Of the various flooring types, wood flooring is considered as one of the classiest form of flooring. It’s made from a relatively easily and cheaply available material, timber, but the finished product is palatial. There are basically two types of wood floorings, as described below.
Solid Wood: This type of wood flooring is milled from a single piece of timber that is kiln or air dried before sawing. It is installed above a concrete floor. The timber from which it is derived may be cut into three ways, flat-sawn, quarter-sawn, and rift-sawn. The kind of flooring you wish to apply determines the way the timber should be cut. After this process, the timber is either packed unfinished for a site-finished installation, or finished at the factory. The manufacturers also need to carefully control the moisture content, so that the product doesn’t get distorted during transport and storage. Most solid woods incorporate absorption strips to reduce cupping. Absorption strips are simply grooves cut into the back of the wood that run the length of each plank.
Engineered Wood: This is the type that is used all over the world. It consists of many layers, with the top one visible above the surface. The top most hardwood surface is covered with multiple layers (generally six) of varnish. Each layer below runs at 90 degrees to the one above. This makes the engineered material more stable. Engineered floors are divided into still more types. Veneer floors use a thin layer of wood over a core that is commonly a composite wood product. Acrylic impregnated wood flooring, as the name suggests, uses a layer of wood impregnated with liquid acrylic.
The wood may be engineered differently from the aforementioned ways too, depending upon the need and affordability of the customer.
Rotary-Peel: The log of wood is first placed in boiling water at a certain temperature for some time. Then after the log is removed from the hot water, it is peeled off with the help of a blade, starting from the outside and gradually proceeding towards the core. This sheet thus formed is called a veneer. The veneer is then pressed flat with high pressure. The end-product is applied to the concrete floor to give a wooden floor appearance.
Sliced-Peel: This process is quite similar to rotary-peel, with the difference being in the way the wood has been cut. While in the former, the wood is peeled off horizontally, here the wood is sliced from the edges, giving it a circular look. The rest of the process is quite the same.
Dry Solid-Sawn: Here, the wood is not boiled but kept at a low humidity level and dried slowly to draw moisture from the inside of the wood cells. The log is then sawed similar to the way it is while making hardwood flooring. Even the look obtained by this kind of engineering is similar to that of hardwood flooring. It’s devoid of the drawbacks of rotary-peeled and sliced-peeled floors like face-checking, and the risk of springing back to its original circular shape again.