When you imagine your dream floors, you’re probably thinking of rich wood with a gorgeous grain that elevates everything in the room. An errant creak is like a record-scratch in this fantasy. Flooring should be seen and not heard.
As it turns out there are three factors that affect the acoustics of your floor: drying; construction; and installation. In this article, we delve into the details so you can avoid expensive mistakes.
Drying
Drying is the first step of the manufacturing process and how it’s acomplished will affect the quality and performance of the flooring over its lifetime. Some manufacturers rush the process by flash drying their boards over a couple of days. This adds substantial stress to the wood, strain that may not be evident immediately but will affect the flooring over time, particularly as it acclimatizes to the home and climate where it’s installed.
Our drying process takes place over the course of four to six weeks, gradually drawing the moisture out of the wood. Our boards are Kern dried in chambers which are renewably powered by sawmill residue. We extract the moisture content in our raw material to stabilize the hardwood so it can be reliably used in the fluctuating Canadian climate. Finally, we select boards of the highest quality to manufacture our luxury engineered flooring.
The result is luxury, high-performance, stable flooring.
Construction
Flooring is not simply a collection of boards. Each floorboard consists of old-growth European white oak or ash which is adhered to a structurally stable support layer. The result is flooring specifically designed to withstand the North American climate.
Manufacturing quality
Hor flooring is manufactured directly affects how it looks, feels, and sounds. It’s also the difference between a like-new floor at 10 years and one that’s warped and creaking. At Khayeri, we’ve invested a lot of time and energy into high-quality manufacturing. We use precision diamond milling to achieve a square-edge no-bevel fit so the floor is a seamless flat surface once it’s installed. This not only looks magnificent, it’s also necessary if you want dimensional stability which will dampen any creaking from the subfloor.
Backing material
Though invisible, what you use for your backing will affect performance. Inexpensive flooring is typically backed by pressed scrap softwoods similar to plywood. At Khayeri we support our floors with cross-ply Balitc Marine Birch Support, a product that reduces the expansion and contraction of floors by up to 90%. This is why we can claim out floors are engineered. Our quality cross-ply support counteracts the stress movement of the hardwood top layer.
Installation
Quality flooring deserves expert installation. This means that care and attention is paid at every step of the process.
To ensure a perfect installation every time, Khayeri has a team of highly trained professional installers. Certified by the National Wood Flooring Association, Khayeri team works according to NWFA standards and regulations, and their work is backed by a lifetime structural warrantee.
The first step to an installation is the removal of the existing floor to expose the surface followed by preparation which results in a solid, level subfloor. The installation of an acoustic underlay will help ensure your floors are silent. The next step is gluing down the hardwood—this is when your floors really begin to take shape. In the quest for the highest performance floors, we realized that we would need a better adhesive, so we developed one. Khayeri MS ECO BOND adhesive is an elastic, 1-component, solvent-free wood flooring adhesive based on MSP so it’s better for the planet. It’s anhydrous, which prevents wood expansion. And it absorbs sound due to its permanently elastic character. The final step, finishing, involves installing custom nosings, flush-mount vents, baseboards, and moldings to ensure your floors fit seamlessly.