Very often used flooring such as linoleum. Its use is due to its beautiful appearance, various patterns on the surface, hygiene, ease of installation. But not everyone knows that leveling a wooden floor under linoleum is the most important stage of preparation. After all, to prepare the basis for laying linoleum you need to be especially careful, because the elastic material, after lying down, begins to repeat the floor relief. Of course, when laying on sheet material, you will not encounter special problems, but with the old plank floor difficulties may arise. In order not to make mistakes at the stage of surface preparation, you need to know a few basic rules.
We analyze the condition of the floors
Before starting the laying process, it is necessary to assess the condition of the base under the linoleum, find out if preliminary preparation of the base is necessary.
You can walk around the room with a quick step, jump, if the floors do not creak or stagger, then you can start working, even if the surface is not perfectly flat.
It is recommended to inspect the boards, to touch the darkening areas with a sharp instrument. By the absence of fungus, mold and rust on the nails, one can judge the healthy state of the wood. Another unpleasant phenomenon of wooden coatings is insects. Boards with grooves on the surface should be replaced so that the rot does not move on. In this case, it is also recommended to carry out treatment with special preparations.
It will be useful to lift a few boards and evaluate their lower part, as well as the lag. At the appearance of a creak or bending when walking, it can be argued that the logs do not withstand the load, and it is necessary to lay bricks or small bars for support. Sometimes a creak occurs as a result of the friction of the floorboards. You can solve the problem simply by pouring talc or graphite powder into the crack. It is also worth evaluating the surface for irregularities. By consistently performing these steps, we get a high-quality appearance.
Preparation of the instrument and related materials
Before starting work, you need to prepare all the necessary tools:
- Planer or machine for scraping;
- Plywood, bars, nails or screws for leveling the surface;
- Special glue, putty.
Preparing the base surface
- From the surface of the boards you need to remove the old paint, deepen the nail heads.
- With a flat field, with the absence of any distortions, you can use a planer or scraper.
- After removing the upper part of the boards, the gaps between the floorboards and the areas of deepening the nails must be puttied. After complete drying, the cycling process must be repeated.
- The raw base of the wooden floors will show up on the linoleum. Leveling the wooden floor with significant irregularities and differences is carried out in other ways.
The main stages of leveling wooden floors under linoleum
The construction market offers materials with which you can quickly and efficiently level a wooden floor without completely or partially replacing it.
- Use for leveling self-levelling compound. Of course, the surface of the base will become smooth and even, but this method is not ideal. For a wooden floor, you need to choose a special mixture.
- To level the wooden base, sheet material is used: hardboard, OSB, plywood, fiberboard, furniture panels.
Fiberboard is an inexpensive material with a thickness of 2 cm. It is used only with a flat field, the main disadvantages of which are the gaps between the boards.
OSB ─ this is a structurally specific material, with a thickness of 6 mm and above.It can bend under fasteners, repeating the plane of the floor, depending on the thickness. It is used on a flat surface, but with minor damage. Otherwise, there will be smooth bends on the floor plane.
Plywood ─ this is a durable material, quite expensive, but which is able to qualitatively level the base of the floor. The unique puff structure practically does not allow to sag. For leveling, use plywood with a thickness of 10 mm or more.
To get rid of irregularities, the sheets are fixed with glue or a mixture of gypsum and PVA, then nailed or a special stapler. To level the surface horizontally, it is necessary to lay sheet material on logs glued to the floor. With each method of laying sheets, the seams must be carefully puttied. At the final stage, the surface is covered with drying oil.
It is not necessary to lay an additional layer of thermal insulation material, since the linoleum subbase performs these functions. At the end of all preparatory work, the floor is cleaned of debris, vacuumed, washed and dried thoroughly. Do not forget that a gap of about 10 mm is left between the wall and plywood.
Summarizing
Each method has certain advantages and disadvantages, so you need to look at the situation. However, when choosing a material for leveling the floor surface, it should be understood that savings will cost more. If the floor covering can be changed in the future, then the base must be done with high quality the first time. Using the above recommendations, weighing the pros and cons of each method, you can make the right choice and correctly align the base for linoleum, getting an excellent result for many years.
