Engineered Wood Flooring in Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes was designated a new town in the late sixties, and its housing is modern in a way no other city on this list can claim: detached and semi-detached, on a concrete slab or a screed, with underfloor heating in the newer estates as a matter of course. That is the engineered board’s home ground. The cross-bonded core holds its width as the screed warms and cools, the range is listed as compatible with the heating, and the levelling that dominates an order in an older city is a small job here.

The exceptions are the towns the new town absorbed. Stony Stratford, Wolverton, Newport Pagnell and Olney are pre-war, inside conservation areas, on suspended timber that wants levelling, and with original boards that may be protected; there the board goes over a levelling layer and the old floor stays. Manor Park at Walton and Meadow View at Whitehouse are the newest condition, heated screed from the first day.

Semi-detached houses are the largest group in Milton Keynes, 29% of the Milton Keynes stock, and the typical semi has two ground floors in one: a suspended timber front room and a solid concrete kitchen or later extension. Engineered oak can run through both, floated on underlay over the timber and glued to the slab, so a knocked-through room reads as one floor. The join between the two bases is where the level is set, and it is worth checking before the boards are ordered.

Detached houses are 28% of the Milton Keynes stock, above the national picture, and they bring larger, longer rooms to Milton Keynes. That favours the wider boards: a 190 or 220 mm plank fills a big reception room calmly, where a 125 mm board reads as busy. It also means more square metres in one batch, and a batch is the unit that keeps the colour consistent across the room, so the whole order goes in at once.