HW16004 Alabastro – Block Select 70mm Engineered Oak Wood Flooring

This board uses select grade timber, which means that it is not quite as clean as a prime grade, but less busy than a character or rustic grade, Essentially it will include a mix of almost prime boards with others which contain a few more knots. Knots are formed when a branch has died and its base has become enclosed by subsequent layers of trunk wood as the tree grows, so their presence is emphasised by the grain of the wood flowing around it. Filler is used in the larger knots, the colour carefully selected to complement the wood rather than to match it exactly. The colour of the filler may vary.

You should also expect some heartwood, sapwood and checks (cracks across the growth ring.)

In general, European mills utilise a technique known as live sawing. This results in a mixture of plain, quarter and rift sawn cuts all in one wide plank of wood. Capturing all parts of the wood in one cut like this gives the floor a unique and notably beautiful appearance, and because at least a third of the cut is quarter sawn, the planks themselves are particularly stable.

In an engineered board, the top layer is, of course, solid wood, whilst the other layers may be plywood, softwood or yet more layers of hardwood. Each layer is bonded to the next with the grain running at right angles, which makes it virtually impossible for the board to swell or shrink. So when it is laid it is highly unlikely to warp and gap, or otherwise suffer in the same way as solid wood flooring can when exposed to changes in humidity through the use of heating and air conditioning, or simply due to a change in the weather.

In addition to being far more stable, engineered wood offers several other benefits. It may be laid as a floating floor, as well as being nailed or glued down, and some planks even come in an easy to fit 'click' system. It is usually pre-finished, meaning you see exactly how your floor will look before it is fitted and ensuring a faster, easier installation with no mess and no fuss. And, because it isn't affected by changes in humidity, it is available in much wider, longer, more imposing planks. Finally, it is particularly kind to the environment, because every beautiful, stable, hard wearing engineered timber floor fitted uses less of the slow-growth hardwoods. Little wonder that engineered timber is now by far the most popular type of timber flooring fitted around the world.