Solid bamboo flooring over concrete - Any tips?

[Alex Franke]

Hi all, I'm going to my bro-in-law's new place this weekend to help install some solid bamboo flooring in his new house. The house is in the mountains of NC, was built in the 80's I believe, and has concrete under the carpet where we're planning to install the wood.

Never done this before, so I'm hoping I might be able to get some tips from you all before I start causing damage!

The flooring will have been on site for about 4 days before we start.

Thanks, as always. I'm all ears!

[supper shaun]

Not sure if this helps, but I was looking online for info about hardwood floors and specifically looked up "bamboo floors". Most listed the ability to glue onto concrete. I googled "hardwood floors bamboo concrete" and didn't see any that said you couldn't.

Just my $.02

[radhak]

I am an amateur flooring DIY-er : did a floating engineered-wood floating for a small bedroom last year, and am gonna do the same for the MBR coming weekend.

With that caveat : my understanding has been - to install wood on concrete, you use glue. If you wanna use nails/staples, you need to lay another wooden sub-floor on the concrete, and nail your final wood to the wooden sub-floor. Else, you well do you think your fastener would hold onto concrete? Of course, I can't also comment on how Bamboo differs from other hardwood floors.

[linear]

A friend of mine runs a forum where flooring professionals will answer homeowner questions:
http://www.thefloorpro.com/community/

Give those guys a try (with no disrespect to the collective wisdom here intended)

[Cheeky]

if it's a basement level, you may want to consider Dricore.

fill in any cracks with any cementitious patch/crack filler

there are adhesives with built-in vapor barriers...you may want to pursue one of those to be on the safe side.

if it's T&G, just roll-out the vaper barrier.

[crokett]

Alex,

Check the flooring box and/or with the manufacturer. I looked into bamboo a while back and a lot of the ones I saw could be glued or nailed to subfloor or glued at the seams as a floating floor.

[iceman61]

I know this is late since it's the weekend already, but I hope that flooring was actually stored in the house & not just out of the weather.

Wood flooring is supposed to be stored inside the house for a few day to acclimate. Also a vapor barrier is always supposed to be used when installing wood on concrete to cut down on moisture content transfer.

[JimD]

I put laminated oak flooring in the living room in our basement. I glued it down to the concrete which is what the manufacturer recomended. It has been down several years and is working well. I got the glue and trowel that was recommended by the flooring manufacturer.

Jim

[Alex Franke]

Update!

Thanks for all your tips! I'm tired and sore, but the installation went pretty well. I'll post a picture after they get the baseboard back up.

We carefully preped the concrete, scraping up all the glue used to hold down the carpet padding, using concrete filler to fill in the divets left by the tack strip nails, and a few minor cracks in the concrete. We got the floor pretty clean and flat.

The wood had been stored in the house (actually in the actual room where it was to be installed) fro about 4 days prior (to iceman61's comments) and the thermostat was set to what it would be at if there were someone living there... They'll be moving in later this week.

Like Cheeky suggested, we used a glue that also served as a vapor barrier. (I'll get the brand name later.) It was quite expensive -- around $250 I think for 8 gallons. Every set of instructions we read seemed to say something different, but we settled on a 1/4-1/4 trowel for the glue and we put down 5 rows or boards at a time.

It took a lot longer than we expected because of the time it took to get the glue down, plus it was a lot messier -- lots of time wiping tiny specs of glue off the tops of the boards because I had accidentally touched the glue putting down the previous plank.

Also the planks tended to slide around a bit. It'd tap in the ends of one row to close any gaps, and that would cause gaps to open up in neighboring rows. Fortunately we discovered this early enough to go back and fix it (re-tap the ends) in all but one inconspicuous place -- and you only notice that one if you're really looking hard.

What we forgot to bring that would have been really helpful: A wire brush or two and that new air filter I picked up in a recent bargain alert (both for prepping and cleaning the concrete), work lights on stands because we ended up working late, and cloth rags instead of just paper ones.

[crokett]

Glad it went well Alex. If I'd known you were going to use glue, I'dve given you a few tips I learned from a pro. Most useful was to to ductape your trowel and anything else that touches glue - like kneepads. then if you want to clean them, just peel the tape off.

[Alex Franke]

Just realized I don't have a relly good picture of the finished floor! Oh well... but here are a couple of okay ones. Thanks again for all your tips!

[crokett]

I see red Xs Alex.

[radhak]

Alex, nice looking floor there. The overhead pic gives a great overview.

Looks like more than one room there, right? How much time did it take?

what flooring did you use (brand) ? And any more pics?