Engineered Wood Flooring
Engineered wood flooring
Summary: Solid wood floors or engineered wood flooring. The trend these days goes very strong towards engineered wood flooring. The reason is that the engineered flooring version is: 1. Much more stable than solid wood. Less bending and deformation of wood. 2 Due to saving expensive wood, the price is lower. 3. A higher stability makes it possible to produce in a range of width: 20-33cm wide. The engineered wood flooring Arrow Wood produces are in CE class: Cfl-S1 and E1 (E0 can be produced on request), see certificates under inside the tabs. Arrow Wood can make your engineered floors resistant against termites if you want .
OUR TYPES OF ENGINEERED WOOD FLOORING
WHY ENGINEERED WOOD FLOORING?
We have to analyses solid flooring to understand the principle of engineered flooring. As we study a board, we can divide this into the area above the tongue and groove. In fact, when we send down a solid piece of floor we cannot sand more down than around 2mm above the joints. If we sand more deep, the joints will break and the floor is spoiled. So if we calculate how much you can really use from a solid floor, that is around 4mm. The analyses is that we can divide a solid floor into a top layer and a construction part where tongue and groove is made.
The basics here is that solid wood works a lot, this is not due to the top layer of 4mm but comes from the construction part of the board.
SOLID WOOD CLOSE UP
ENGINEERED WOOD CLOSE UP
At the left side, we see a solid piece of wood being divided into 2 sections:
1. A top layer 2. A construction part.
Since the construction part in solid wood is responsible for the working of a whole floor board, engineered wood flooring just keep the top layer but replaced the solid construction part for a good quality of plywood. Arrow Wood is using plywood with water resistant glue, this is called a two-layer engineered wood floor. The wood is glued full water proof to the plywood.
Arrow Wood produces engineered wood flooring up 33 cm wide.
PLYWOOD AND ENGINEERED
2 layer engineered wood is the base for a high quality. Wood+plywood and not as some producers want to sell, veneer+wood strips+top layer, this is 3 layer engineered and much less in quality since it uses massive wood that can still move if the width is a little more wide. See details more down at this page.
Plywood is build out of thin layers that is glued water resistant on a grain angle of 90 degrees. So each layer is balanced by the next layer since the grain moves on 90 degrees. The more layers the more stable the plywood is. A 19mm flooring with arrow wood has 9 layers wile other companies uses only 4 or 5.
ENGINEERED WOOD FLOORING AND THE DIFFERENCES IN QUALITY
ROTARY CUT
Rotary cut wood is where one cut a log like a role of toilet paper. This way of cutting will have a limited length. Specs are ofter from 300 mm to 1200mm long. Longer is not a good idea for rotary cut. On the right hand we see a linear cut wood. This can cut any size in length and will produce our spec in long length. Linear cut is the way engineered wood flooring should me made.
LINEAR CUT
ROTARY CUT WOOD
Rotary-cut wood is to be recognized as wood with a grain that is very much disturbed and in many areas quite wide. Linear-cut wood has nice more straight grains and is more delicate in width. Linear cut wood in long length and in a nice straight grain is the way engineered wood should look like. Short-length rotary cut wood is a very budget line, compare with our prices and you will see if there is such a difference between a good-looking linear cut engineered wood flooring and a low grade rotary cut one.
LINEAR CUT WOOD
3 LAYER ENGINEERED
A 3 layer system is made out of 1. a veneer layer on the down part, there a cheap soft wood strip is placed on. This wood strip can be spruce, pine or rubber wood, normally wood of a low density is used. On top of these strips, the final wooden top layer is glued on. Engineered wood needs to be very stable. If one still use massive wood that we still have an unstable factor in our flooring.
2 layer engineered uses plywood, built out on multiple thin layers that are placed on a 90 degree grain from each other to get a optimum in stability. Only this composition is used in boards that are 18cm and wider. You try to put a 18cm or 26 cm wide board made out of 3 layer engineered in a humid climate, better don’t! it is not that stable as the same idea in a 2 layer system with plywood using many layers.
2 LAYER ENGINEERED
ENGINEERED WOOD FLOORING AND TERMITES
In many countries, there are no termites, but especially in tropical climates, you will have them. For this region, we have a special treatment where all boards will be soaked with a special solution to have a good concentration of this inside the flooring and that will not come out easily if dried.
