what floor prep is needed under luxfeel air next-gen hybrid flooring?

Do you need floor preparation under Luxfeel air? Well, it's a floating floor system, the reason why you go for a floating floor system. Our next-generation hybrid is because it minimizes the floor prep needed on your subfloors, whether it be timber, tiles, or concrete. A majority of the time, you won't need any floor prep whatsoever for a DIY option. This is an absolute dream.

What we look at, though, there's always a provision put in play just in case you have a disastrous subfloor. So let's talk about a hole in the floor. Well, let's say we've got a hole in your floor, and it's concrete. Let's fill it up with a bit of levelling compound and smooth out that area so that board can float and go over the top. Because it's the air rated PVC, it's flexible, it's strong, and it can contour to the shape of your existing subfloor quite nicely. But there's everything within reason. Suppose there's a huge big hole that you need to fill over the timber. It's exactly the same thing. It can float over the top of your timber subfloor. So this is your pole homes, your second stories, for example, you can go straight over the top of them no worries at all. 

Let's just address, if there's a crazy high point where two bits of the yellow tongue are meeting, let's sand that down. If you sand it down, it will make it nice and simple. 

The major question that I get asked more than anything is we're going for Hybrids, and we're going for next-generation Hybrids specifically to go over the top of tiles. And I personally have had that installed directly over top of the tiles at my home. And what we did there, though, is we assess the space. We had 500 by 500 highly polished porcelains with quite narrow grout lines. They are very uneven, mind you, though. They're not flat. So the subfloor underneath the tiles was up and down like anything.

So I knew ahead of time there was going to be some high points and low points. So on the low points where it drops off quickly, you might feel a little bit of flex in the flooring. But that's okay to me. I decided that that was okay if I didn't like that. If you had really big, open grout lines with huge high points in the tiles, what you might want to do is grind those high points off. That's option one.

And if you get really, really specific and you want it perfect, you can flood coat those tiles to make it nice and smooth to install the planks thereafter. But if you get asked the question, can I install over my tiles? Yes, all within reason. Let's assess what type of tile it is, and let's float our floors, saving on the floor preparation.