Laying Plywood On The Floor. How To Lay Plywood On The Floor, Installation, Leveling, Flooring

2023 Author: Philip Bishop | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-08-25 07:54

• How to lay plywood on the floor. How to glue, fasten
• DIY plywood floor installation
• Plywood flooring

Plywood is the best rough subfloor. It is durable, not subject to deformation, always warm. Made of wood, it is able to maintain a comfortable and healthy indoor climate. Do-it-yourself apartment renovation website today will tell you how plywood is laid on the floor, installation and alignment technology. As a result, you will know the whole device of this method.

How to lay plywood on the floor. How to glue, fasten

Plywood must be attached to the base with dowels and glue. The water-based adhesive is almost odorless, but it takes several days to dry, which can cause unwanted slowdowns in construction.

Solvent-based adhesive dries much faster, but fills the room with a strong, unpleasant odor. And although the smell disappears with good ventilation, many craftsmen do not like this composition. Therefore, you can choose the third option: fastening the plywood to the base using two-component glue. Most often, this method is used if the screed is not completely dry, and there are communications in the concrete.

Work begins on laying plywood on the floor with a correct screed device. The screed was made dry or wet - it doesn't matter, the main thing is that it is completely horizontal, and the work is done with high quality. If the screed is done correctly, waterproofing, thermal insulation are made in accordance with technological requirements, the moisture content of the base does not exceed 1%, then you can count on the fact that the finished floors will serve for many years, will be warm, dry and comfortable.

The base for parquet is usually plywood sheets FC 4/4 or higher. Usually choose a thickness of 1 centimeter, sometimes 12 millimeters. It is this thickness that makes the material moderately strong, but, at the same time, moderately flexible, which is very important: after all, glued sheets are subjected to heavy loads when people walk on the floor and arrange furniture. Thickness over 12 mm is impractical because does not affect properties, but costs more.

Since plywood is a multi-layer material, it can delaminate in high humidity. Before starting its flooring, you need to check how wet the concrete floors are. This is done simply. During the repair, the old topcoat is removed. During construction, the floor is simply released.

A large sheet of waterproof film (polyethylene) is spread over the slabs cleaned of old coatings. Its edges are carefully and hermetically pressed by a load to the floor so that the center remains free. If after a week condensation does not appear on the polyethylene, then you can lay a wooden substrate. The appearance of moisture indicates that the room is too damp and additional waterproofing of the floors will be required.

DIY plywood floor installation

First, preliminary cutting of sheets is carried out according to previously taken measurements of the room. When cutting, be sure to take into account that the damping seams between the panels should be about a centimeter, and at the walls - one and a half or two centimeters. The deck must not be in contact with the walls. The distance is necessary so that the change in dimensions due to changes in the level of humidity or heat does not "swell" the finished floor. In addition, small-format workpieces are more reliable and stable than large ones.

When the cutting is finished, you should check if the ends are not delaminated at the cutting site. Such blanks cannot be used. After that, the panels are adjusted to the floor. The sheets are laid out on the floor as they will be attached to it. Important: do not allow a joint in one place of four sheets! Therefore, the panels are laid with a shift, as with brickwork.

When the plywood is fitted, all the parts are numbered, a diagram of their location is drawn, the blanks are removed from the floor device. The base for the flooring is first carefully leveled: traces of mortar, paint smudges, and other traces of construction work are removed. Then the overlap is dedusted. This is best done with a powerful industrial vacuum cleaner. If the cleaning of dust and debris is carried out with an ordinary broom, then it is absolutely impossible to wet it - the moisture will spoil the wood material.

Now you need to coat the base with a primer. This type of primer is prepared from the same composition on which the plywood will be glued, but strongly diluted with an appropriate solvent. The primer has several tasks. It penetrates deeply into the pores of the base, glues the remaining microscopic dust particles to it and creates a solid surface for gluing. Such dedusting enhances the adhesion of glue and plywood, greatly enhances the adhesion of dissimilar materials. The primer strengthens the concrete surface, prevents it from collapsing and forming new dust. In a large room where the flooring will be carried out in parts, the primer is also applied in parts. In small rooms, you can prime the entire base. In any case, the processing is carried out immediately before laying the plywood; you cannot walk on the primer.

Plywood flooring

The pre-selected mastic is applied to the primed base with a notched trowel. The thickness of the required layer is indicated on its packaging, but usually does not exceed two centimeters. A numbered sheet is laid on the mastic, which is attached to the base using self-tapping screws with plastic dowels. It is important: the fastening is done diagonally and perimeter. The distance between the dowels is 20 cm, the distance from the edge to the dowel is 2 cm, the length of the screw is three times the end of the plywood sheet.

To prevent the workpieces from splitting from hammer blows, fastening is carried out as follows. Directly through the wood, the base is first drilled with a drill, the diameter of which corresponds to the dowel, and then countersinked with a drill of a larger diameter. The caps of the self-tapping screws are easily hidden in the resulting hole.

The fixed flooring remains to be prepared for parquet. This requires grinding. It is best to carry it out with a special grinder, but if it is not there, you will have to work first with coarse, then fine sandpaper. The resulting surface should be perfectly smooth, without chips, burrs, roughness, height differences at the joints.

Covering a properly laid wooden base with parquet or other material is not difficult. Such plywood floors will not "walk", act as insulation, keep an excellent and healthy microclimate in the room.