Always follow the laying instructions
For the guarantee to apply you must always follow the laying instructions for the specific floor you are laying. The following are a set of general guidelines to help you when buying your flooring.

Floating flooring needs free space to the walls
Click floors are clicked together to a platform that “floats” above the sub-flooring without being attached anywhere. There should be room for the floor to swell during periods of high moisture in the air. So always leave some space between the floor and the walls or other fixed objects such as pillars or door frames. The spaces are then covered with skirting, baseboard or strips. How much space that needs to be left depends on the type of flooring and how large the flooring is. It can generally be said that a 10 m long floor needs around 7-10 mm distance to the walls.

Check The Distance Under The Doors
Have you got room for a new floor under the doors? If the space is too small then the door leaves must be sawn off.

The sub-floor must be clean, dry, even and firm
The most suitable sub-floor is concrete, wood, chipboard, floor joist plates, clinker, linoleum and plastic flooring. Needle felt can be used but softer wall-to-wall carpeting must be removed.

Even out the sub-floor
Set out some blocks and use the edge of the long side as a rule to gauge the evenness. Any holes are filled in with putty or paperboard. Any raised areas must be ground down. The more even the sub-floor is, the more stable the click floor will feel to walk on. Despite all of this, if it sags anywhere you can take up the click flooring again and fill in with paperboard to even out the cavity.

Removing baseboard and frames
The best results are obtained if you remove the baseboard/skirting. Mark them so that the baseboard can be put back in the correct place. An alternative to removing the baseboard is to cover the gap between the floor and baseboard with a quarter round (a rounded piece of moulding) or base shoe.

Saw off the door frames
It looks at its best when the flooring goes under the door frames and not around them. Put a floor board against the door frame and saw along the plane of the board.

Put damp proofing on concrete
Concrete contains moisture which can rise up and ruin your floor. Always lay a plastic sheet (0.2mm PE sheeting) with 20cm overlap on concrete or a sub-floor with underfloor heating. It is important that the sub-floor is sufficiently dry and properly clean so that mould doesn’t form under the plastic sheeting. A concrete floor must have a relative moisture reading of under 95% RF at 20°C when laying. An electronic moisture reader only gives an indication. Call in a specialist if you are not sure.

Never lay a damp course on underflooring
The underfloor must be well-ventilated and it must be possible for any eventual remaining moisture to penetrate the floor structure. Plastic sheeting and dense floor sheeting, such as linoleum and vinyl flooring, should therefore be avoided (if you have under-floor heating then plastic sheeting must always be laid, irrespective of the sub-floor or foundation). However, plastic sheeting can be laid on the ground in the crawl space. Make holes in the plastic at its low points so that any eventual condensation can run out and not form any pools of water on the sheeting.

Soften footfall with floor underlay
Foam, paper felt or soundproofing membrane can be used as a floor underlay to soften the sound of footfall, even out any bumps, insulate against the cold and to provide a more comfortable surface to walk on. Another way to minimise the sound of footfall is to glue down the parquet flooring to the subfloor.

Underfloor heating
Bjelins Parquet can be installed on top of a floor heating system. The one exception being parquet blocks made from beech wood as beech is particularly sensitive to changes in air temperature/moisture.

Bear in mind that the underfloor heating must be suitable to be used with wooden flooring. The best information about which system you should use can be provided by the manufacturer of the underfloor heating. In the laying instructions for the respective floors there is also information about specific requirements for the floor heating system.

Laying the floor
Follow the instructions that come with the floor packaging. There are various instructions that come with click flooring and the laying methods depend therefore on the type of flooring you have chosen.

Bear in mind to order sufficient flooring. Approximately 5% extra is usually enough to allow for wastage when laying in parallel rows and squares. When laying a herring bone pattern, 10-15% extra is recommended. It is also a good idea to save a few extra blocks so that any damaged blocks can be replaced in the flooring.

Also bear in mind that wood varies in colour and pattern. So order a little extra so that you can select blocks which go perfectly together to create the desired look. In particular more rustic styles can vary a great deal and too many light or dark blocks next to each other can give an undesired patchy effect. Try mixing blocks from several packs.