We have a suspended floor with tongue & groove floorboards in our house. We have decided we want to laminate the living room/ kitchen floor. The kitchen and living room is open plan so all runs throughout. Currently we have carpet in the living room section over the floorboards and in the kitchen we have vinyl that has been 6mm plyboarded underneath to allow for the vinyl to be laid. The floor in the living room is quite bouncy. Before i lay the laminate i was going to plyboard the floor to match that in the kitchen and then lay my underlay and laminate. My main reason for doing this is i was hoping it would make the floor feel less bouncy. Would this be the case or would i be wasting my time? I have been looking at fibre board underlay as this is what was down when we moved in under the old laminate. I would just like to know if it would be worth plying the floor to hopefully help with the bouncing or just lay fibreboards/ other underlay if plywood would not help with the bouncing? We are only planning on staying here for 4-5 years so do not want to have the expense and hassle of pulling up the floor to stiffen joists etc. Any recommendations would be great as I don't know what to do for the best and don’t want to waste my time plying the floor if it won’t help with the bouncing as this would be the reason for plying it in the first place. The floorboards should be level and smooth enough with some good underlay so wouldn’t be plying for that reason, just mainly for the bouncing. Thank you!!
Thanks for the reply. Although this is something i will do prior to laying anything. It’s more the actual bounce and spring in the floor that is irritating and wondering if the ply would be a cheaper alternative to pulling boards up and stiffening joists etc? I know the ply wouldn’t completely remove the bouncing but hoping it would help make the surface feel more sturdy? Again this is just in the hope it would improve the feel of the floor for the 4-5 years we will be here! Thanks again
9mm will stiffen it up more and I've done this for a customer in their original lounge connecting to a new concrete extension or you could go 12mm depending on your height tolerance.
Remove some floorboards and investigate as to why, these issues sometimes can be an easy fix by packing under a joists etc
I agree, it could be something that could easily be fixed within a hour or so, with very little or no cost
To be fair we overlaid a floated chipboard floor with 12mm ply screwed down and it helped a lot. Just depends if you have the height as mentioned already Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk