Floating Floor Detail at top of Stair

[JanetE]

Finally got around to ordering our wooden floor and have gone for an engineered oak.  It will be a floating floor (I know you don't like them Jeremy!) But I have decided that it will be the easiest to lay.  

I was wondering how to deal with the expansion gap at the head of the stairs, presumably an oak beading of some kind would be used as I believe we cannot butt them up against the wooden stair.

Hope you lot can help

[Stones]

See picture below of how we did ours, exactly as you propose:

 

20 mm top oak tread. 2mm underlay and 18mm oak flooring. Expansion strip over join.

 

[Oz07]

Presuming you painted that string!?

[Stones]

No, its just been oiled with Osmo, the same as the oak. Works surprisingly well visually, something a bit different.

[ragg987]

We were told by our flooring supplier that expansion of engineered floor is not likely, if it does expand it is likely to be small and along the length rather than the width. We butted ours (tiny gap) at the head of the stairs. Floor is glued not floating.

[JanetE]

12 hours ago, Stones said:

See picture below of how we did ours, exactly as you propose:

 

20 mm top oak tread. 2mm underlay and 18mm oak flooring. Expansion strip over join.

 

What was the profile of this expansion strip? Was it glued down?

[PeterW]

9 hours ago, ragg987 said:

We were told by our flooring supplier that expansion of engineered floor is not likely, if it does expand it is likely to be small and along the length rather than the width. We butted ours (tiny gap) at the head of the stairs. Floor is glued not floating.

 

I was advised to glue one edge at the top of a set of stairs as the rest could expand away from that fixed point.  In reality we are talking 1mm at best I would think on a 3-4m span 

[Stones]

11 hours ago, JanetE said:

What was the profile of this expansion strip? Was it glued down?

 

T bar solid oak profile. Push fits into a plastic channel fixed to the subfloor. Sits 4mm proud of the finished floor.

 

 

https://www.luxuryflooringandfurnishings.co.uk/brushed-and-lacquered-solid-oak-t-profile-door-bar-to-match-oak-flooring.html

Edited May 2, 2017 by Stones
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[Barney12]

19 hours ago, ragg987 said:

We were told by our flooring supplier that expansion of engineered floor is not likely, if it does expand it is likely to be small and along the length rather than the width. We butted ours (tiny gap) at the head of the stairs. Floor is glued not floating.

 

I got the same advice. We have an 18mm engineered oak floor in the flat. It butts straight up to the stairs and we've had no issues in 2 years. 

[JanetE]

@Barney12 was your floor also glued down?

[Barney12]

7 hours ago, JanetE said:

@Barney12 was your floor also glued down?

 

No screwed using tongue tite screws.

[Gone West]

12 hours ago, Stones said:

 

T bar solid oak profile. Push fits into a plastic channel fixed to the subfloor. Sits 4mm proud of the finished floor.

 

I'm a bit surprised that isn't considered a trip hazard especially as it's at the top of the stairs.

[Nickfromwales]

10 hours ago, PeterStarck said:

I'm a bit surprised that isn't considered a trip hazard especially as it's at the top of the stairs.

Not just me then 

[Stones]

10 hours ago, PeterStarck said:

I'm a bit surprised that isn't considered a trip hazard especially as it's at the top of the stairs.

 

You've gone and said it now!  Doubtless there will be a spate of tripping incidents in the next few days.  

 

In all seriousness, can't say there has been any issue and the Building Inspector was happy.  As a consequence of your post, I've tried to catch my toe / foot on the strip but with rounded edges, it doesn't seem to be an issue.  

[jack]

Based on where it is, it's pretty unlikely you'd trip on it.  You'd usually place your foot close to the top of the stairs (when going down).  By the time your toe getsto the raised bit, your foot is decelerating, with the toe higher than the heel.  It'd be just about impossible to catch it, but even if you did, there's no momentum to cause you to trip (you don't trip over things in front of you unless there's a lot of momentum).

 

On the way up, your foot is raised over the last step and above the raised bit, then lowered onto it with little to no forward motion.  Again, no way of tripping.

 

I had the same concerns with the slight lip where our carpet joins our top step, but it just hasn't ever been an issue.

[TerryE]

Out of interest what we did in the end was to use a thin floating membrane under the engineered flooring on the landing area (which is only ~ 2 × 1.5m but fixed this on one side, where is meets the void and the top of the stair.  We used screw fixings under the section to be glass-panelled so that the panel bottom carrier will sit on the engineered flooring.  Where the flooring meets the stair head, the top surfaces are at the same level, so I fixed the floor panel to the underlying floor with a long bead of Sikaflex EBT and but jointed the floor to the top stair nib using a decent wood glue.

 

My thinking here is that any diffeential expansion between the engieered floor and the underlying chipboard floor will be tiny as they are both an enigeered wood and the temperature in the house is extremely uniform.  Even so, the engineered floor is still free to move on three sides and the top layer of the engineered floor is almost an exact match to the oak used in the stairs,, so both Jan and I are really pleased with the final look, and there absolutely no trip hazard.     We'll cover the engineered floor edge with a thin oak strip.