From the author: Hi friends! Any repair necessarily involves work with floor coverings and, it should be understood that the duration of the service life will depend on the quality of surface preparation. You don't want to see sagging linoleum and deformed parquet in a year, do you? That is why, before deciding on the finish, you need to choose how you will fix it. I will tell you about an old, but rather popular method of fastening, the name of which is the installation of a floor lag. It will be not only about wood, but also about.
What are lags, and what functions should they perform?
Logs are logs, beams, metal or plastic beams that are laid horizontally. Most builders prefer them as the basis for flooring and platforms. A floorboard is laid on top of the lag.
Previously, when building technologies were not yet so developed, the beams were laid on a concrete base, and the boards were fixed on them with nails. Of course, over time, all the elements of the floor covering were deformed, which led to a constant annoying creaking of the floors. But experts have found how to fix this problem:
- logs began to be "tightly" fixed to the surface, even if the installation is made on a concrete base;
- the floor began to be ventilated.
A new type of structure has also appeared - adjustable floor logs, the installation of which is so simple that you can do it yourself by watching the video:
It is essential that repair products are made from good quality raw materials. If you plan to use wooden elements, then pay attention to the moisture content - it should not exceed 12%. Also, the wood must be treated with a special antiseptic in order to prevent the appearance of fungus and decay processes.
To understand why logs are so widely used in modern construction, it is enough to familiarize yourself with the main advantages of this method of arranging the floor:
- allow you to raise the level of the floor to the required height;
- have high strength and significantly reduce the load on the floor slabs;
- are quite cheap, so you can save your money;
- are installed, so the work will take a little time;
- the air gap between the flooring and the base improves sound and heat insulation;
- the ventilated design helps to increase the life of the finish coat.
Now that we know all the advantages of installing logs, especially on a concrete floor, we can highlight the functions that they must perform: sound and heat insulation, surface leveling, load distribution on the base, ventilation and communication masking. In my opinion, pretty good, as for their price.
Since, in most cases, logs are installed on wooden and concrete floors (much less often on polymer ones), I will describe the work with these two types of bases.
How to choose lags?
It is best to start work towards the end of the heating season, because it is during this period that the likelihood that flooring boards absorb a lot of moisture decreases. As I said above, before using wood in work, be sure to treat it with an antiseptic and fire retardant to reduce flammability.
For the arrangement of wooden floors, the following materials are most often used:
- sheet material (plywood, chipboard, OSB);
- folded boards;
- glued beam boards;
- uncut boards.
Choose solid boards, wide for the whole room. It is preferable to dwell on materials from cedar, pine, larch, fir. If you are running out of money for repairs, and you will do all the work yourself, then you can safely take wood of 2-3 grades. The height should exceed the width by 1.5–2 times.
How to install on a concrete base?
Wooden beams are laid on a concrete surface at a certain distance, which directly depends on the thickness of the flooring boards. For example, a board 3 cm thick must be laid on wooden blocks in 30 cm increments. At the same time, it is necessary to leave gaps between the walls and beams of at least 3 cm.
To complete the work, we need the following materials and equipment:
- puncher or drill with a chipper function;
- anchors or self-tapping screws with a diameter of 6 mm, dowels;
- carpentry equipment for fitting and cutting beams - a chisel, a jigsaw, etc.
With what you will fasten the bars, you choose. Self-tapping screws with dowels, of course, will cost you much less, but anchors are more reliable. The main advantage of fastening on an anchor is fixing end-to-end. They do not just fix the position of the bar, but press it to the surface.
After you have decided on the finish coating and the method of attachment, you can get to work. The sequence of actions will look like this:
- We put the first two beams parallel to the opposite walls of the room, and distribute all the rest with the necessary step over the entire floor area.
- If the dimensions of the room significantly exceed the length of the wooden beam, we extend it by joining two elements.
- After laying two side bars along opposite walls, set them in height with a water level.
- We stretch a construction cord between the extreme boards, which will help to lay the rest of the beams at the same level.
- We make through holes in the bars and the base of the floor surface.
- We put either the expansion part of the anchor or the dowel into the hole formed.
- Screw in a screw or bolt.
- We lay any between adjacent bars to create additional thermal insulation.
- After the insulation, we equip the vapor barrier layer.
- We lay the finish coating on the finished structure - boards or plywood.
You can install joists both to level the concrete floor, and simply for thermal insulation. It won't take long, and the results will surely delight your entire family.
Installation under a wooden floor
Plywood, chipboard or OSB can be used as a base for wood flooring. But if you install logs for the floor, for example, in a wooden house on the second floor, then you can not lay anything, but immediately lay the boards perpendicular to the beams.
Most often, such a foundation is built in living rooms and during operation does not allow floor coverings to deform. Structures of this kind do not require complex additional steps, everything can be fixed here with ordinary self-tapping screws. The places where the joints of the sheets will be must be placed on the bars, they must first be sanded.
After you have installed the wooden logs, you need to mount the subfloors. Under such surfaces it is better to use edged boards. The advantage of this material over sheet is that during operation it does not appear drops.
After laying the beams, you can begin to improve the thermal insulation of the floor. Here you can use materials such as basalt fiber, polystyrene foam, etc. If the beams are installed on a solid base, then we lay the insulation between them, and if on the ground, we lay it on the subfloor.
Work must begin from the farthest corner of the room from the doorway. The size of the log under the wooden floor in the house depends on the span (the distance between the beams of the lower trim) and the thickness of the insulation used in the repair. We unfold the boards with a tongue to the wall and lay a row with a gap of 1 cm from it. This distance is necessary to compensate for the expansion of wood during operation. We fasten to the beams with self-tapping screws - holes must be made in advance.
In cases where the boards are slightly shorter than the length of the room, the next rows must be laid offset. We fix them in the grooves of the previous row and fasten them with self-tapping screws from the “wrong side”, hiding the hat. It is very important that the annual rings on the boards alternate (in the first row they will be on one side, in the second - on the other).
All elements should fit snugly against each other and be well fixed on the logs. The last row must be fixed in such a way that the heads of the self-tapping screws can be hidden under the plinth. Your task is to fix the boards so that all the flaws can be hidden with the help of the plinth.
The device of a wooden coating on the logs today is one of the most durable, popular and practical. Such coatings can be easily repaired and restored. The main thing here is the clarity and correctness of actions during laying the floor. To protect the boards from contamination during repairs, paint the walls before laying the final floor.
You can clearly see how to lay a wooden coating on logs in the video:
We lay the floor in a wooden house
In wooden houses, depending on their purpose and location, two types of floors can be made - single and double. A single floor is more used in country houses where people live only in warm weather. Laying in one layer is performed in this order:
- If the structure provides support beams, then the boards can be laid directly on them. However, there are situations that the beam system does not allow this to be done immediately. It's good that the builders figured out how to solve this problem - you should strengthen the floor in a wooden house with a log net.
- The step of laying the beams is selected depending on the size and thickness of the flooring boards.
- We fix all the elements of the floor in a wooden house with nails.
- We lay a rough coating of unedged boards or a finishing one - of tongue-and-groove boards.
In wooden houses intended for living, it is recommended to equip double flooring. Such flooring differs from the previous one in that it has several layers: a rough coating, vapor barrier, noise absorbing, and a finishing flooring of their grooved board. Feel the difference? Thanks to this design, your home will be warm even in the winter cold.
The laying of a double coating occurs according to the following scheme:
- We put cranial bars on top of the supporting beams.
- On the bars we lay a rough coating of low-grade boards.
- We lay on the draft floor (any thermal insulation material).
- On top of the heat-insulating layer, you can put a polymer film for vapor barrier.
- We lay tongue-and-groove boards on the cranial bars and nail them at an angle of 40–45 degrees.
- We make sure that the gap between the boards of the finishing flooring does not exceed 1 mm.
- If you want to finish the finish coat, then it must be cycled and covered with several layers of varnish.
- It should be borne in mind that the floor structure on the supporting pillars is not tied to the rest of the building elements, therefore, in order to avoid high loads on vertical partitions and walls, gaps of 2 cm are left at the points of their contact. They are filled with elastic materials and hidden under the plinth.
Replacing the floor logs in a wooden house is even easier than installing it, since wooden structures tend to deteriorate in parts. Rotten boards are determined by a dull sound and the appearance of the butt. But that's another story, because if you did a good job and listened to all the recommendations, then you won't have to worry about coverage for another 30 years.
If you decide to completely renovate your apartment or house, you can watch a selection of useful video tutorials on repair or subscribe to our newsletter. See you soon!
