Handy hints when buying and reusing Reclaimed Flooring
• When buying reclaimed flooring especially for the first time, as with any reclaimed material, it is advisable to thoroughly check the actual batch at the dealer's premises prior to delivery. First time buyers are advised to buy from Salvo Code dealers (see the link below).
• Ask the reclaimed flooring dealer if the batch of reclaimed wooden flooring you wish to buy has been left outside in the wet and has a high moisture content - because this will need to be reduced before the floor is laid.
• Ask if the moisture content is known (this can be measured with a moisture meter). For most floors 7 or 8 percent moisture content is best.
• If possible lay reclaimed floorboards loose and unfixed on the joists in the room intended for them for a few months or longer, so that they can acclimatise to the ambient humidity of their new location, then fix them down properly.
• Cleaned reclaimed woodblock (also called parquet) is ideal for laying direct onto dry level screeded solid floors using a mastic adhesive, or on to solid or hollow panel boarded floors using a woodblock glue. Use the latter method if underfloor heating is fitted.
• Reclaimed woodblock, most of which dates from 1880-1930 comes in a variety of species, the most common of which are oak, pine, pitch pine, beech, maple, mahogany, teak and many other tropical hardwoods imported from around the old British Empire. Reclaimed woodblock was an expensive flooring usually laid onto hot poured asphalt, or poured bitumen, on concrete ground floors in Victorian and Edwardian institutional buildings. The asphalt formed a high quality damp proof layer.
• Reclaimed woodblock needs to have cleaned edges, tongues and grooves. Check that the lengths and width of a batch are identical because batches of mixed lengths or widths can be more or less impossible to lay. The thickness is likely to vary because the floor was sanded down, and then worn, more in the middle of the floor than at the edges. So the middle blocks are thinner than the outer blocks. I used to sort them out and lay them in batches of similar thickness, so that less (or even no) sanding down is required afterwards. If one block is much lower the surrounding floor will all have to be sanded down to the level of the lowest block.
• Thin even layers of asphalt can be left on the bottom of reclaimed woodblock if a bitumen mastic is to be used as the glue.
• When relaying reclaimed woodblock start in the middle and work outwards in rows (usually). Use a chalk line, a string line, or other means of keeping the herringbone pattern very straight.
• When sanding down reclaimed floors some people react to tropical hardwood sawdust, sometimes with nosebleeds, so always wear a good fitting face mask, and try to only breath through your nose.
• Try alternatives to sanding floors such as cleaning dirty old flooring by hand using wirewool, cleaning with a water-based eco-spirit such as Bartoline, then buffing with natural beeswax.
• Or try scrubbing in-situ floorboards with diluted eco-cream bath cleaner, followed by a damp cloth to remove all traces of the cleaner, and then waxing when dry
• Avoid staining or painting reclaimed wood. Most wood, especially yellow or red softwood, darkens with exposure to sunlight eventually creating a beautiful patina. This might take a couple of years but is definitely worth the wait. Beeswax will not colour a floor and is barely noticeable, but it will create a luxury finish, and one which is safe for crawling babies. Avoid using toxic coloured varnishes or waxes.
• Sanding an old reclaimed floor will remove the top patinated layer, but the patina will eventually return.
• Patching missing areas of old flooring with reclaimed boards may result in a colour mismatch. Try scrubbing the existing floor and moving the dirty water to the reclaimed boards and this may even out colour differences, this does not often work but is worth trying before staining wood to get a match which can be quite time-consuming and tricky.
• When flooring a loft or a shed where stained flooring does not matter, ask a salvage yard if it has any water or oil damaged flooring for sale going cheap, or advertise for some on SalvoWEB. This can provide an excellent floor at a low price.
• Most British houses built between 1770 and 1970 were fitted with softwood flooring. The modern trend is to remove this and replace it, or simply cover over it, with engineered new or reclaimed oak flooring. If you plan to do this, please carefully remove the old pine floor and place it in the loft, or sell it to a salvage yard or on SalvoWEB to someone who intends to refit it in their home.
• Plumbers and electricians can damage amazingly good original wooden flooring, and skirtings and architraves, when fitting pipes and cables under an old floor. Make sure that they remove boards and skirtings carefully, numbering them and drawing a plan of them if necessary, and then replace them, preferably using the same old nails. Discuss this need prior to employing them.
• Reclaimed woodstrip flooring comes in similar species to reclaimed woodblock - oak, pine, pitch pine, beech, maple, mahogany, teak and many other tropical hardwoods imported from around the old British Empire. It is usually secret-nailed, tongued and grooved, but sometimes these are damaged during removal, and will therefore be harder to lay, and so cheaper.
• Use SalvoWEB for finding all dealers in your region, or buy a Salvo Pack, or look for reclaimed flooring currently for sale in your region on SalvoWEB, or register on SalvoWEB and create a free wanted ad for reclaimed flooring.

The link below lists businesses subscribing to the Salvo Code (established in 1995), which flags to customers and suppliers that a business has good practice in stock purchasing, and which support the Salvo theft alert system.