Fiberboard on the floor

Among the options for finishing and leveling the floor, you can choose the most economical and simple materials. One of them is laying fiberboard on the floor. Such an affordable and, at the same time, practical option will make the surface as flat as possible at the lowest possible cost. The material has both advantages and disadvantages, which we will discuss today. You should also take into account some nuances regarding the installation of fiberboards on a wooden floor under linoleum. In our article you will find answers to many questions that interest you.

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Hardboard on the floor. Advantages and disadvantages

You can level the rough floor using the boards from the fiberboard. Before you lay linoleum on fiberboard, it is advisable to familiarize yourself with the positive and negative sides of this finishing material.

Pros:

• Low price and availability. Prices for fiberboards in construction stores are low, which allows you to purchase the right amount of material to absolutely anyone.
• Easy to install. In order to mount the sheets on the floor, you will need a minimum of effort with the same small number of tools. The only thing you need to purchase in advance is the fasteners for installing the product. When covering fiberboard under linoleum, even a beginner will not have difficulties.
• Easy to work with material. To cut it you will not need an expensive tool with which not everyone can work. You can cut boards qualitatively using a cutting or sawing tool, for example, a sharp knife or a jigsaw.
• Light weight. This advantage will allow you to do the job without assistance.
• Ecological cleanliness. Recycled natural wood waste makes up the majority of fiberboard. For this reason, the material can safely be used even for flooring and the manufacture of children's furniture.
• Lack of smell. An unpleasant tarry odor is completely eliminated in the material, rather, on the contrary, the coating smells of wood.
• The possibility of using fiberboard for the floor as an insulation layer.
• Long service life. If the plates are selected correctly, the load is correctly distributed, you take good care of them, then a long service of the material is provided.

Disadvantages:

• Afraid of water. Fiberboard is considered to be non-moisture resistant material, since when water does not enter its surface, it can swell and modify its shape. Thus, the coating becomes unattractive, and the paint or other finish coatings are mercilessly deformed. For this reason, fiberboard can not be used categorically in the kitchen or in the bathroom.
• Fragility. In the event that there are voids under the sheets, there is a risk of their destruction. Some types of fiberboard can break with their strong bend.
• High fire hazard. The material quickly ignites and also burns quickly.
• Quick wear on the front. If you do not cover the boards with a finish, then the outside will deteriorate and lose its original appearance.

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Kinds

Before laying fiberboard on a wooden floor, you should familiarize yourself with the classification of this material, which will be discussed later.

By thickness:

• Soft. These types of sheets have a low density, which is not more than 350 kg / m. It should also be noted that they do not have a good level of sound insulation. Soft fiberboard sheets are most often used for finishing the back walls of furniture and as internal shelves of drawers.
• Semi-solid.The density of such wood sheets is an order of magnitude higher than the previous version - at least 850 kg / m3. They are used for finishing cabinet furniture, but such fiberboard sheets are more durable and less flexible than soft counterparts.
• Solid. The density of such sheets varies between 850-1000 kg / m3. They have a finely porous structure and can be used to make some doors and for furniture. Fiberboard for linoleum on a wooden floor with the marking T-B is characterized by increased resistance to moisture and does not have tinting on the front side.
• Superhard. These are the most dense sheets. Their thickness exceeds 1000 kg / m3. Fiberboard is necessarily treated with pectin to increase its strength by at least 20%. It is superhard material that is used in the construction of partitions, as a flooring or for wall cladding. You can also make furniture or a door leaf from it yourself. The front side can be easily painted with paint, varnish or primed.

To size:

• In width - from 100 to 180 cm.
• In length - from 120 to 275 cm.

Important! When choosing a particular option, follow a simple rule: the more material, the better, and the fewer the seams on the fiberboard surface, the more reliable it will be and it will be easier for you to do the work.

By way of fastening

Let's look at three main options for attaching fiberboards:

• Using adhesive.
• Nails.
• Self-tapping screws.

The choice of mounting method directly depends on the type of surface base and on your personal preferences.

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Fiberboard underlay on wood floor

So, we come to the most important thing: how is the laying of hardboard on a wooden base? Properly laid on top of the slab on the wooden floor will hide all the bumps, thereby creating a perfectly even substrate for linoleum.

Working process:

1. We carefully prepare the wooden base.
2. We replace rotten boards with new ones, if any are available.
3. We process the base with a grinder.
4. We lay the plates from the corner of the room, not forgetting to observe the gaps from the wall surface. We fix the fiberboard to the floor only with nails or self-tapping screws, since the use of glue gives a dubious result. The most important thing is to drown the caps of fasteners on the surface of the plates so that protrusions are not visible on the linoleum. We continue to work with a mounting step of 100-150 mm.
5. After fixing all the plates to the floor surface, we make the final finishing of the base. Between the stacked sheets we formed neat joints, which we first carefully grind with sandpaper, remove all dust, and then putty with sealant or any other putty on wood. Again, putty areas of already dried putty, remove the remaining dust with a household vacuum cleaner.
6. At this stage, the alignment of the wooden base under linoleum is completed.

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Laying linoleum on fiberboard

To complete the full picture, we offer a small workshop on fastening linoleum to wood-fiber material, which is already installed on a wooden floor. The whole process goes like this:

1. We prepare linoleum for laying. We leave it to lie down in expanded form for three days. This is necessary so that the structure of the material gets used to the temperature conditions of the room. After these simple manipulations, the sheets will become soft and pliable for further work. If the waves on the surface of linoleum are quickly and well smoothed, then this means that it is time to use the material.
2. We lay out the linoleum canvas in the room so that all of its sides are slightly overlapped, taking into account the walls. If you have a large room that requires flooring of several pieces of material, then they need to be correctly combined according to the drawing. Make sure that there are no gaps at the joints.
3. Trim the excess edges around the entire perimeter of the floor surface. We bend the edge of the canvas so that it fits snugly against the wall. Now we press a long ruler to the place of the bend of the material, and after that we cut off the excess piece of linoleum with a sharp knife.
4. Glue the canvas to the floor with mastic. We roll a sheet on a dust-free surface. We perform the previous steps on both sides of the canvas, reaching the middle of the sheet. We move from the roll to the wall, lubricate the base of linoleum with adhesive.
5. We roll one side of the roll on the greased floor. Do not forget to roll linoleum with a roller in the direction from the center of the canvas to the wall - this will help remove excess air. In a similar way we lay the second half of the roll. Now it remains only to install the baseboard.

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How to choose fiberboard for the floor?

Agree, no one wants to buy the material, install it on their own, and after a few years become disappointed in its quality. It is in order for the final result to please you as long as possible and to serve the material without any complaints, it is very important to take a responsible approach to its choice and acquire the highest quality option. We recommend that you familiarize yourself with the main criteria when choosing fiberboard:

• Wood fiber coating must have a certificate of quality. It should state that there are no harmful components in the material and that it has passed a sanitary and epidemiological check. The thing is that some unscrupulous manufacturers can add hazardous substances to raw materials to improve the quality of their products. Yes, by doing this they will increase the resistance of the material to moisture several times, but it will contain impurities that are dangerous to human health. For example, formaldehyde emitted can increase the risk of malignant neoplasms and respiratory diseases. In residential premises, categorically it is impossible to stack fiberboard of dubious quality.
• Read in advance a list of trusted manufacturing companies, read reviews of real consumers of products that have tested products in practice.
• Sheets should be only intact, with no cracks and any other factory defects. Do not forget to carefully inspect each purchased canvas.

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Stock footage

Do not be afraid to use fiberboard to level the floor. This inexpensive material will do its job perfectly, and most importantly, it will save you from long, expensive and time-consuming work.