Hello there gents , little bit of help needed please. Iv`e just redecorated the in laws dining room and they`re having lino put down , the old boards are a bit rough so I am putting hardboard down for them first ,here`s where I need info .What fixings are needed and at what centres should they be fixed, also are the sheets placed face up or down . Thanks in advance ,Scott.
Plywood would be better mate, is there a reason you are using hardboard? But use ring nails 20mm and nail on perimeter every 4 inch and in centre every 6 inch.
plus it's not really that much cheaper to buy, and i was always told when pinning it down it was 20-30mm on centre around the perimeter and board :?
Nothing wrong with hardboard just so long as it's fixed properly and the subfloor is level. Better off with ply if the floorboards are cupped, though.
Thanks for the help folks , I`m using hardboard cause the fella told the father in law to use it when he came round to measure up. Also someone told him to wet it before hand , is that necesarry?
who's 'the fella' that said just use hardboard? id use plywood, coz i like to sleep at night mwahaha :lol:
Every post on here apart from one has advised plywood over hardboard. I would personally take note of that !
Years ago hardboard was what everyone used without any problems. I think there is a degree of professional snobbery going on here. In 20 years of fitting I have learned, amongst other things: There is absolutely nothing wrong with using hardboard so long as the subfloor isn't "wavy" Tarkett, you state that you can't bond to hardboard. I have read that elswhere on this forum from another poster (can't remember who). I can assure you that you can. You should try it, rough side up, you may be surprised by the results. This was how it was done back in the day by all the old timers who taught me, and this is how I continue to do it if the circumstances allow. We all have our different ways of doing things, nothing wrong with that as long as the end result is the same, but it doesn't half get on my t1ts when fitters spout "facts" that just aren't true, just because they either read it somewhere, or were told it from "some bloke". I hope I haven't offended anyone, but I only ever write what I know from my own experience, and I would back that against anyone else.
Q = Which overlay should i use? Plywood or Hardboard ? A = Plywood is the most stable of the two products. It is also sutible to be glued to. Hardboard is a 'cheaper' alternative to plywood and will not preform aswell. you can not bond to hardboard either. Matt agrees with me, and he trains fitters.
Sorry mate, no disrespect to Mat or you, but even if God himself agrees with you, I know you can bond to hardboard because I have done it myself hundreds of times (including in my own house), as have all the fitters I've ever worked with/for, and I suspect, many fitters on this forum. How are you so sure that it can't be done.......have you tried it?....or are you just taking somebody's word for it? Have you ever tried to uplift old flooring that has been bonded to hardboard? It's a bitch of a job. I'm not saying that hardboard is better than ply, I'm saying that in many instances it is perfectly adequate.
Hardboard can be glued to but only a select few products and when a damaged tile needs replacing etc then it breaks down. Also its shear strength is low so only really suitable for bonding in domestic property of vinyl where you would normally be loose laying. It is a more unstable product. If treated right it is fine but if something happens it will fail where plywood will normally survive. (kids spill a load of water for instance at bathtime) As for under carpets it is not suitable as the gripper ringshanks don't have a great holding power through it and can fail when a carpet is being correctly stretched or one we see a lot of is with woven carpets the carpet is cleaned and the width of the carpet shrinks pulling the gripper up. The reason why the carpet shrunk was because of the fixings holding the gripper down failed due to the hardboard, not down to the carpet cleaner. But normally the carpet cleaner will get the blame ! Also if we was to think a head of future floorcoverings that may be installed then if plywood is already down it will have to be uplifted and replaced with plywood. So due to the above we recommend plywood and not hardboard. Then again you could question the above with the state that plywood is coming in at the moment
the quality of hardboard isn't much better, lots of very unstable sheets on the market at the minute warping like buggery. Plus as you need oil tempered hardboard for flooring installations the oils can react with certain adhesives causing the floor to fail, that's through experience and when it happened had it inspected and was told this as the reason (more than once) now we won't use hardboard only ply and if the quality on the ply is bad we send it back and get it elsewhere.
Hardboard can be used but now I ALWAYS use ply simply because as stated elsewhere it IS more stable. The last two occasions I used hardboard it got wet from a small leak from a washing machine and had to be replaced. The hardboard used was supposed to be oil tempered and was sold to me as oil tempered but I'm dubious as to its quality. I'd be more confident in ply surviving intact under the same circumstances. Sidney, what you say is correct but then materials and methods improve/change/progress whatever you want to call it, if they didn't we'd still be using copydex and tape. For me it isn't a difficult choice these days, plywood for sure.
We still use dex on the edges of non latexed backed carpets, but dex and tape still beats some of the adhesive tapes out there
I'm aware of that mate, when I originally questioned it I was told it was a replacement for their originally supplied stuff that was no longer available due to the tsunami. When i replaced it with ply on the first job that I hit a problem with I went back to them and again questioned whether it was oil tempered or not and the answer was yes so I asked for a sheet, took it outside and poured water over it. It was obviously NOT tempered just a dark colour. This was from a pretty reputable flooring accessories supplier around here and to my knowledge they are still selling the damned stuff. The second job I had an issue with was done a few weeks previously but lasted a few months longer. When I got a call to alert me to a possible problem I was pretty certain the hardboard had blown and sure enough it had. I've not yet had one single problem with ply apart from having to ditch plenty of the Chinese stuff that came with faults. I've been supplied with Malaysian ply recently and that stuff looks much better and cuts a lot easier too. At the end of the day, if Sidney uses hardboard and it works for him then he is free to choose to use it, when it comes to advising someone what is better then my answer would definitely be ply. I've seen plenty of hardboard that "dropped" to the contours of floorboards but not seen anything like as extreme with ply.
