Flooring and wood floor installers for Naples

What a Naples condominium asks of a hard floor

Associations here publish their flooring rules, and they are specific. Cove Towers in North Naples sets a minimum sound rating by floor type: wood, tile or marble goes over underlayment at least a quarter of an inch thick, rated at an impact insulation class of 71 and a sound transmission class of 66 or better. A luxury vinyl or laminate floor has to come with its own rated backing, 66 and 63, with the specifications handed in. Existing flooring comes out to the slab, and nothing new goes over old without the board's written approval.

Impact insulation class measures footfall noise through a floor in a laboratory; a reading taken in a finished unit is a different number, so it matters which one a building's rules mean. We choose the product to the building's sheet, not the other way round, and the spec sheets go in with the application.

Buildings that name the underlayment

Some buildings go further and choose the product. The Dunes of Naples requires one named sound-control underlayment for every hard floor, wants written approval of the material first, and has its maintenance staff inspect the underlayment before the finished floor goes on top. A strip of the same material stands on edge against the baseboard, and no tile or setting material may touch the walls, toe kicks, thresholds or shower curbs.

The same rules shape the day. Workers there may not use the passenger elevators, and every cut, wet saw included, is made inside the owner's unit under a plastic tent. That is why a Naples condominium floor starts with the building's own form and a call to its manager, before a date is set.

Older buildings, older floors

Close to two thirds of the city's homes were built before 1990, and the 1970s alone account for nearly one in four. A floor in a building that age has usually been replaced at least once, and an association that requires removal to the slab means the old floor, its adhesive and any leftover bed all come up first. What is under them decides the next step: a slab flattened for wide planks, or for porcelain tile where wood is not the right floor.

Below the flood line

In the City of Naples' flood zones, the cost of improving a building is weighed against half its market value, taken from a recent appraisal or the Collier County Property Appraiser's figure for the building alone, and a floor that is part of a larger renovation counts toward that total. The City also does not allow an enclosed area below the required flood elevation, such as the ground level under a raised house, to be finished into rooms; the owner records a non-conversion agreement. Finished flooring belongs on the raised floor above it.

Where a lived-in room does sit below the flood elevation, FEMA's current bulletin on flood damage-resistant materials decides the floor. It rates engineered wood and plastic laminate as unacceptable there, and ceramic and porcelain tile set in mortar as acceptable. That is why a ground-floor room in an older Naples house so often gets tile while the wood goes upstairs.

Engineered wood in a house closed for the summer

Four in ten Naples homes are kept for seasonal use, by the same Census survey. For engineered wood that changes the instructions as much as the install: Riva's range for its floors is thirty to fifty-five percent relative humidity and sixty to eighty degrees, held while the house is empty as well as while it is lived in. A thermostat with a humidity setting is part of the floor.

A long drive, planned once

From the showroom to Naples City Hall is about 124 miles, between two and two and a half hours by I-75. So a Naples floor is chosen in one visit, with the building's flooring rules and the unit's measurements in hand, and the crew is booked for the whole floor rather than a room at a time. For tile and large-format porcelain in the same home, the Naples tile page covers the season and the slab after a flood.