ᐅ Solid wood plank flooring – how thick should it be?

Hello everyone,

We are still in the planning phase, but one major topic for us is the floor and its covering. We have agreed that it should be a wooden floor. It should be solid and made of oak. Additionally, underfloor heating will be installed. When I search online, I find planks up to a maximum thickness of 2.6 cm (1 inch). Is that already the maximum thickness? I ask because I recently visited a construction site where they installed a solid Douglas fir floor, and there the planks were 5 cm (2 inches) thick.

The installation height of a floor heating system with parquet flooring should not exceed 22 mm (0.87 inches) according to standard EN 2242. When designing modern low-energy screed heating systems (if present), a parquet thickness of up to 15 mm (0.59 inches) is recommended. Of course, this assumes full-surface adhesive bonding.

Best regards, wieli

That's true. There is also little reason to use thicker floorboards.

Solid wood floorboards, meaning a single piece of hardwood, are generally not suitable for use with underfloor heating as far as I know. The wood simply acts as too strong an insulator.

I cannot confirm that from my own experience. We have 16mm (0.63 inch) oak floorboards in the upper floor covering 80 m2 (860 sq ft), and I don’t see any issues.