It is the dictum you all the time see once you buy a ground overlaying: Begin with a stage subfloor. Whether or not engineered wooden flooring, tile, hardwood, laminate, or vinyl, that ground cowl must be put in on high of a stage subfloor.
However older properties regularly have subfloors which can be out-of-level creating sloping flooring. Even some newer properties have already got uneven subfloors. How will you right an uneven subfloor earlier than putting in flooring so you’ve gotten a stage ground?
Why a Degree Subfloor Is Necessary
Your ground is not simply the tile, carpet, wooden, or laminate that you just stroll on. The flooring system in your house sometimes consists of three layers: the floor ground overlaying (reminiscent of laminate planks, sheet vinyl, hardwood planks, or carpet); an underlayment that lies immediately underneath the floor ground overlaying; and the structural subfloor that’s put in immediately over the ground joists.
The subfloor is a structural part, important for the energy and sturdiness of the house’s flooring platform. This subfloor layer have to be secure, stable, flat, and stage. If the subfloor is uneven, with dips, ripples, or waves, this irregularity will probably be telescoped via to the floor ground overlaying and may even trigger the flooring set up to fail. For instance, ceramic tile put in over a nasty subfloor may end up in cracking grout or damaged tiles.
In properties constructed after the Nineteen Seventies, the subfloor is often product of tongue-and-groove plywood sheets that interlock to type a easy, flat base for the flooring system. Extra lately, OSB (oriented strand board) grew to become a suitable materials for subfloors. Plywood or OSB usually makes for a really secure subfloor that resists buckling or rippling until there was some type of water injury or settling of the home’s foundations or heart help beam. Nonetheless, if the subflooring materials was substandard—constructed with non-regulation skinny sheets of plywood or one other materials—it is doable your subfloor will probably be uneven and want alterations, reminiscent of leveling the ground with new plywood, prior to installing new flooring.
In older properties, the subfloor is usually product of particular person pine planks put in at a diagonal to the ground joists, typically with seen gaps between boards. These are sometimes quite low-quality boards that may be vulnerable to warping and cupping, in addition to cracking and breaking as they age and dry out.
Put together to Degree a Flooring
It is best to guage the subfloor and make any mandatory repairs after the outdated flooring and underlayment have been eliminated because the final step earlier than putting in new flooring. There are some cases, nonetheless, the place new flooring is put in immediately over the outdated flooring, reminiscent of when carpeting is put in over hardwood or when laminate flooring is put in over sheet vinyl. In these cases, the analysis and correction of the subfloor might be accomplished with the outdated ground overlaying nonetheless in place. Self-leveling compound, for instance, is a straightforward option to stage and flatten out a vinyl ground earlier than laying laminate planks excessive.
Take into account, although, that putting in new flooring over the outdated means that you’re growing the general peak of the ground. The place this can be a drawback, it could be greatest to take away the outdated flooring, underlayment, and even perhaps the subfloor itself to put in new layers from backside to high.
Issues with subfloors fall into one among two broad classes: basic sloping that impacts the whole aircraft of the ground and pretty minor irregularities that interrupt the flat aircraft of the ground with out affecting its total levelness. Whereas there are a number of methods a do-it-yourselfer can repair minor irregularities. However bigger sloping and sagging points are past the attain of most do-it-yourselfers and sometimes contain leveling uneven flooring utilizing jacks.
Security Issues
Subfloors and all the constructing members that undergird them, together with joists and beams, can grow to be unstable if an excessive amount of weight is loaded on high. With raised flooring that has a crawlspace or basement beneath, just be sure you are staying inside load limits.