time, it just moves about and gathers in balls far easier, especially under beds.

Having just taken up two rooms worth , I’d say a pain in the backside , if like mine you have scotia around the edge because that needs to come off first , which for us meant repainting skirting as well . We maybe have an odd house so others may have less of a problem . Also we were replacing our flooring with new , but some was damaged when we took it up and so I’d suggest keeping some spare just in case which will save you having to replace it all if you damage a piece while lifting it .

If you are worried and currently have access you can put in an additional pull and/or check the run of the cable to see if a new cable can be attached to the existing cable (at the light/plug socket ) and pulled back to the fuse box etc.

I laid sound absorbing underlay in the upstairs rooms that have laminate flooring, and noise is not a problem. I think it might well be without the underlay though.

@KievLoverTwo dust isn't the same as dust mites - the mites themselves live in carpets amongst other things (beds, fabric sofas etc), so removing carpets throughout the house can make a huge difference

Thanks all for the responses so far. We don't have any electrics works planned, so it's more of a "if we think of something we want to do later will this be as bad as large tiles being down?"

Sounds like it's partially about the design - whether any decorative things like scotia need removing as mentioned by @Theraffarian.

Ooh yes, I imagine those little buggers are nasty for allergies.

If my only choice was to live without carpets, I would at least make sure all my furniture reached the floor. That they don't is a constant source of more work than should be necessary.

I kinda understand why so many old folk have divan beds these days (disability makes stretching and cleaning low quite tough).