When we come to someone's house, the first thing that catches your eye is the floor covering. The beauty and comfort of the home largely depend on its appearance and quality characteristics, so it is strongly recommended not to save on flooring. However, the cost of good material is sometimes such that, unwillingly, one wants to save at least something.
For example, having bought a beautiful and expensive laminate, many begin to look for a way to lay it on their own. And if you are going to lay a laminate under a warm floor, the need for competent laying it becomes simply obvious. By the way, is this really real? Let's try to figure it out ...
Deciding to lay the laminate on your own, it is important to stock up on time and patience, since this process is quite time-consuming (like any major repairs, by the way). It is very important to prepare the floor surface. It should be as even as possible, without strong drops and bumps. If you use underfloor heating in the form of infrared film heaters, you won’t have to especially “be smart”. But when choosing water heating systems, you will have to do a quality screed. Here you should make a digression and say that it is better to entrust the production of the screed to professionals, since it should be laid perfectly perfectly. It should be noted that the underfloor heating under the laminate, the reviews of which speak for themselves, involves the use of a laminate of the highest quality and resistant to the external environment.
On a prepared surface we lay a special substrate, it is advisable not to cover it with the entire area of the room, but to gradually lay across the sheet in width. An ideal option for a
concrete screed is a cork lining, but its cost is very high. A cork can come out more expensive than the laminate itself under the warm floor, and therefore, cheaper analogues are often used.
Laying of laminate boards depends on the location of the window in the room. It is advisable to place the laminate perpendicular to the window, in which case the seams on it will be the least noticeable. It is important to note that to lay a laminate under a warm floor you need to glue seams as high quality as possible, otherwise the joints between the panels may diverge due to temperature changes.
Having decided on the laying direction, we prepare the necessary tools: a jigsaw (for sawing off the unnecessary remainder of the board), a pencil, and spacers 1-2 cm thick. These spacers are placed around the perimeter of the room near the wall, as they provide room for maneuver with uneven rooms. You will also need a wooden plank and a hammer. As you can see, warm floors under the laminate (the price of which, by the way, has recently declined recently) practically does not limit you in the choice of materials and methods of work.
We lay the first board and from the end side we bring the second. Laying is done on the basis of the crest-groove principle, and the reliability of each connection must be verified individually. We take a wooden plank and apply it to the end of the second board over the groove, knocking on it with a hammer. In this way, we ensure tight adhesion between the laminate plates. In this sequence, lay out a number. Each board in the subsequent rows will be coupled from four sides, therefore, maximum attention must be paid to the quality of the connection.
In a word, laying a laminate under a warm floor should be in the usual manner.