How to Figure Hardwood Flooring Nails

How to Figure Hardwood Flooring Nails

Whether you’re a floor contractor preparing a quotation or a homeowner planning to do a floor installation yourself, you need an accurate cost estimate if you’re going to remain on budget to the job. That precision depends on including all of the incidentals that the setup needs, such as floor filler and claws. Air-powered tools such as staple and nail guns may drive different fasteners than manual nail guns, but the two types of fasteners cost approximately the same. The quantity you’ll need depends mostly on the width of the boards you’re installing, because that breadth governs the spacing of the nails.

Plan to distance nails by 8 inches if you’re installing conventional 3 1/4-inch floor boards. That sums to 1 1/2 claws per foot. If you’re installing wider boards, you’ll need to reduce the spacing to 6 inches, which can be two nails per foot, also if installing narrower planks, then you can increase the spacing to 10 inches, or 1 1/5 claws per foot.

Assess the room dimension that matches the plank management using a tape measure and compute just how many nails you need to install 1 row of flooring. Add 10 percent to the total if you’re installing shorts, which are boards less than two feet in length. They need more nails, because you need to drive one at either end of each board.

Figure out the amount of rows of flooring you need by measuring the vertical dimension of the space in foot, converting the result to inches and dividing that amount by the plank thickness, in inches.

Multiply the amount of rows of flooring by the amount of claws you need each row to arrive at the total amount of nails you need. Add 10 percent for this result into account for accidental waste.

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