Bamboo Flooring - Float, Glue, or Nail?

[psicodude]

So we have decided to pull out the carpet in our Den and replace it with bamboo hardwood. Well, technically it's engineered of course, but whatever, I am calling it hardwood. Anyway, the room is relatively small at 120 sq. feet and our house is only 7 years old, so the floor should (god, I hope) be level.

The hardwood we purchased has the uniclic stuff and says that no nailing is required, although it and gluing are optional. Anyone have any experience with this? Floating it sounds way easier but I do consider myself to be somewhat handy, so nailing it is not a huge deal I guess. I am leaning towards floating it just for the ease of removing it down the road.

Thanks for any advice.

[amorak]

Originally Posted by psicodude

So we have decided to pull out the carpet in our Den and replace it with bamboo hardwood. Well, technically it's engineered of course, but whatever, I am calling it hardwood. Anyway, the room is relatively small at 120 sq. feet and our house is only 7 years old, so the floor should (god, I hope) be level.

The hardwood we purchased has the uniclic stuff and says that no nailing is required, although it and gluing are optional. Anyone have any experience with this? Floating it sounds way easier but I do consider myself to be somewhat handy, so nailing it is not a huge deal I guess. I am leaning towards floating it just for the ease of removing it down the road.

Thanks for any advice.

Don't let Ducay see this - In the last hardwood thread he just about murdered people who called engineered flooring hardwood.

I say floating for ease of removal.

[Ducay]

Originally Posted by amorak

Don't let Ducay see this - In the last hardwood thread he just about murdered people who called engineered flooring hardwood.

I say floating for ease of removal.

My qualm was with people calling laminate hardwood.

Engineered can be called hardwood since it is indeed, somewhat made of hardwood.

[Ducay]

Originally Posted by psicodude

So we have decided to pull out the carpet in our Den and replace it with bamboo hardwood. Well, technically it's engineered of course, but whatever, I am calling it hardwood. Anyway, the room is relatively small at 120 sq. feet and our house is only 7 years old, so the floor should (god, I hope) be level.

The hardwood we purchased has the uniclic stuff and says that no nailing is required, although it and gluing are optional. Anyone have any experience with this? Floating it sounds way easier but I do consider myself to be somewhat handy, so nailing it is not a huge deal I guess. I am leaning towards floating it just for the ease of removing it down the road.

Thanks for any advice.

If you can do a good job and have a decent underlay, you might get away with floating.
Plus, if you do it yourself (floating) and hate the feel/look of it, you can always just pull it up and redo-it with a fastener.

[SportsJunky]

Float it for sure. Most strand type bamboo hardwoods are dimensionally stable (nowadays) so nailing/cleating is fine but one of the advantages to using engineered boards is that you can float it. I'm pretty sure that the uniclic system is fine without applying glue to the grooves. Make sure that you leave a big enough gap around the perimeter of the room as a floating floor needs to be able to float and not bang into walls. When you see laminates, locking hardwoods etc... start to separate from eachother (usually on the short locking ends) it is because the floor didn't have enough room for movement (walls or door jambs for example) and so that energy shows up as gaps between the planks.

[Mad Mel]

I was once given advice by a wise person; I live my life by them, and they may apply here: if it moves, nail it.

[VladtheImpaler]

The guy who installed my hardwood (and was great) said not to use any tropical woods here, as you are just asking for trouble... Take it for what it's worth.

[Winsor_Pilates]

Originally Posted by Ducay

My qualm was with people calling laminate hardwood.

Engineered can be called hardwood since it is indeed, somewhat made of hardwood.

Agreed, Laminate hardwood is a pet peeve of mine as well