Solid vs Engineered Hardwood !Which is better solid hardwood or engineered hardwood?

       Solid Wood Flooring vs. Engineered Wood Flooring

Michael here with gr flooring once again

today's topic of conversation soli

versus engineered hardwood flooring nowI've said it before there's lots of questions but if solid wood versus

engineered wood there's not only lots of 

questions there's lots of misinformation

out there okay because there's such a 

range solid woods pretty simple but a lot of people build up this engineer stuff as being the best thing since

sliced bread and a cannon it can't be so 

let's just address what they are

          wood is just that solid wood got up

from a tree kill and dry it down mill it 

finish it done and solid wood engineered wood is actually a thin layer now this is one of the thicker ones this is a five five thirty five sixteenths layer

of wood on top of plywood but it's a

thin layer wood on top of plywood or 

some kind of base now the point of engineered is the the plywood or the base used on the engineered floor is more stable than actual wood because

wood will expand and contract depending

on moisture so you know obviously in 

Saskatchewan here cold dry winters nice beautiful human summers we get gaps as these boards shrink they all get gaps engineered that woods trying to shrink

but the crisscross layers of plywood 

help hold it into place so what actually happens and this is a great sample here is why I showed it now this sample here we can actually see a gap between thes boards now you know give it another month or so this gap will fill right

back in whereas this engineered has no 

                                                                                     

now the widest that we can go in 

southern Saskatchewan in a solid wood floor is three and a quarter inches wide reason for that because again as that would expand some tracks if you go wider than that it can actually move to the

point where it crushes the cells if the 

cells of the would get crushed they will never return to the original shape so

even my own home I have got solid wood

throughout it here Regina winter gaps 

summer fields backhand winter gap summer fields back in and add Infinium it just can't keep going on now with an

engineered floor as I had when I lived

in Winnipeg because of that really 

strong stable plywood never got gaps

again there tries to move can't move 

tries to move can't move now that being said I really shouldn't say can't move

wood will move no matter what you know

the story that I've heard many times is 

wood has moved so much with water that the ancient Romans used to use white oak

plugs so what they do when they're 

trying to break into mountains and crush rocks that actually drill a small hole

stick oh oak wood white oak plug in

there and pour water on them until they 

actually expand it so far that they broke the rock that's how strong it is we're not going to stop it from moving but we minimize the movement and we change the movement so it actually happens if you get a nice wide like a five-inch wide board or a six and a half inch wide board as that floor tries to shrink the plywood saw trying to hold it in place which you actually might get is

a little bit of cupping this again it's 

trying to pull in it but the base is all

holding it so it doesn't completely move 

as it doesn't solve it just warps a little and again as soon as the humidity goes back up she goes nice and flat again now most of the products we have are available both in a solid as well as an engineered same colors same wood not

necessarily all same species and of 

course again the widths the widest we're going to go three and a quarter the widest I have reign Helen are engineered is I believe seven and three quarters wide so really white boards so that's

the big difference the engineer gives us

stability more so than the solid now one 

of the things we hear a lot of though is that engineered is more or less durable and that just can't be true it's the

 

same wood on the surface it's the same

finish on top of that wood it's never 

the wood itself so what we're walking on is that layer of polyurethane that we have on the engineered how we have on the solid we have on all of our natural

products we're never walking on the wood

so this will scratch just as easy as the

solid and vice versa also denting they'll both occur exactly the same it's the wood on top that's moving its not

the plywood core it's the wood on top so 

if I drop a heavy thing on here heavy thing on here they both damp the same if they were the same species obviously oak and maple grand i10 different but they both mark the same they both wear the same they both have the same durability and a good quality engineer you can still recut you can

still refinish maybe not as many times 

as you can with a good solid but it is still a possible

so again no difference in durability the 

only difference is stability which

allows us to go to these wider boards 

which are a little bit more in style

these days but everything goes in cycles 

so right now it's wider who knows couple years from now be signed the little boards and then back again back again so then one would ask why would I use solid

over-engineered or vice versa it's like

I said I have got solid in my own home 

of course I sold the original floor

probably about 1617 years ago I bought 

the house 11 years ago 10 years ago solid throughout solid is there forever

okay it has been used for four decades 

if not centuries upon centuries

engineered the new kid on the block in 

our market here in Regina solid is still

King now as education occurs and 

products get better engineered is

getting more and more popular solid is 

still King this will allow you to

refinish as per than that as per the 

national would form Association they say that a three-quarter inch solid floor done by a professional can be refinished between five to seven times whereas we say a good quality engineered with that five 16 7 inch wear layer can be refinished two to three times so you get more resound out of this than you do on

this now that being said buyer beware 

not all engineered is created equal there are some engineers out there where the layer wood is so thin it's 0.6 millimeters it's basically the thickness

of a piece of paper now because that

paper is wood it's not a picture of

 

paper like a laminate floor you can 

actually call it engineered as well as if the core isn't stable enough it will still have movement he'll still have some issues in there so be very careful

when you're looking at hardwood it's a 

very expensive it's a big investment in your home so make sure you're using the

proper engineered or the proper solid 

any questions please don't hesitate to

ask thank you very much