Solid wood flooring or 'engineered flooring' with underfloor heating ?

[NomDePlume]

Which is best ?

We need to replace the white carpet in our living room (3 kids, black cat, red wine drinking household, therefore MASSIVELY impractical). DH and I are agreed on wood flooring (not laminate), but not sure which is best to go for, the solid wood boards or the engineered stuff. I assume the engineered stuff performs better where expansion/contraction are concerned.

Which did you choose and why ?

Thanks

P.S. the underfloor heating is already in situ, if that makes a difference

I'd say solid wood but I'm not sure about the under floor heating???

as far as I know solid hardwood flooring is fine with u/f heating. My Mum fitted hers onto it and there were no probs

you have to use something as thin as poss - we have engineered flooring with underfloor heating as we were told that solid wood would not work well, both from an expansion/contraction point of view and also because it would be too good an insulator.
The stuff we have has a thin layer of real wood on top and is a click system, so was dead easy to lay.
It looks lovely but the downside is that is scratches easily - obviously much more easily than laminate - and then unlike solid wood flooring there's not much you can do about the scratches. We've had it for 5 years now in our lounge and I think it'll probably need replacing in 3 years' time or so - I guess 8 years is pretty good really, considering we're rubbish about taking shoes off indoors etc.

was it expensive, geekgirl ?

I realise it's going to cost us afair whack (quite a big room), but there MUST be ways to bring the cost down (without botching it)

not really, we've got Kahrs Linnea in the lounge and the bedrooms and it cost from £17-22 per m2. You can easily lay it yourself, too.

gawd, that is quite cheap. I've been looking at stuff £50+ per m2 (that is solid wood though) and that would cost us thousands to buy and have fitted (we wouldn't fit it ourselves [lessons learned by bitter experience emoticon])

crikey, yes, the solid stuff is really pricey.
This is where we got all ours from: www.flooringsupplies.co.uk

I think it looks nice. And it's obvious that is is real wood - we have laminate (expensive stuff) in one of the children's bedrooms and it looks very different from the Linnea flooring.

welll... the engineered has the advantage that it is very stable and will move less with expansion contaction etc.

with engineered you have to look out for how it is constucted, and how thick a 'wear layer' you are getting (ie, how thick the top layer is and therefore how much you have to play with in sanding down over the years.) theres a lot of variety out there, much research is needed.

and price does not reflect quality. yuou must be on your guard in this respect.

they both come either as planks or as tongue and groove for easy laying etc...

only some companies will 'approve' their solid wood products for underfloor heating use... this is to do with the moisture content in their product at point of sale. so far as i can glean, as long as the moisture content is about 5-8% or lower, you will be fine. all the companies will specify an aclimatisation period of between 2 and 6 weeks, where you have the wood stacked in such a way as air can circulate freely around it in the room in which it will be installed. they are covering their backs in this.

the way in which it is laid also has a part to play in whether you have a problem with the underfloor heating.

the ideal is to have the wood suppliers also install as i am told that one will blame the other endlessly if a problem subsequently occurs.

me? i went for a good quality solid wood in the end... and fingers crossed i dont have any problems (not installed yet)

hth

if youre looking for oak in solid, wide plank format, with a good moisture level (im pretty sure guaranteed for underfloor heating) and i think up to 11 or 12 inch width (very rarae you will find) then call Timber Neutral. marvellous people. and they have this at about £30 a metre!! (and i already got all mine goddamit!!!)