Installing laminate flooring
We recently pulled the old carpet out of our motorhome (not a job for the faint hearted as all the furniture had to be removed!) and are planning to install laminate flooring. Motor Home magazine had...
Forum Discussion
If you do a search on this or other RV forums, you'll find lots of info. I think there was a good thread here recently on it.
Allure is a popular brand used but the manufacturer says it shouldn't be used in unheated spaces like an RV. The flooring will shrink and expand summer to winter and you need to take that into account and it should be floating. Depending on where you live, RVs can have extreme temp. swings summer to winter, unlike in a house where it's relatively stable. Glue-down types are not a good idea.
Movement of your floor won't be the issue, it's expansion and contraction that you have to consider. It seems to me that floors in motorhomes are more stable anyway and in some of them, they even use ceramic tile. I would only use a 100% waterproof ABS or vinyl product.
Some have had the self-stick type planks like Allure come apart. I would suggest interlocking type. It's important to have a correctly sized expansion joint all around. You don't want things secured to the floor that will prevent the laminate from moving, like say table pedestal legs screwed to the floor. We used 1/8" thick ABS type laminate in our first TT and it worked well. One joint came apart but only because the expansion joint was too small in one area (fixed and fine after that). I made up a 1" x 3/8" baseboard to go all around and painted it and used oak under cabinetry and stained it to match.
Allure is a popular brand used but the manufacturer says it shouldn't be used in unheated spaces like an RV. The flooring will shrink and expand summer to winter and you need to take that into account and it should be floating. Depending on where you live, RVs can have extreme temp. swings summer to winter, unlike in a house where it's relatively stable. Glue-down types are not a good idea.
Movement of your floor won't be the issue, it's expansion and contraction that you have to consider. It seems to me that floors in motorhomes are more stable anyway and in some of them, they even use ceramic tile. I would only use a 100% waterproof ABS or vinyl product.
Some have had the self-stick type planks like Allure come apart. I would suggest interlocking type. It's important to have a correctly sized expansion joint all around. You don't want things secured to the floor that will prevent the laminate from moving, like say table pedestal legs screwed to the floor. We used 1/8" thick ABS type laminate in our first TT and it worked well. One joint came apart but only because the expansion joint was too small in one area (fixed and fine after that). I made up a 1" x 3/8" baseboard to go all around and painted it and used oak under cabinetry and stained it to match.
