Solid Hardwood on concrete slab

I have been told that I need a vapor barrier, felt, ½ plywood, more felt and then lay the solid hardwood tongue and groove planks on top of all of that in order. Is this true and if so what kind of vapor barrier, plywood and felt?

 

Dave:

Min 5/8" CDX plywood. 6 mil visqueen(plastic film) and #15 roofing felt.

Ken Fisher

 

There is the sleeper method too.

Cut the 5/8 plywood in 1 foot wide strips. Fasten around the perimeter and then in strips across the floor in 1 foot intervals, so the floor can be fastened in the direction you wish to run it.

 

I may also be doing a solid strip over slab and I have noticed that in the houses that have hardwood/tile, there appears to be very little height difference between them.

Considering that the hardwood is going to end up about 1.5" off the slab, and tile might be 1/2", how can this work? Are they putting down cement backer board under the the tile to build it up or perhaps a well done transition will hide the difference?

In my case the tile is not installed yet.

Thanks

 

It isn't 3/4" solid hardwood your seeing. Most likely your looking at a prefinished engineered hardwood that is 3/8" thick, and it is glued directly to the concrete slab, after moisture test on the concrete are done.

 

Thanks Perry,

Makes sense.

If you were going to redo the tile and hardwood at the same time on a slab, and labor cost isn't an issue, what type of hardwood product would you use?

I guess because I have done a couple of installs (just floating) I have become fairly critical of the professional installs I see and let me tell you even in the 3/4 million dollar homes I see lots of defects like gaps, sloppy shoe molding etc.

If I do this job, I'd ideally like to do a 3/4 (solid or engineered) over plywood, jobsite finished and total replacement of the baseboard. Then perhaps I could either come up with a custom threshold or use CBB under the tile?