Q by Steven Derix: To kit or not to kit?
We are laying (or rather: having laid) a floor of so called
'industrial parquet'. The floorpieces are solid oak, about 16 cm in
lenght, and 6 cm wide. The pieces are glued on an wooden surface. They
will get a finishing of oil.
Naturally - the strips of wood being natural oak and quite small -
there are small gaps between the floorpieces. The manufacturer advised
us to fill in these gaps with a mixture of sawdust and some filling
materail, a glue based on solvents, ore on a water-base. However, my
'parquetteur' (French for floor guy) is not keen on doing this.
According to him, the kitting will come loose because of the
shrinking/expanding of the wood, and because of the vibrations of the
wooden underlayment caused by walking accross the room. Both arguments
I put to the manufacturer. He says this is nonsense. The parquetteur
however, persists. Whom to believe?
Our answer:
Hi Steven
Thanks for this question.
There will be small gaps indeed (if your parquetteur (parket-legger
in Dutch, floor fitter in English) does his work correct it wouldn't be
too many and only tiny ones.
And if he collects the sand-dust of the seconds sanding (grit 80, mixes
that with wood-filler (like Lecol 7500) and 'plasters' this over the
whole floor all gaps will be filled. After this has dried (goes rather
quickly) the third sanding will remove any excess filler from your
floor.
We've done this many times over and never had any problems with the
filler coming out of the tiny gaps. So the manufacturer is right.
Just wondering however about the grade you mention: Industrial Grade
Mosaic is normally only used as subfloor for Design Parquet Patterns
(like herringbones) when installing on concrete floors.
Hope this helps.
(received kind reply back from Steven: It is, thanks.
Actually, I got the same advice everywhere. I ordered the Floor Fitter to fill
in the gaps.)