Experience with wooden pavers?

[Donn]

I just caught the tail end of a piece on HGTV, featuring a floor made of end-sawn pavers, cut from antique beams.

http://www.thevitruviusvision.com/images/2.jpg

Looked very cool. Has anyone done any work like this?

[Jim Budde]

Saw a similar floor recently here in Nebraska. Owners very proud .. and certainly unique ... but in my opinion, traditional hardwood floors look better.

[rbgarr]

I used to work in a Cummins Diesel engine factory and the floor was paved with wooden 8" x 8" pavers like that. Very comfortable on the feet and supported heavy burdens like forklifts, etc. Soaked up spilled oils quickly, too.

Downside is that the pavers wore unevenly, but that might not be a problem in a home.

[ssor]

I have only seen them in factories and horse stables. Always quite thick and set in asphalt over concrete. For residential use I would think that they could be treated like tile or parquet and set in a resilent adhesive.

[StevenBauer]

It's been a dozen years or so since I've been there but the lobby floor of the Samoset Hotel in Rockland was made like that. 12" x 12" endcuts. Pretty cool.

Steven

[holzbt]

The next time you are in the shop venture over to the east side of the workbench and look down. :D

[imported_Dutch]

I saw an episode of this old house about 8-10 +- years ago where they did a floor in that manner-looked relatively simple to do- im trying to remember what they used as the mortar bond- seems like linseed oil was in it though

[Ed Harrow]

A very cool floor. The fist one I saw done that way was a then bar in Montreal. Since then, the old Bell facility in Allentown, PA, and a Pratt & Whitney operation in Maine.

As noted, typically industrial, but a really beautiful floor.

[Donn]

They look like they're 3/4" or less, but I guess if you were cutting your own, you could make them as thick as you like.

Roger, I remembered yours after I posted this, but they're just free astray on the floor, no? :D

Vitruvius (http://www.thevitruviusvision.com)

The site is under construction. http://www.thevitruviusvision.com/images/15.jpg

[ 02-07-2005, 12:42 PM: Message edited by: Donn ]

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

The wooden pavers used in industrial applications are usually creosoted pine. Can't imagine they would use those in a home.
The big drawback to them was their ability to soak up large volumes of water, and then swelling up to the point of creating a small hill. Once that happens they must be replaced. Used in a place that is guaranteed dry would be OK but I would avoid any place where even modest flooding is possible.
I'm also curious about what it takes to finish/refinish all that end grain.
Charlie

[nedL]

I don't know about dry environments only. As a kid I remember seeing parts of some NYC streets that were paved that way, kind of like wooden coblestones. They were well over 100 yrs old then.

[philbobagginzzz]

I was asked to lift and relay a similar floor in a early Victorian mill in Manchester (U.K) 3 or 4 years ago. The building was being converted into extremely up market flats. No proof that it was original but it almost cetainly was.

It was set in a 'bitumen like' material but having a definate 'granular' content.

As somebody else commented on this thread it had worn very unevenly with block thickness's ranging from 5mm to 20mm. Although they obviously were not standard cut in the first place - the high wear area's were probably close to 10mm lower than the low wear area's. In a domestic situation I can't see that being a problem in any of our lifetime tho - and it would totally eliminate carpet burn!

In the end it was deemed 'uneconomical' - and we didn't even win the contract to screed it and lay top quality modern laminate! Such is life...

As to the aesthetics - I did my time as a furniture maker - so - for me, end grain sucks - but each to their own!!!

Regards,

Philbo.

[gary porter]

Originally posted by rbgarr:
I used to work in a Cummins Diesel engine factory and the floor was paved with wooden 8" x 8" pavers like that. Very comfortable on the feet and supported heavy burdens like forklifts, etc. Soaked up spilled oils quickly, too.

Downside is that the pavers wore unevenly, but that might not be a problem in a home.Let me guess, was that Cummins plant in Columbus Indiana? I've been in a couple of those plants and remember the one which was new at the time had this type floor. Pretty impressive. My brother and several cousins worked for Cummins.
Gary

[rbgarr]

Yes, it was the plant in Columbus. It was also better for dropping tools on... if there is such a thing as 'good' about dropping tools. ;)

[Gerald]

When I worked at Cat the steel was delivered with 4x4 or larger oak or hardwood beams between the different codes. I sized the beams, cut off 1" chunks, and rounded the edges with a 1/4" round over. I laid the blocks on top of a concrete floor using mastic and filled the grooves with a paste made from sawdust and epoxy. Far as I know that kitchen floor is still being used and that was a good many years ago. Probably would have looked better using 4x6's but the lumber I used was free.
Gerald

[Cullen T.M. McGough]

Jazus. Next to a fireplace?

Anybody ever read colonial accounts about cobblestone streets being temporarily patched with pine blocks? It seems they swell and compress until... *POW* they sky-rocked into the air, affrighting passers-by and other, equally affronted domestic stock.

Still... it looks cool.

[Tom Robb]

There's a street in the University Circle area of Cleveland Ohio that's end grain wood blocks.
Quite old, I'd think.
Wouldn't they likely need to be rather deep/thick? Thin blocks in end grain would awfully fragile.
The freight elevator in the main Ohio Bell central office in Akron Ohio was "paved" with end grain blocks. I never niticed any untoward wear on them. The 'tween block gaps do collect a lot of crud.

[Dave Fleming]

Mare Island Naval Shipyard had at least 1 building floored with wood blocks on two floors.
They were not thin slices. They were about 6 inches deep with double dovetails in all 4 sides.

The one on the first floor set over a very thick concrete slab was set in tar or heavy mastic.

The one upstairs laid over a 3 inch thick Doug Fir wood floor on huge Doug Fir Beams was also laid in a mastic type stuff.

My old mentor Matt Escobar told me the building was rebuilt to house precision metal working machinery for the atomic subs that Mare Island was planning to build.
Tremendous effort was made to get the floors as level and smooth as possible. Even after that special mounts for the machinery were made in existing machine shops on the Island.

I recall getting some literature from the company sometime in the 1970's. Dunno if it is still in business. Those blocks were sure impressive.

I did a quick Google on wood block floors and found a few companies making the thinner ones.
Comment on one site specifically addressed waterproofing and rot treatment.
Seems they are now protected against both problems.

[ 02-09-2005, 05:34 PM: Message edited by: Dave Fleming ]

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by Cuyahoga Chuck:
The big drawback to them was their ability to soak up large volumes of water, and then swelling up to the point of creating a small hill. Once that happens they must be replaced. Used in a place that is guaranteed dry would be OK but I would avoid any place where even modest flooding is possible.There's a US Navy Reserve Armory here in Seattle (now part of the South Lake Union Park) that has the main floor (muster deck?) laid with wooden pavers like that. It's beautiful—old-growth douglas fir.

Some years back, while it was still in use by the USNR, somebody in the reserve unit that occupied the place took it upon himself to install a water cooler.

Evidently he didn't do a good job pressure-testing the new plumbing before hooking everything up and turning on the water.

:eek: The ensuing 'hump' as I remember must have been about 10-15 feet long and close to a foot high.

BTW, a google for "http://www.google.com/search?q=end-grain+flooring" comes up with a number of companies that manufacture the same.

[Gerald]

When machine operators would forget to turn off the coolant hose the coolant would run over the pan and under the wood blocks. I would send my fork trucker out for tub loads of castings to be placed on the floor blocks in the water soaked area. It didn't always work. There were many times that the floor blocks had enough force to lift the thousands of pounds of castings. Maintenance would also remove sections of blocks and try to pump the coolant from under the blocks. Normally didn't work and they ended up replacing large areas.
Gerald