Hi all. I'm a still a very new DIYer in my first home. I have been reading all I can and still have many questions about hardwood floors. Let me explain the situation. I have a fairly small 110 sq. ft. family room where I would like to replace the carpet with hardwood, and I think this would be a good project and learning experience for me. It's on-grade (I'm in Florida, so no basement). I've read about the lock and fold floors from Bruce and it seems like an easy installation.

But I have a floating laminate floor in the dining room that was there when we moved in, and I'm really unhappy with it because of the "give" in it, it feels bouncy, and in my opinion it feels cheap. But I don't know if that's the nature of a floating floor, or a crappy installation, or cheap laminate or what. So I guess my question is if I go with the Bruce L&F what are the ways to mitigate this? I know about leveling the subfloor with 1/8" in a 6 ft. radius (did I get the numbers right), and the underlayment, but is there anything else? I'm not interested in trying the glue down method because I read they're prone to failure and not really for the first timer. I really don't like that bouncy feeling, if I must put a subfloor down, well that's another post with a bunch of questions...
Thanks!

 

The existing laminate floating floor may be bouncy for a few reasons... Like you talked about, the subfloor may have issues with "Deflection", or simply the floor was not installed correctly. It could also mean that the floor matting (blue matting under the floating floor was not the correct matting).

Follow the manufactures directions, if you have any questions, call them! Bruce has a great tech team and they are there to help. Buy the proper materials, check the deflection in the subloor after you get the carpet out. make sure you remove all of the staples left behind from the carpet padding, and make sure that sub floor is sufficiently secured to the floor joists and in NOT already bouncing! If you need to install a 1/4 luan sub floor and add some leveling compound to rid the subfloor of out of spec deflection - do so. I suggest using Mapei Floor lever. Here is their link: *once there do a search for: "ULTRAPLAN EASY"

http://www.mapei.us/

Follow the directions for the flooring installation (Checking relative humidity in the room, checking subfloor moisture content, flooring moisture content, acclimating the wood, leaving expansion gaps around the perimeter with spacers!, etc..)

Good luck,

Greg - Retired Floor Installer/refinisher
Maine