Laying a wooden or laminate floor onto concrete Help, advice, information, answers and tips on all types of flooring from laminate and carpet to timber and vinyl

[al-williams13@talktalk.ne]

I want to lay a wooden or laminate floor onto concrete, (not sure which yet). Do I need to lay an underlay? All advice very much appreciated.

[floorlayergrant]

a lightweight foam underlay is required also is the concrete newly laid? if so has it got a dpm? if it has no dpm then use a combined underlay/dpm.

[rosebery]

Personally I hate the hollow sound of many laminate floors. This is, IMHO, exacerbated by the use of foam underlay where the tiny little bubbles act as echo chambers and multiply the noise out of all proportion. I much prefer to use a rubber based underlay which provides comfort as well as smoothing out any irregularities in the sub floor. These can also be procured with a built in moisture barrier for the circumstances that Grant suggests.

But, to answer the question, yes you must have an underlay for laminate.

If you are going for wood I'd recommend engineered rather than solid. Solid has to be fixed to the sub-floor either by secret nailing (very difficult with concrete) or by glueing it down. In the case of wood over concrete a liquid DPM should be applied first. Engineered flooring can either be glued direct (with a DPM) or floating in which case it should have an underlay as above.

Cheers