Help on hardwood dance floors!

I am ripping up my carpet in my house's great room to install a hardwood dance floor. Their are so many choices in wood flooring with solid, manufactured, engineered, strip, various types of wood, bamboo, locking, nail down, floating, etc... Does anyone have any good advice to give me. I do ballroom, swing and country dances and learning more. It will not be a studio but just a place to socialize and practice at home (24' x 12' in size).

Thanks in advance!

Ralph, I've noticed that several studios have installed Pergo (qv) floors. It's a type of laminate which is relatively inexpensive and holds up fairly well under the stress of dancing.

A hardwood floor is ideal but it must be installed correctly for dancing and, even worse, it must be maintained. Accordlingly, hardwood floors are very expensive.

If your house is built on a slab then you must use engineered hardwood instead of solid.

jj

"If your house is built on a slab then you must use engineered hardwood instead of solid."

This is not really relevant. You simply should not put dance flooring of any sort directly on a concrete slab, as it will be "dead" with no give to it.

Real wood in addition needs sufficient ventilation underneath to prevent the accumulation of moisture, but then so do some of the cheaper "engineered" materials which can experience glue failure.

Ralph

I had about the same situation with a Room about 18 X 26.
I went with a Master Portable Dance floor as it has its own spring built into it and that way I can remove if I ever move. While it cost more then installing a hardwood floor it provided better options in the long run.
It cost about $10 per square foot at the time I bought it compared to around $4:00 per square foot for hardwood.
Based on your room size you could do a Maple plywood floor for fairly reasonable $

"This is not really relevant. You simply should not put dance flooring of any sort directly on a concrete slab, as it will be "dead" with no give to it."

Please show me where I claimed that you could do so.

Engineered hardwood is built with moistureproof outer layers. Also, no floor is installed on a concrete slab until the slab has dried sufficiently to eliminate most moisture problems.

Every studio in which I have seen Pergo or some other laminate used for flooring sits on a concrete slab with padding between the floor and the slab.

Even if Ralph is going to install the floor himself, all flooring vendors provide plenty of literature which explains proper installation. They don't want people to be unhappy with their product.

jj

"Every studio in which I have seen Pergo or some other laminate used for flooring sits on a concrete slab with padding between the floor and the slab."

Since you aren't putting it directly on the concrete, you are not limited to engineered materials but can instead take the appropriate steps to use real wood.

Personally, if you are dancing on a man made surface anyway, you might want to consider regular commercial floor tiles rather than fake wood.

These postings made me wonder about the various dance studios at which people train, teach or take lessons.
I have never been in a studio in which the dance floor was built atop concrete. They have all been on the second floors of buildings for that reason, so as not to be on concrete foundation. But I am certain they do exist, and maybe only the professionals, using it over the long haul, would notice a difference in how their legs were reacting to the surface.
Our studio also went with the Pergo surface not long ago, mostly because it is viewed as advantageous for the ballet and hip hop students who are pounding their knees far more than Fox Trot students. It is also less expensive to maintain. I didn't like it as much as the hardwood floor at first, but I have gotten used to it.
This post was interesting to me, as I too am tearing up my thin carpeting with practice and lessons I give out of my home.

"I have never been in a studio in which the dance floor was built atop concrete. They have all been on the second floors of buildings for that reason, so as not to be on concrete foundation."

I've been in at least two built on slabs, but they were built/converted by knowledgeable dancers who used a complete flooring system - not just boards on concrete, but something to provide a moisture barrier and compliance under the boards.

Often if the room is very large and the dance floor does not cover all of it, there will be a step up of several cm to get from the surrounding building floor onto the dance floor. Some of today's clip-based systems are even compatible with rented space as you can take the floor apart into component boards and save almost all of them to reinstall elsewhere. The floor isn't actually nailed down, it just sits there, a cm or two smaller than the room if it goes to the walls to allow for expansion.

http://www.sprungfloors.com/

This was just the first in a search. Sprung floors is the way to go if you want a quality "dance" floor.

You can provide a semi-sprung surface for quite modest cost, even over a concrete base.

You need a damp proof layer first (or a completely dry concrete slab which incorporates a damp-proof layer already).

Lay two thicknesses of good quality rubber carpet underlay, and over that a thin layer of plywood or hardboard. Over that, fit inexpensive click-together laminate flooring. The purpose of the plywood/hardboard layer is to spread the load at the laminate joins, so that the rubber underlay gives the floor "spring", without any risk of the floor flexing at the joins (particularly under the weight of a lady's heel. The whole "sandwich" is not too thick, and it doesn't need any permanent fixing, so you can take it up again if you move, or want to renew the rubber underlay.