How To Lay Tar Paper On Floor

Asphalt saturated felt paper is used for two reasons.

How to lay tar paper on floor.

Building paper between layers of flooring. The paper is installed just before the wood flooring and comes in rolls of various lengths. The original pine strip flooring was laid over tar paper. But maybe a better idea is to consider other flooring options that are more able to deal with high moisture conditions.

Ken szmyt via email none. It is used as a moisture barrier and it allows the wood floor above it to breathe. Charles peterson owner of connecticut premier hardwoods replies. While manufacturers have made hardwood floors easy to install you do need to take a few steps to prepare the room to make installation easier.

Some roofers prefer to attach felt underlayment with 1 inch roofing nails or special nails with plastic washers but most codes allow staples which are easier to drive. It s a moisture retarder and it helps to diminish noise caused by wood to wood. Your first task is preparing the surface that the hardwood will lie on which means deciding whether you need to use felt paper under the hardwood. Building paper is a catchall term for single ply sheathing paper manufactured in various thicknesses.

Hardwood flooring can increase your home s value. Rosin paper is a multi purpose building paper used underneath hardwood floors as an underlayment. Sanding the subfloor can remove minor swells or high spots in the wood but any low spots in the floor must be filled in order to level the plywood. Hardwood floors add style and a distinct look to a room.

In order to properly install hardwood floors the plywood subflooring must be even or level. There always seems to be a new product on the market to replace the old but asphalt felt is a time tested and dependable underlayment. The 30 pound tar paper is heavier and has much more asphalt in it. In addition the nwfa specifies a vapor barrier with a permeability between 0 7 and 10 perm.

How to install felt underlayment for hardwood floors. Plastic sheeting is not a suitable material because it can trap moisture and doesn t allow the floor to breathe. The tar paper made between 1900 and 1980 probably will last far longer than the tar paper made today. If you are installing flooring above a damp crawl space then certainly using tar paper as a moisture barrier is a great idea.

While impossible to know unless you do an expensive analysis the asphalt used to make modern tar paper contains much more oxygen than it should. The paper comes in rolls typically 3 feet wide.