How To Lay Tar Paper On Floor

Plastic sheeting is not a suitable material because it can trap moisture and doesn t allow the floor to breathe.

How to lay tar paper on floor.

Should i use tar paper under the new floor. Rosin paper is a multi purpose building paper used underneath hardwood floors as an underlayment. Hardwood floors add style and a distinct look to a room. Among the materials that satisfy its criteria are asphalt laminated paper tar paper and asphalt saturated kraft paper.

Charles peterson owner of connecticut premier hardwoods replies. Building paper between layers of flooring. How to install felt underlayment for hardwood floors. The tar paper made between 1900 and 1980 probably will last far longer than the tar paper made today.

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. 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. 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. Before applying roofing you ll need to cover the sheathing with roofing felt also often called tar paper most local codes call for using 30 pound felt.

The 30 pound tar paper is heavier and has much more asphalt in it. It s a moisture retarder and it helps to diminish noise caused by wood to wood. Ken szmyt via email none. In addition the nwfa specifies a vapor barrier with a permeability between 0 7 and 10 perm.

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. In order to properly install hardwood floors the plywood subflooring must be even or level. The paper is installed just before the wood flooring and comes in rolls of various lengths. Asphalt saturated felt paper is used for two reasons.

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 flooring can increase your home s value. But maybe a better idea is to consider other flooring options that are more able to deal with high moisture conditions. It is used as a moisture barrier and it allows the wood floor above it to breathe.

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. If you are installing flooring above a damp crawl space then certainly using tar paper as a moisture barrier is a great idea.