Laying timber laminate floor

[mrsxtro]

Good evening all.
A quick question about laying timber laminate flooring over concrete. Brand new house, slab has been down for 12 weeks now. The instructions say "the moisture content of the concrete may not exceed 2.5 % (CM method)." How do I work that one out??? After 12 weeks of dry Queensland winter weather would the slab be dry enough to lay the floor on? We will be putting down the usual combined moisture barrier and foam underlay. One fellow at Bunnings reckoned if I put black plastic under the underlay then the moisture content of the slab won't matter??? Any advice, experiences welcomed.
Thanks in advance.
-mrsxtro

[Honorary Bloke]

G'day Mrsxtro,

I have laid many square metres of that stuff and you should have no problems. 12 weeks should be ample time for the slab if it's as dry as you say. You could get a moisture meter for cement but I wouldn't bother. Just be sure to let the laminate flooring "rest" in the same room you will be laying it (and at least 2 feet from the wall--bloody hell, what's that in MM? :confused: About 650 or 700 I should think.) for at least 72 hours so it can adapt to the environment. And be sure that moisture barrier covers all.

Good luck

[elraco.com.au]

at least 2 feet from the wall--bloody hell, what's that in MM? :confused: About 650 or 700 I should think

G'Day Bob

610mm actually.

You can talk in feet and inches. I think most people on this forum have grown up using both, imperial and metric.

It hasn't affected any of them

Regards

[glock40sw]

G'Day Ray.
Funny you should say that.
Being in the timber game, We all use a mixture.
eg: 4x2 10 at 3.9
6x1 1/2 3@ 4.2
etc etc etc.

Always use metric for small measurements and Ft & " for large sizes.

[Honorary Bloke]

G'day all,

The problem here in the US is that we "went metric" in about 1970 but nobody paid any attention to it. A few states changed their speed limit signs (but have since changed back to imperial). Of course, most of the large industries have changed over their manufacturing because global markets demand it, but your average Yank just yawned and thought "I'm not doing that" and so we didn't. Companies such as Festool just round up or down to the nearest fractional inch and we pretend it's not really metric after all. Someday I suppose we'll adopt, but it will be aslow process.

Not only have we not adopted metric for timber but we still often use some very old style designations for board thickness such as 5/4, 6/4, and 8/4 which denote boards nominally thicker than 1 inch but which are actually fractionally less than--5/4 should be 1 1/4 inches but is more like 15/16th of an inch. :confused: :confused:

[trover]

Trouble is the conversion in UCA was completely voluntary - read optional.
The notes on timber thickness are even more interesting.
Thing is inches is referred to as 'english', but it's the yanks that are still holding on - I think feet and inches should be referred to as american units.