Solid Wood Flooring in Liverpool

The Georgian houses of Rodney Street and the villas around Sefton Park have the suspended timber floors, the ventilated voids and the room heights that a solid oak board was made for, and they are also where the original board is most likely to be a protected feature. Where consent allows a replacement, a Windsor board in a period width is laid tongue and groove over the joists after the void has been checked and the timber acclimatised.

With private and social renting together making up more than half of the city’s households, the solid range is an owner’s floor here rather than a landlord’s: it is sanded and refinished over decades, which a let does not need. On the heated screed at Liverpool Waters the solid board is the wrong construction; the engineered range takes its place.

Terraced houses are 38% of the homes in the Liverpool district, and a terrace is where solid oak is at home: the original floor was solid timber on joists, and a new solid board is fixed the same way, nailed or screwed through the tongue into the joists or a ply overlay. The 90 mm Windsor Narrow boards suit the proportions of a terraced front room. What the terrace needs first is a dry, ventilated void underneath, because solid timber follows the moisture of the air around it.

Social renting is 26% of households in Liverpool. Solid oak is rarely the specification there, because it asks for a timber base and a stable climate and it is fitted rather than clicked; where a housing provider wants timber across a refurbishment, engineered oak is what the specification usually says, and the guide below sets out the difference.