New flooring needed

[truckcab79]

1 hour ago, LadyG said:

I tried those glued vinyl planks which were all the rage four years ago, but they moved slightly,, so dirty lines on light flooring, i assume Karndean would be the same.

I have found a good remnant on Remland carpets, it's 2m wide commercial grade, sort of blue black colour.

I'm finding it very difficult to find a remnant of wool twist, and also decide on the carpet colour from the screen. For some reason the boat fitter seems unwilling to do the job.

Properly installed Karndean or better still
Amtico doesn’t move. It’s all to do with the stability of your base. Thick, firmly fixed and as few joints as possible. All more difficult to achieve on a boat but perfectly feasible. Not cheap when done well, but nothing is.  

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, truckcab79 said:

Properly installed Karndean or better still
Amtico doesn’t move. It’s all to do with the stability of your base. Thick, firmly fixed and as few joints as possible. All more difficult to achieve on a boat but perfectly feasible. Not cheap when done well, but nothing is.  

 

Absolutely correct. In five years on our boat there was absolutely no sign of our Karndean moving or lifting.

 

Ditto in our kitchen at home six years on.

 

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by M_JG

[magnetman]

I've done two boats with the finger parquet. One was about 15m2 and the other is about 5m2. No expansion gaps just put the stuff down on Lecol latex adhesive job done several yars later nothing has moved or come orf. 

 

Seems fine to me. This was stuck to an existing 18mm ply floor. 

[truckcab79]

6 minutes ago, magnetman said:

I've done two boats with the finger parquet. One was about 15m2 and the other is about 5m2. No expansion gaps just put the stuff down on Lecol latex adhesive job done several yars later nothing has moved or come orf. 

 

Seems fine to me. This was stuck to an existing 18mm ply floor. 

Yep.  18mm bare minimum.  I laid a porcelain bathroom floor for a client last year. Old house and loads of flex.  Think we laid 60mm of sub-floor before I was happy it wasn’t going to break up.  Luckily we had a dropped floor so loads of space to play with.  Vinyl is a lot more forgiving but still needs a good base. It’ll also show every last imperfection over time so we generally lay at least 18mm and then a fibre-reinforced screed over the top.  No chance of the joints on the floor mirroring through the vinyl a few years down the line then.  

11 minutes ago, magnetman said:

I've done two boats with the finger parquet. One was about 15m2 and the other is about 5m2. No expansion gaps just put the stuff down on Lecol latex adhesive job done several yars later nothing has moved or come orf. 

 

Seems fine to me. This was stuck to an existing 18mm ply floor. 

 

 

Nice.  Any pics?  

[magnetman]

This is the one in here. Other boat I don't have any more I laid them in the mooring common parquet type layout with squares of 5 pieces each.

These came as individual fingers as they were reclaimed. I do prefer the brick wall effect. I also don't treat the wood its just bare hence a bit shedlike .

 

 

Fingers are about 9mm thick 25mm wide and 120mm long. 

The other boat floor was a lot more impressive for a photo but I don't think I have any pics. 

Found one! This was the barge. 

 

 

Took a bit of patience getting all that down one piece at a time ! I did actually put a rope down the centre as an expansion gap but pretty sure it wasn't needed. 

[LadyG]

21 minutes ago, magnetman said:

This is the one in here. Other boat I don't have any more I laid them in the mooring common parquet type layout with squares of 5 pieces each.

These came as individual fingers as they were reclaimed. I do prefer the brick wall effect. I also don't treat the wood its just bare hence a bit shedlike .

 

 

Fingers are about 9mm thick 25mm wide and 120mm long. 

The other boat floor was a lot more impressive for a photo but I don't think I have any pics. 

Found one! This was the barge. 

 

 

Took a bit of patience getting all that down one piece at a time ! I did actually put a rope down the centre as an expansion gap but pretty sure it wasn't needed. 

I already have some wood chip fingers,  glued on if you read my previous.

I've ordered Heckmonwith commercial carpet remnant from Remland carpets, full price £1200, my price £200 delivered, seems they have a 2m remnant. It has ten year guarantee. Tough stuff, and already  cut to width!

Ye haw.

Edited December 10, 2023 by LadyG

[blackrose]

19 minutes ago, Peugeot 106 said:

I don’t live on my boat so can’t comment on cold in midwinter but would say that for comfort underfoot Flotex having a very short nap is in between normal carpet and hard flooring. It’s the short dense nap that makes it so washable but that means you don’t sink in like you do with a shaggy carpet.

 

 It would be fairly easy to cover the floor with a thin sheet of ply over thin floor insulation which would make it warmer if you needed to. You can get various floor insulating sheets from places like Screwfix. The floor would be raised less than 10mm. You could use the same card template for carpet insulation and insulation. I suggest you get a sample.

The problem I had was  aesthetics. A lot of the Flotex looks really naff and pale colours  I don’t know what their design department are smoking.  But I did find quite a decent design in the end and being a roll end it was at a good price. I mentioned a eBay company in an earlier post it could be worth giving them a shout

 

Thanks. I'm thinking to save the trouble and expense of laying insulation I could just lay 6mm ply over the existing underlay and carpet tiles. It might not have the insulation properties of a specialist floor insulation but I know from years of living with it that it's good enough. I think the issue with any insulation under thin ply will be compressibility but maybe if it's screwed down hard every 18" across the entire floor it would work.

 

I know what you mean about some of those Flotex designs. The wood grain effect I was looking at is never going to look as good as a hard floor, but unless you're down at floor level it looks ok.

[truckcab79]

36 minutes ago, blackrose said:

 

Thanks. I'm thinking to save the trouble and expense of laying insulation I could just lay 6mm ply over the existing underlay and carpet tiles. It might not have the insulation properties of a specialist floor insulation but I know from years of living with it that it's good enough. I think the issue with any insulation under thin ply will be compressibility but maybe if it's screwed down hard every 18" across the entire floor it would work.

 

I know what you mean about some of those Flotex designs. The wood grain effect I was looking at is never going to look as good as a hard floor, but unless you're down at floor level it looks ok.

6mm is too thin for that. Far too much movement and worse still if you screw it down every 18” It’ll  be like a mountain range. You want minimum 12mm and even then you need to screw down every 150mm maximum.   I personally would never lay over underlay or carpet.  It’s going to look awful.  18mm ply you might just get away with it but by then you might as well have taken up the carpet and done it properly.  

[LadyG]

I don't understand about floor insulation, wear slippers. My boat is warm from the day the fire is lit to the day it is not. Plenty of warm air.

Even when I was iced in I was toasty 24/7,  just keep the fire going.

I usually have some windows open a crack and the hatch is not even insulated, though I did cover it with some windscreen insulation for a few days when we were down to -6 overnight.

3 hours ago, haggis said:

I would advise against floor covering in a boat which will show every spec of dust or animal hair. Dark blue black might just do that 🙂 

Cat is black, but does not shed, soot and local mud is black, so I think I will be OK,  it's sort of speckled/hairy the type of thing used in commercial offices rather than houses. I struggled to find a wool twist carpet remnant that would work, the Berber Heather wool twist recommended by the carpet company was £32/:sq m and came in a 4m roll!

Edited December 10, 2023 by LadyG

[blackrose]

1 hour ago, truckcab79 said:

6mm is too thin for that. Far too much movement and worse still if you screw it down every 18” It’ll  be like a mountain range. You want minimum 12mm and even then you need to screw down every 150mm maximum.   I personally would never lay over underlay or carpet.  It’s going to look awful.  18mm ply you might just get away with it but by then you might as well have taken up the carpet and done it properly.  

 

Yes you're probably right. But if the ply is too thick then there's no point having insulation underneath because the specific heat capacity (related to density) of the solid wood will just give you a cold floor anyway. What about laying 6mm ply over 12mm celotex and just sticking it all down?

 

1 hour ago, LadyG said:

I don't understand about floor insulation, wear slippers. My boat is warm from the day the fire is lit to the day it is not. Plenty of warm air.

Even when I was iced in I was toasty 24/7,  just keep the fire going.

 

Yeah, you don't understand that every boat is different. Without some form of insulation my floor gets very cold in winter even with slippers. I'm also heating up a much bigger space than you. 

 

I've been living on this boat for 18 years and lived on a narrowboat before. I'm not some idiot who's just bought a boat who needs to be told what to wear on his feet! 🤣

Edited December 10, 2023 by blackrose

[Peugeot 106]

Blackrose the insulation i’m On about is fairly rigid from Screwfix. It’s actually fibreboard insulation specifically for the job 10mm or 6mm thick so it won’t compress but takes out irregularities in the subfloor  I used it in my shed under 18mm chipboard . I suppose it’s just a thermal break under the ply subfloor and won’t add much insulation but I can’t see it doing any harm

[LadyG]

1 hour ago, blackrose said:

 

 

 

 

I'm not some idiot who's just bought a boat who needs to be told what to wear on his feet! 

Sorry, I can't imagine how I got  that impression, lol.

Edited December 10, 2023 by LadyG

[truckcab79]

1 hour ago, blackrose said:

 

Yes you're probably right. But if the ply is too thick then there's no point having insulation underneath because the specific heat capacity (related to density) of the solid wood will just give you a cold floor anyway. What about laying 6mm ply over 12mm celotex and just sticking it all down?

 

 

Yeah, you don't understand that every boat is different. Without some form of insulation my floor gets very cold in winter even with slippers. I'm also heating up a much bigger space than you. 

 

I've been living on this boat for 18 years and lived on a narrowboat before. I'm not some idiot who's just bought a boat who needs to be told what to wear on his feet! 🤣

With regard to the ply it’s not really about insulation. Anything less than 18mm over anything soft or able to be compressed will flex too much and you’ll have a floor that will look horrendous. 6mm is like paper.  

celotex with ply stuck over would be ok so long as the ply has enough weight to hold down the Celotex I suppose, but it’s not an approach I’d personally take on and expect decent results to be honest.  Depends what level of finish you’re after.  On your own boat it matters less of course.
 

might be worth looking at Wedi board or its equivalent.  It’s a foam cored fibreglass tile backer board available in many thicknesses.  Stiff, waterproof, easy to handle.  I’d be more inclined to stick some of that down if that’s the approach you’re after.   

[blackrose]

1 hour ago, Peugeot 106 said:

Blackrose the insulation i’m On about is fairly rigid from Screwfix. It’s actually fibreboard insulation specifically for the job 10mm or 6mm thick so it won’t compress but takes out irregularities in the subfloor  I used it in my shed under 18mm chipboard . I suppose it’s just a thermal break under the ply subfloor and won’t add much insulation but I can’t see it doing any harm

 

Ok I'll have a look at it, thanks.

1 hour ago, truckcab79 said:

With regard to the ply it’s not really about insulation. Anything less than 18mm over anything soft or able to be compressed will flex too much and you’ll have a floor that will look horrendous. 6mm is like paper.  

 

Yes I understood that, but if I wanted to lay my Flotex on top of 18mm ply I'd just use the existing subfloor. My point was that any insulation under such thick dense board is rendered useless because of the specific heat capacity of the material.

1 hour ago, LadyG said:

Sorry, I can't imagine how I got  that impression, lol.

 

I can. There's a tornado of nonsense whirling around in your head. Lol.

[truckcab79]

17 minutes ago, blackrose said:

 

 

 

Yes I understood that, but if I wanted to lay my Flotex on top of 18mm ply I'd just use the existing subfloor. My point was that any insulation under such thick dense board is rendered useless because of the specific heat capacity of the material.

 

 

Yep. Appreciate that. Was just trying to stop you screwing 6mm ply down hard over carpet underlay as you’d described. Laying a floor on that would be like try to lay it on a chesterfield sofa.  😂