Wood floors
Wood floors
Originally uploaded by mdm.
We went with in-floor radiant heating, which is going to be great, but is rather limiting in floor choices. The ideal floor choice for radiant heat is tile, but that’s hard on the knees and little heads, and we really like the look and feel of wood. Problem is, typical wood floors are not very dimensionally stable, meaning that temperature changes cause them to expand and contract. When you have multiple boards, that results in gaps (contraction) and cupping (expansion). Further, the wider boards have more stability issues than thin boards, so we were about to go with 2.5″ red oak floor boards. I don’t really care for the grain of oak, but we’re going with a dark stain anyway.
Well, it turns out that getting quarter-sawn lumber makes it much more stable, so much so that we’re going with 3.5″ boards. We also have lost a lot of that typical oak grain, so I think it’s going to be awesome. The finished floors look great, though we lost another week on them. Wood floors over radiant heat really have to acclimatize to their environment before you nail them down. Basically, you want their moisture content to match that of the floor below so they are in their stable state before getting set. And though we thought the heat was on in the house, it wasn’t. So they got to sit an extra week, this time with heat on.
Many things have not gone according to plan. I think flexibility and not being too attached to dates are keys to success in homebuilding.