How many flooring staples

Engineered flooring lends itself especially well to staples, with a thinner profile and more advanced structure. Some installers claim that cleats create a tighter fit than staples. When swelling occurs due to high humidity levels, a tight fit lessens the risk of gaps and warping.

Staples may not work well with harder wood species, resulting in marred surfaces, cracking and splits around the fastener. Be sure to factor in every detail of the project when deciding between cleats vs staples.

What type of hardwood flooring are you installing? What are the thickness and Janka hardness rating? Cleats provide a better fit with thicker, harder types. Do you have the tools necessary for installation or will you need to rent or buy a nailer or stapler?

How much time do you have available for installation? If time is short and you need to find an affordable tool fast, staples may be your best bet. Hardwood flooring installers disagree on which is better—cleats vs staples. Framing nail guns are not suitable due to nail size and configuration.

What gauge nails to use for hardwood flooring? The two gauges of nails typically used for hardwood floors are and gauge. The higher the gauge number, the thinner the nail.

Use the specific gauge of nail recommended by the manufacturer for your floor. This will depend on the hardness of the wood, its thickness and whether it is solid or engineered. What underlayment to use for hardwood floors? The type of wood flooring installed also influences your choice of underlayment.

Floating engineered wood floors or solid-hybrid floors will use a padded underlayment such as Floor Muffler, while nail-down hardwood use paper underlayment such as Aquabar-B or Silicone Vapor Sheild. Can you install hardwood floor with finish nailer? So, if you handy with a finish nailer, then you can use it for the installation of hardwood floor. It is designed for trim work and to shoot a near-headless nail that does not mar the surface look of the wood.

That's why finish nailer make the hardwood floor installation effective as well. What's better cleats or staples? Most experts agree that cleats allow for greater movement in areas with high humidity, meaning your hardwood flooring will look better longer.

Thank you for this blog post. For a long time cleats were the standard product used on a hardwood floor installation. A large majority of the time Powernail has been in business 67 years they have made and sold mostly cleats.

Over the recent past 20 or so years staples have gained in popularity. The cost difference cleat vs. This point alone would be enough to sway me towards cleats. Which should you use? Great blog. Please allow me to divert this on the technical side of fasteners. I fully agree with all the comments about the fasteners and would add that cleats can be used in manual nailers and are easier to unjam from tool as where I often saw staples traveled upwards into the bumper.

You can further diminish dimpling by using 18 ga, nails. On the other hand, 18 ga. One mechanic can save a lot of aggravation by choosing the right fastener. In static testing of withdrawal of fasteners, the staples have the highest holding power, regardless of type of subfloor. The staples show the highest lost but are still Superior to the cleats. These results are for STATIC testing only and demonstrate the ability and the variables of sub flooring materials with different moisture contents.

This is explained by the barbs of the nail holding on to the wood fibers during mechanical sollicitation as where the cement bond of the staple has broken. Mechanical sollicitations of fasteners directly affect their performance and even more so with humid subfloors.

If you have experienced a perfectly stapled down floor and returned to the jobsite 4 to 6 months later and being able to pull boards up with your hands, then, dont look any further. Regards, Curtis Laboratoire Primatech Inc. Hello there As a regular nail gun user, I think the main differences are Because of having ribs, cleats can go all the way down to the shank of the nail. This helps the cleats to have better grip than staples. But, as staples are more comfortable to manufacture you can get staples with a lower budget compared to cleats.