Durability of engineered wood flooring

Durability of engineered wood flooring

 by Chancelier Wood Flooring

  www.artparquet-woodflooring.com

what is engineered wood flooring

engineered wood flooring is made by wood top layer and plywood material. as the plywood structure is consisting of several layers of wood veneer pressed by high-power machines, engineered wood flooring is totally different from solid hardwood flooring, without one-direction of wood grain. in the aspect of shrinking & expanding with moisture, and the dimension stability, engineered flooring definitely has better performance than hardwood flooring. Besides, engineered wooden floors achieves the same impression of beauty for the wood grain as hardwood flooring, and it also provides same feeling of walking to people , as hardwood flooring.  

With same stability of laminate flooring and beauty of hardwood flooring, engineered wood flooring becomes more and more popular around the world now.

The factors to influence the durability of engineered wood flooring

Before we discuss the durability of engineered wood flooring, we need to know well the details of engineered wood flooring.

1 Wood species for the top layer 

With different wood species as top layer for engineered wood floors,  the hardness of engineered wood flooring will be very different, for example, birch is very soft and brazilian teak is almost the hardest wood, with janka hardness 1260psi and 3300psi. Birch engineered flooring thus feels much softer than brazilian teak engineered flooring. After several years, brazilian teak engineered flooring would look better and feel better than birch engineered flooring , as people walk on it with shoes for years.

as a result, wood species for engineered wooden floors is one of the factors to influence the durability of engineered wood flooring.

2 Quality of lacquer or oil for flooring coating

Most of the engineered wood floorings are pre-finished with UV lacquer or UV oil by the engineered wood flooring manufacturers. The quality of lacquer or oil coating is the most important factors to engineered flooring durability.

 If the quality of lacquer of oil is poor, the flooring coating will probably occur to these potential problem: 

   lacquer failure at parts of the flooring boards,

   lacquer cracking, 

   lacquer uneven surface, 

   lacquer de-bonding days after installation

With such lacquer problem, those engineered wood flooring undoubtedly needs reparing, or even are less any more.

On the other hand, with excellent lacquer quality, engineered wood flooring would be as good as new even after several years, without need for re-finishing for coating for 5-10 years.

3 Quality of plywood material

Plywood material has better stability in dimension than solid wood flooring, but the multi-layer plywood is made of several layers bonded by glue. So quality of plywood material and the glue quality for the plywood material would be the 2nd important factor to engineered flooring durability.

With installation on concrete flooring, the moisture in concrete flooring will have an effect on the back of engineered flooring year by year, although the concrete floor would be processed with waterproof treatment for wood flooring on top.

In some cold area, people will install engineered wood flooring above the under hearing system, which would be turned on in winter,then the floorings would be heated as well. The qualified plywood material for engineered wood flooring will not be glue de-bonding in such circumstances.

Those plywood materials which could pass the bonding strength testing ( soaking in boilding water for 2 hours),are qualified in such situation.

4 Good maintenance to the flooring

Although engineered wood flooring is new product with high technology,  its wood property still require people to use , maintain them as real hardwood flooring: 

   waxing every 6 months, 

   mopping without dipping water,

   no dragging for heavy articles on it,

   keep flooring and house as dry as possible

Without good maintenance, even the best quality engineered wood flooring will not have durable performance, and probably needs repairing several months after installation.

According to the above knowledge about the factors to durability of engineered wood flooring, we thus shall pay great attention to these factors before we make decisions during buying engineered wood flooring for our new houses.