Right then guys, green oak wide floor boards.

[robgil]

Local saw mill gave me a price of 22 quid a square meter for wide oak floor boards 1 inch thick.
Problem No 1, drying and seasoning.
Problem No 2, making them fit my wonky floor joists, its bowl shaped but also hump shaped as well.

90% of my floor is B&Q T+G the other 10% is older wide oak boards. A very well known floor restoration company will be charging 10k or more to do this and i have no doubt it would be a beautiful floor its a huge amount of money.

So , what do the pros do apart from a 10k resto job? new floor over the old? lift the B&Q boards and replace with oak?


22 quid a square meter is peanuts for inch thick oak floor boards and thers no way i could put down that T+G engineered flooring, i cant stand the stuff.

so, what did the original builders do? how much shrinkage could i expect from green oak boards?

 

[biffvernon]

I don't think laying green oak boards is a good idea. You might end up with a lot of gaps. They need to be at least air dried - stacked in stick outside for a couple of years, and then brought indoors for as long as possible before laying.

For price comparison I took a delivery last week of 1" thick air dried English oak at £22 (not including VAT) per cubic foot sawn through and through. There would be a certain amount of wastage and it's un-planed.

 

[Penners]

I don't think laying green oak boards is a good idea. You might end up with a lot of gaps. They need to be at least air dried - stacked in stick outside for a couple of years, and then brought indoors for as long as possible before laying.

I quite agree. In fact, even with good air-drying and acclimatising, I reckon you still risk a gap or two, in time. But perhaps you're not too worried about that.

As you've observed, your other problem is going to be fitting wide, flat boards to a wonky set of joists. I don't know just how out-of-true the joists are, but you may have to do a fair bit of firring on top of the joists to level them up.

 

[robgil]

stupidly out of true they are , i suppose warping the boards would be too difficult a thing to do?
I dont mind gaps but how did the original builders do it? they only left gaps of around 5mm or so and in some places no gaps at all but i suspect the tight fit could be down to the joists cupping.
If i put a flat floor in it will look out of place with the horizontal wall timbers.

 

[MdB]

Just as a comparison, 20mm thick dried American oak T&G is around £27 / sq m (inc VAT) - at least that is what I've paid for it. It does give a modern finish though which is maybe not what you are after.

 

[Andrew Bodenham]

Robgil,

Green oak is not really suitable for direct fitting as floorboards, as the amount of shrinkage will be problematic. Depending on how fresh the boards are (and hence their moisture content) they might shrink 5 - 10% on drying out. That could give 10mm gaps on 100mm boards, with the result that your floor would look like decking. Depending on how they were fixed down you'd likely get splitting at the fastenings.

It's a fair price though, so why not buy a batch and stack it up to air dry for a year or two. Then get it planed up and bring it inside for another few months before fitting.

Getting the boards to fit to your 'wonky' floor shouldn't be too much of a problem if you use big enough screws to pull them down. Plug the screwholes afterwards. For a more trad look you could whack in big cut nails, but the vibration may not do the rest of your decor any good, plus you'll struggle to get them back up again when you find you've left your car keys under the newly laid boards.

Is the saw mill providing the material sawn or planed?

 

[Penners]

Getting the boards to fit to your 'wonky' floor shouldn't be too much of a problem if you use big enough screws to pull them down. Plug the screwholes afterwards. For a more trad look you could whack in big cut nails, but the vibration may not do the rest of your decor any good

I don't think I'd be quite so confident about pulling the boards down to fit the humps and bumps in the joists - but I suppose it all depends on just how wonky they are. But I do agree about the problems of nailing - I wouldn't contemplate that.

 

[skier-hughes]

I dont mind gaps but how did the original builders do it? they only left gaps of around 5mm or so and in some places no gaps at all but i suspect the tight fit could be down to the joists cupping.
If i put a flat floor in it will look out of place with the horizontal wall timbers.

When built surely the floor would ahve been nice and level, so very easy to attach floor boards to, only time has made them the way they are.

On our very out of true beams we laid some packing pieces to level them up, but you need a damn good carpenter to cut pieces that fit well.

 

[Penners]

When built surely the floor would ahve been nice and level, so very easy to attach floor boards to, only time has made them the way they are.

I quite agree.

 

[robgil]

Thanks guys, what i meant about the original builders was did they season the oak or not, i suppose they did.
Perhaps a system of both packing ontop of the joists and bending the boards would be an idea, matching this to the original boards might be problematic.

 

[Penners]

If you're going to pack the tops of the joists, why do you need to bend the boards? I should just get the firring out correct and have a flat floor (as it would originally have been).

You could either pack with various shaped/tapered pieces of wood on top of the existing joists, or you could insert a completely new set of joists alongside the existing, taking the highest point of the existing wonky joists as your datum. The latter technique would probably turn out to be a lot quicker and easier, and provided you use new joists that are no deeper (or better still a little shallower) than the originals, then you should still be able to show most or all of the old ones as a "beamed" ceiling in the room below.

 

[robgil]

Thats a good plan Penners however the only problem i have with it is a flat floor wont line up correctly with the wall plates upstairs and as we live in a 1 and 1/3 (is that the correct term?) height cottage the low wonky walls wont look right with a straight floor.
I have yet to put a lazer across it but the floor does sag a lot at one end and seems to be humped in the middle , as do the other timbers in the walls in the rooms up stairs.

 

[Penners]

the low wonky walls wont look right with a straight floor.

Well, that's obviously a matter of personal taste - your house, your rules!

But I don't necessarily agree with you. Just because the walls are wonky, I don't believe that the floor has to be so, as well.

 

[biffvernon]

I don't think the flatness is so much of an issue. If all you've got is green boards and you need a floor quickly, lay the boards loose, no nails, no screws. Hold them down with the furniture! Then in about three years time, push them all together, slip in another board at the gap, and screw or nail them down. If nailing, be sure to pre-drill holes for the nails.

 

[Penners]

That's a bloomin' good idea!

(Except that I'd never nail a floor down in old property - all that banging could easily cause stuff to rattle loose.)

 

[robgil]

it would be like a see saw, surely a 1 inch thick oak board would take a bit of bending?

 

[biffvernon]

Try it.

 

[Lime]

As suggested by biffvernon, loose lay and leave for several years.
I'd over top the boards with hardboard (loose lay) to maintain a semi-flat surface and give a safer floor while the drying is taking place.

 

[AMc]

My worry with laying the boards and fixing them green is they could end up doing some damage if they cup or bow significantly.
A friend has a bar in his barn conversion built using a piece of tree (probably oak) sawn into a wide 2" plank which was left with the bark attached. That was built onto a brick plinth. As the wood dried out it has ripped the brickwork apart below it causing a 1cm crack in the masonry below it.

I wouldn't want to do that to your floor joists - I guess that a floorboard nail would pull from the joist, but a screw could easily start to transfer that load into the structure of the floor?

I guess a couple of fixings to stop the board moving & rocking then fix it tighter as time goes on might work?

 

[robgil]

So if green boards are going to be a hassle , what would be best? Kiln dried? Any idea of how much that might cost?