The first type are solid wood planks (15mm - 22mm thick) that can be either glued to the sub-floor or nailed to the joists. This floor will need to be sanded and sealed. Over time, such a floor can be restored by repeating this process.

The second type are engineered planks (usually with a 14mm core of birch ply and a 6mm wear layer of any type of hardwood you choose) and can be nailed to the joists to take a heavy payload or can be laid as a floating floor.
These planks are available in widths from 160mm to 300mm wide. Some consider these planks are stronger than a hardwood plank. They are very stable and will show very little movement if the moisture content suddenly changes in the room.
They can come pre-finished in an oiled or lacquered finish, thereby eliminating the sanding and sealing process. Or the planks can be delivered in an unfinished state and can then be sanded and sealed to your specification. The advantage of an unfinished product is that it can be stained to a particular shade you prefer and then sealed.
If the planks are laid as a floating floor, then a special underlay with a built in vapour barrier is installed first. In this type of installation the planks are not fixed to the sub-floor at any point. The underlay does mean that you can get the slight feel of movement under foot.
This is usually the most economical way to have a hardwood floor.

The third type is a more specialist floor – parquet flooring – these blocks range from 12mm – 22mm thick. The 12mm block tends to be an engineered product and usually comes pre-finished. The 22mm blocks are solid wood and are usually available unfinished requiring sanding and sealing. This is certainly not a project for a DIY enthusiast. It is very labour intensive and requires a lot of expertise and specialist machinery. However, the flooring has a very long life span. You just have to visit older houses to see parquet floors in their full glory. If you think back to your school days to the assembly hall, those floors are still going strong with the proper maintenance. We still return to refurbish some parquet floors that were laid 80 or more years ago.
Parquet flooring can be laid in many different patterns, including herringbone, basket weave and brick to name just a few. We also offer a bespoke service, including borders and diagrams, etc. This type of flooring is beginning to become very popular again in domestic properties.

What are the different woods that can be used?

We install and are able to provide some of the following exotic woods, including, bamboo, afromosia, jatoba, curupau, ebony, lapache, tigerwood maple and many others. There is now access to an eco-friendly timber called coconut wood (cocos nucifera) - a very tough and dense wood. This tree will harvest coconuts on some plantations for fifty to eighty years and then it reaches the end of its life. We also get nuts, oil and coir (fibre from around the seed) for matting. So some African countries are going green by using the trunk of the tree for hardwood planking. There are 100 species of coconut trees. Some are 25% harder than oak and as hard as maple and so it is very hard to cut and machine. The tree will sometimes be 12" in diameter. The trunks do not have growth rings, heartwood, branches or knots.

Bamboo is another interesting species. This can be cut down every two or three years and as long as the mother plant is not touched, it will continue to grow, yielding more bamboo for harvesting in a few short years. Then of course, there are the home-grown woods, the ever popular Oak, Ash, Birch, Larch, Pines, Sycamore, Cherry, Walnut and many more, all of which we have installed over the last 28 years. Due to a new EU directive which will come into force in the near future all products used are solvent-free. This applies to adhesives, sealers (lacquers) and moisture suppressants.