Do-it-yourself plywood floors in the cottages in the country, in a private wooden house, on the 2nd floor

Repair in an apartment or in a country house necessarily accompanies the life of most people. And one of the most common problems that have to be solved in connection with this is cold or not evenly even floors. There are several ways to get out of this situation, one of them is to make plywood floors in logs. With your own hands, this will be realized or with the help of specialists, each property owner decides at his own discretion.

What are lags?

Logs are special wooden or polymer bars or pieces of metal profile laid on a concrete base, on top of which a base for the floor is laid. It’s much easier to work with metal, moreover, it is more durable than wood. But there is one significant drawback - metal, unlike wood, is critical to changes in ambient temperature, which can lead to the floor becoming distorted. In addition, wooden bars will cost less.

It should be noted that for the manufacture of logs, conifers, especially larch, are most suitable. Parts must be of regular geometric shape, even and without bending along the entire length.

The choice of material for the base

In order to level the floor with plywood on the logs with your own hands, you need to choose the right material, since not every type of material is suitable for this. There are such varieties of leveling sheets for the floor:

1. Plywood is a multilayer material, the number of layers starts with three.
2. Cement bonded particleboard (DSP) is an excellent material for leveling a wooden floor for subsequent laying of tiles. It is made from chips and Portland cement with the addition of chemical ingredients.
3. Oriented particle board (OSB) is a multilayer material in which the chips are glued together with resins with the addition of synthetic wax. It is environmentally friendly, but it bends easier than plywood, and is a bit more expensive.
4. Chipboard has the lowest strength and environmental performance.
5. Fiberboard (Fibreboard) - a material made by hot pressing of wood fiber, very flexible, fragile.

Based on the listed properties of the materials, it can be concluded that the floor from plywood for logs with your own hands in a private house is best done from OSB, DSP or plywood.

About Material

Plywood is the most acceptable option. It consists of veneer sheets glued in a special way: for each new layer, the fibers are perpendicular to the fibers of the previous one, which significantly increases stiffness. Plywood varies in terms of moisture resistance, durability and environmental friendliness, which depend on what binder material was used in the production:

• FC brand is made using carbamide glue, poorly resistant to moisture, swells quickly. But it is safe for humans, can be used in rooms with low humidity.
• The FSF brand contains phenol-formaldehyde glue, it is moisture resistant, but not environmentally friendly due to phenolic secretions.
• FB brand - Bakelized plywood, resistant to moisture and aggressive environments.
• FOF is a laminated (laminated) material called a laminate. Used as a decorative finish on the floor.

To make the floor from plywood for lags with your own hands in the country or in the apartment, plywood of the FC and FSF grades of birch from ten to fifteen millimeters thick is best suited.

The benefits of plywood flooring on logs

A device of this gender has a number of indisputable advantages:

• strengthening sound insulation characteristics;
• increase in thermal insulation qualities;
• high-quality quick insulation of the floor by laying between the lags of the insulating material;
• ensuring uniform distribution of pressure on the base;
• the presence of empty space between the lags makes it possible to arrange various communications in it;
• quick leveling of the floor surface;
• good strength characteristics of the coating;
• the ability to easily replace damaged parts;
• even a novice without special skills will cope with the work;
• the installation of the floor from plywood to the logs does not require specialized heavy equipment or tools.

Styling preparation

Mandatory measures before laying floors should be:

• inspection of the base;
• thorough cleaning of large irregularities;
• lubrication of cracks and cracks;
• floor waterproofing.

Whatever the moisture resistance coefficient, plywood or any identical material possesses, it has a certain hygroscopicity, which leads to the absorption of a certain amount of moisture. Therefore, the main stage of preparation is waterproofing. It is usually performed with a thick plastic film (in the simplest case) or with a special coating. The concrete floor is completely covered by the material, with a slight overlap on the walls. And so that after laying the plywood, the film protrudes for it. Parts of waterproofing at the joints are fixed with construction tape.

To make installation of floors on plywood lags, galvanized hardware with a length exceeding the thickness of the fixed sheets by three times is used for fastening.

Which is better: two thin layers or one thick?

Plywood is a composite material. The layers in it are arranged in fibers crosswise to achieve sufficient rigidity and strength. Based on this, it becomes clear that in order to increase such characteristics it does not matter how many layers will be laid - two ten-millimeter instead of one twenty-millimeter or more. And the price will not be particularly big winnings.

But when leveling very curved floors, the number of layers plays a significant role here. When laying one layer, the irregularities will, of course, be smoothed out, but there will be differences at the joints of the plywood sheets. A correctly laid second layer will help here - the joints of the plates of each of them will coincide with the center of the plates of the other layer.

Conclusion: to insulate an even base, you can mount plywood floors on logs with your own hands in one layer with sheets of thickness twenty millimeters. When aligning the curved base, two ten-millimeter layers with staggered plywood boards are better suited.

Do-it-yourself plywood floors: logs and lathing

The sequence of steps in this step is as follows:

1. To carry out the installation, apply dried equal bars with a cross section of 10 x 5 cm and a length of at least two meters. In addition, they must be aged indoors for two weeks.
2. Waterproofing is laid on the prepared base, and the bars are treated with an antiseptic.
3. During installation, the lag is indented from each of the walls by 25 mm.
4. To neutralize irregularities, use substrates of MDF or fiberboard with a side of a square of 20 cm, and to suppress noise - linoleum pieces. In places where there are substrates, the logs are attached to the cement base with anchor bolts. When laying between the logs, a distance of 40 cm is left.
5. When all the lags are mounted, go to the device crates. Its strips are also installed on substrates with fastening to the floor and lags with self-tapping screws at a distance of no more than half a meter. It is important that the crate size matches the parameters of the plywood sheets.
6. The resulting cavity in the crate is filled with a heater and a sound insulator.

Sizing, mounting

In order to properly arrange the floors from plywood into logs with your own hands (a photo of the actions is presented in the article), it is necessary to cut the plywood into sheets of the desired size, optimally 1250 x 2500 mm. For convenience, they can be numbered.

In order to exclude the possibility of creaking during further operation, stripes of glassine are attached to the logs before laying the plywood with a stapler.

Sheets are laid across the log, secured with screws at a distance of 15 cm. At the joints, the screws are staggered at a distance of 10 mm from the edge of the sheet.

When mounting between sheets, a gap of the order of a third of a millimeter is left, which is then filled with sealant or elastic mastic and glued with moisture-resistant glue.

Laying starts from the window, hardware caps are completely recessed into plywood into the drilled holes. If communications are planned, cutouts are made for them.

Do-it-yourself plywood flooring on logs: installing layers

This step is performed in the following sequence:

1. Laying of the first layer starts from the window with an indentation from the wall of the order of half a centimeter. You can use plywood of the third or fourth grade, since the presence of knots and appearance do not play a noticeable role due to further decoration, and at a cost such material is much cheaper.
2. Addition for plywood can be intermediate logs. This is necessary to reduce the size of the cells with a view to a good screed sheets and frame. To do this, the lags are connected with cross-pieces from the scraps, screwing them with steel corners. The size of the cells should be a multiple of the sheets of plywood, so that their edges always lie on the lag.
3. The second layer of sheets is mounted with an offset relative to the first. Between themselves, the layers are fastened with self-tapping screws and glued with PVA or with special glue for plywood.
4. Seams between sheets to close up.
5. After laying the last plate, the surface is sanded with sandpaper manually or using a grinding machine.

According to the same principle, a plywood floor is arranged along the logs with your own hands on the 2nd floor of a private house.

Useful Tips

For successful completion of work, attention must be paid to the following:

1. It is not recommended to lay tiles on plywood: it can fall off due to the expansion of the wood layer.
2. Roughnesses on the screed can be sprinkled with sand, and slots and holes in the corners can be sprinkled.
3. To check the humidity in the room, you need to cover the base with plastic wrap for a day. If perspiration appears under it, waterproofing is necessary.
4. It is important to follow all installation rules when installing the floor from plywood in the logs with your own hands. In a wooden house on the ground floor above the ground, this is especially true - if the technology is not followed, you will have to remove the entire coating to correct errors.
5. To ensure good sound insulation, the logs are not fixed rigidly, but are installed on felt or rubber pads to suppress noise.
6. Before starting the installation of the lag, they find the zero level and then equal the rest of the bars on it.
7. The insulation must be cut strictly to the size of the cells so that its edges do not bend during installation.
8. After laying the insulation, a vapor barrier membrane can be attached to the logs with a stapler.
9. For installation, it is better to use not ordinary hardened black self-tapping screws, but yellow ones on wood having a powerful landing hole.
10. Sheets must be laid so that not T-shaped joints are formed, but T-joints.

Conclusion

With the correct installation of the plywood floor, it is able to last more than twenty years. It should only be remembered that this material is suitable for laying in dry and warm rooms.

It is also worth noting that plywood is suitable not only for the arrangement of wall cladding and rough floors. Craftsmen make of it unique decorative compositions in the interior. Using old craftsmanship - artistic cutting, paintings are laid out of plywood parts and form parquet.