Q: Hi good morning, we have a concrete floor in our walkout basement we are putting in an apartment I would love to have hardwood flooring we have radiant heat under the concrete please advise what wood and also at a reasonable price. Sq FT is 850.
Thanks,
Marie
A: Your best bet here is to look into an engineered hardwood floor which is suitable for radiant heat, which most are. Your best bet is to look into some of the higher quality ones which have better built substrates, as this will be far better suited to radiant heat. Good choices here are Saso, Bellefloor, Sun Paratech, Westhollow and Kahrs. If you can float the floor, Saso or Kahrs being great here, this will be your best option, but ensure it is installed over a dense underlayment such as cork or sound 6. You can do glue-down, but many floors have very strict requirements for doing a glue-down floor over radiant heat, but not impossible.
Another good option here would be to look into laminate or cork. Both are suitable for radiant heat and in the case of cork, I would suggest using the floating cork floors over glue-down.
If you want to go for the best bang for your buck, look into Saso for engineered hardwood, Westhollow for Cork, and for Laminate try Quick Step, Pergo or Westhollow.