Flooring

[dor]

I'm going to lay laminate flooring (Aqualoc+) in the back of the boat, the bathroom and galley. The question is, which direction looks best? Lengthways will accentuate the narrowness of the boat (standard narrowboat not widebeam), crossways may look a bit odd and the third option is diagonal which may also look odd across the narrow width.

 

What have you done and does it look right?

[WJM]

lengthways in mine - looks fine - didn't accentuate the tunnel effect at all, in my opinion

[zenataomm]

When laying planks for flooring don't do what a previous owner of my mate's boat did ...............

 

He already had planking down which he didn't like and placed the new stuff on top of the old at ninety degrees to it!

 

Not a problem until there was a need to get at the bilges in a hurry ............oops!

[Beeno]

When laying planks for flooring don't do what a previous owner of my mate's boat did ...............

 

He already had planking down which he didn't like and placed the new stuff on top of the old at ninety degrees to it!

 

Not a problem until there was a need to get at the bilges in a hurry ............oops!

 

Again, lengthways.

 

Most flooring should be laid 90 degress to the underlying joists (according to the instructions), which in a narrownoat run along the width of the boat, however with a substantial piece of ply down first I can't really see it being a problem. You can always lay it out first to see what you prefer and walk on it to check it doesn't flex too much.

 

Mark

[Chertsey]

We went cross ways, laid on top of existing board, with T&G planks of salvaged pitch pine. Reasons were to avoid accentuating narrowness, to imitate (albeit feebly) the effect of bottom planks, and above all to avoid joins in the lengths. If you're using laminate these aren't issues.

 

Pic here when newly done

[zenataomm]

The point I was making is that if your new planking is at right angles to any previous planking then you have to remove it all in order to get into the bilges, even though you may only want to get to a specific square foot of the bilge.

Because the previous planking will be laying underneath every one of the new ones. Unless you are laying very short lengths of course, but you'd still need to take up many more than needed than if they were running parallel to each other.

Not clever if you have an emergency on your hands.

[Chertsey]

But if it's already boarded with, say 6x4 sheets. then you already can't get to the bilge. And I can't see how you'd lay laminate without some kind of substrate to lay it on. If you use T&G boards, it's still hard to lift a small section, whichever way they're lying even if there's nothing underneath. How many people could quickly lift a small section of floor, and why would you need to? What sort of emergency are you thinking of? If you're redoing the floor then you could put hatches in if there were, say, water pipes you might want to get to.

[WJM]

I just laid my laminate flooring on top of the big sheets of wood that form the floor. Although I have never need to access the bilge, I reason that I can do so if I ever need to through the floor areas under the bed and the dinette and in the cupboards.