In all reality installing hardwood flooring is not a hard thing to do, it is intimidating and a little tedious at times but not real difficult. As long as you acclimate the wood, have the right tools, and prepare your sub-floor it should be easy sailing. I have put down a couple hardwood floors in the last ten years but never in my own home. The information I will give in this article is something I have just recently learned and spent many, many hours learning it. For those of you who live in a warm climate zone you will think this is absolutely crazy, but with that being said I’ll continue.
I live in Colorado and slab-on-grade houses are just few and far between. Slab-on-grade basically means that your house is built on a solid slab without a basement. Most of us in Colorado have basements, well those of us in the Eastern half do. Anyway, I live in a home that has a basement (below grade), I also have a garden level which serves as an entrance to the garage and the backyard. This is where I wanted to put some hardwood flooring down, and it just so happens that it was a concrete floor. This is where my troubles began because I didn’t even know if you could but hardwood down on concrete or not. It turns out that you can as long as it is not below grade. I have verified this with all the major floor manufacturers around the country. I ran into a few problems however trying to get someone locally who knew what they were talking about.
My first step was to find out how to prep the concrete so it would accept the flooring, all you have to do is put down a moisture barrier and make sure the concrete is level. Moisture barrier products can be found at any local box store or hardware store. The next step was to find the appropriate adhesive to lay the floor with. This was a fiasco like I have never seen before. The big box stores carry all the engineered flooring and laminate flooring adhesive you could ever want, do not use this. The adhesive used for engineered flooring or laminate flooring will not work for solid hardwood flooring. When I went out searching for the correct adhesive it was impossible to find, and the people at Lowes and Home Depot told me to just use the laminate adhesive, I found out quickly that you should never do that. Anyway, I got through all the challenges and I have put my floor down on the concrete, it looks fantastic and it is performing wonderfully so far.
I guess the moral of the story is that you can put solid hardwood flooring down on concrete as long as it’s not below grade. Just don’t put it down in your basement and you should be ok. By the way, the reason you can’t put it below grade is due to the moisture problem. If you put hardwood flooring below grade you will have moisture seeping up from the concrete itself and you will get warping and buckling of the boards. No matter what anyone tells you, you can put hardwood flooring down on concrete above grade. Just make sure you use the correct adhesive and prepare the concrete correctly. I ended up getting the correct adhesive through a specialty flooring store, which I’m sure you can find anywhere. I hope this helps someone who is going through the same problems I went through.
