Off the hard flooring types the most popular is the vinyl hybrid, if people can afford it. Hybrids are "hybrid laminate flooring" and have a Click-System which lock the individual hybrid planks together. This makes for easy hassle-free installation.They are extremely durable, wear and indentation resistant having a 0.5mm Wear Layer on top of the board. They easily resist scratches, stains, and wear,and cleaning couldn't be simpler. The interior is waterproof and the backside of the board has attached quality Acoustic Underlay that reduces noise levels of foot traffic. Plank thicknesses start at 3.00mm and go to 5.00mm with an additional 1.5mm IXPE pre-adhered underlay. The surface finish is matt, embossed, square edged and slip resistant of a P3 rating.
Most of the time it comes to non-vinyl (MDF) laminate flooring versus vinyl hybrid flooring. The big advantage of hybrid flooring is it is waterproof and quiet underfoot when walked upon. Laminates aren't quiet of silent under foot. The disadvantge of hybrid flooring over laminate flooring is the floor substrate must be very level otherwise the click sytem that locks the boards together can fail. Laminates are structually more robust, being mostly 12mm in thickness and made out of stronger material, and therefore are more forgiving in being installed on rough substate surfaces. With hybrid flooring the boards are mostly 5-6mm plus 2mm underlay that is bonded to them,in thickness, resulting in not a strong board for carrying loads in between 2 points which have a dip in between them. Where the dip is substantial the joining click-system fails and the flooring begins to disintegrate. To prevent this from happening the floor is either diamond ground to take the crowns out of the concrete floor or a levelling compound is used to level the floor by filling in the dips and valleys that ly in between the crowns, or both. This floor levelling comes at a high cost which makes the hybrid flooring more expensive than MDF flooring.
Another advantge of hybrids over laminates is hybrids are waterproof, so they can be more easily cleaned although care must be taken to use a minimum of water. The non-vinyl laminates have a disability in resisting the penetration of water into their joints clic-system. It isn't sealed with glue so the water can freely seep in and if the edges of laminate boards aren't waxed and impermeable to water, the water ingresses into the boards, which are made of MDF, and the boards swell-up and become structually damaged. The swelling causes the boards to cup and eventually in this area they start to flake and disintegrate. Hybrid floorboards are of vinyl construction material which is imperious to water and so they don't have this problem.
The hybrid flooring cost consists of hybrid flooring planks cost per square metre, plus the installation and substrate levelling cost. The cheapest hybrid flooring planks cost (from 4.5mm thick boards) is $28.50/m and the cheapest hybrid flooring planks cost (from 6.5mm thick boards) from about $36.00 per square metre. In addition quadding and finishing trims must be bought. The laying about $26.00/m and if needed concrete levelling from $22.00/m and if needed concrete diamond grinding from $22.00/m. If levelling and concrete grinding are both needed then the cost can be ascertained only by an onsite quotation. If there are tiles on the floor that need smashing and removal this is another big cost item. The costs for laminate flooring are less as they don't need floor preparation.
Not all Hybrid Flooring retailers are geared up to installing the flooring, nor levelling or grinding the floor and hardly any in smashing and removing tiles of the floor. Concord Floors does the lot which is where we are different to other retailers. Simply selling the goods like Bunnings, is an easy game. The hard, stressful part they leave to you. It is a bit like going to a builder asking him to build you a house and he responding by saying that he will sell to you the component materials but will play no part in actually building the house. All he will do is give you a list of contractors with their telephone numbers or get them to call you and you and the contractors will build the house. It will be you that will organise the contractors and guarantee their work to you and the retailer will be free from all workmanship guarantees as it was you that performed the work and not him. This is how some retailers are operating. If the retailer asks you to pay the contractor directly for their labour and not the retailer than this is their method of operation.
Below are pictures of hybrid planks
Is it OK to put laminate flooring on stairs? Can You Laminate Stairs? The answer is yes. Take a look at the steps done by Concord Floors in two homes, one in Templestowe Lower and the other in Caroline Springs. With installation, the step's riser's surface must come out to under the furtherest point of the edge of the tread away from the tread's crotch. This is done by nailing timber strips or small pieces of hybrid floorboards to the riser's surface. Next the boards are cut exactly to size to fit in between the wall and the stringer. The cut boards are then fitted to the riser's surface and affixed with glue. The step's tread surface has floorboards laid normally. The installed floorboards have the corner of the riser and tread covered by a stair tread. The stairtread can be of the same material as the hybrid floorboards or made out of aluminium.
