What to use as flooring in a workshop-style room

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neb

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#278442 16-Oct-2020 12:32

One of the rooms in the house is going to be used as a workshop/storage type of room, and we're wondering what to use for the flooring material. Bare concrete is out, too cold. Lino is just awful and cheap, carpet is out because it's going to used, at least some of the time, as a workshop, and so on. Any ideas on what to put on the floor?

scuwp

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#2586267 16-Oct-2020 13:21

I would be looking at the engineered wooden flooring, looks like wood but harder wearing. If you are DIY oriented you can install it yourself.

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Ge0rge

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#2586269 16-Oct-2020 13:24

Currently at work - a workshop with around 75 employees - that supports light and heavy vehicles, electrical and electronics, radios and other equipment. As I move around, we have a combination of concrete, lino, and heavy-duty, short pile, anti-static carpet :D

Don't discount the carpet too quickly, depending on what you will do in your "workshop".

You could also consider plywood painted with polyurethane - like the flooring in a doc hut.

cshwone

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#2586276 16-Oct-2020 13:37

Ge0rge:

You could also consider plywood painted with polyurethane - like the flooring in a doc hut.

I would also recommend plywood sealed. It's cheap to do, will take a lot a battering, spills etc and using standard sheets can be replaced section by section when required.

neb

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#2586306 16-Oct-2020 14:46

Ge0rge: Don't discount the carpet too quickly, depending on what you will do in your "workshop".

You could also consider plywood painted with polyurethane - like the flooring in a doc hut.

That's the problem, part of it will be occasional woodworking but for anything seriously sawdust-generating I'll try and take it outside on a portable workbench, part will be electronics work. At the moment I'm considering doing half in carpet and half in engineered wood or plywood as others have suggested. For the electronics/general work side I don't want to have a cold, hard floor to be on for hours on end, but when I do something that makes a bit of a mess then being able to easily sweep it up would be good. So with this floor plan:

the rectangular area would be some hard-wearing carpet with a metal lip at the edges, the rest would be engineered timber. The electronics workbench is up against the window at the bottom, the woodworking one at the window to the right.

tdgeek

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#2586327 16-Oct-2020 15:31

Ge0rge:

You could also consider plywood painted with polyurethane - like the flooring in a doc hut.

Good idea. Simple, easy to clean

mdf

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#2586390 16-Oct-2020 16:53

+1 (appropriate) carpet. Carpet tiles even better. Stumpy Nubs has it in his new shop and did a vlog with his thoughts.

Eva888

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#2586401 16-Oct-2020 18:10

Do the entire floor in Carpet Tiles that don’t have a pile, hard wearing and an extra pack on hand for any accidents. Use a big tarp cheap from the warehouse when you need to do any messy work and just wrap it up afterwards.

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neb

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#2586449 16-Oct-2020 22:40

mdf: +1 (appropriate) carpet. Carpet tiles even better. Stumpy Nubs has it in his new shop and did a vlog with his thoughts.

Ah, short-pile commercial carpet, yeah, that would do the trick. Thanks.

neb

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#2611123 26-Nov-2020 13:11

Eva888: Do the entire floor in Carpet Tiles that don’t have a pile, hard wearing and an extra pack on hand for any accidents. Use a big tarp cheap from the warehouse when you need to do any messy work and just wrap it up afterwards.

So it looks like I'll just put tiles over the whole area. Does anyone have any particular recommendations, the range from the usual suspects (M10/Bunnings) is almost nonexistent if you want something that isn't very dark, which I want to avoid because the room isn't very light to begin with. Least bad I've found is this, but I'm a bit uncertain about self-adhesive vs. doing it properly, and I'd prefer bigger tiles leading to less seams for things to fall into/catch on.

mdf

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#2611176 26-Nov-2020 14:13

I've got some of the (admittedly dark) 1m sq ones from Bunnings. They're backed with a pretty non slip backing, so you don't need much to stop the moving around (basically just holding them down for vacuuming). That said, they are big and heavy and floppy enough that they're kind of a pain to line up right.

I've previously used 300mm sq ones like in your post and they were much easier to get lined up properly. We used the proper carpet tile glue which was great. Basically smear a bit around using a pointy edged spreader or trowel, line up the tile and put something heavy on it for a few minutes. And then when you spilled something on it, you can just pry up with a metal spatula or scraper.

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#2611432 26-Nov-2020 21:16

neb:
mdf: +1 (appropriate) carpet. Carpet tiles even better. Stumpy Nubs has it in his new shop and did a vlog with his thoughts.
Ah, short-pile commercial carpet, yeah, that would do the trick. Thanks.

I would seriously recommend not using any type of ordinary carpet - commercial or otherwise. Proper garage carpet is fantastic stuff - a totally different product - but can vary a lot in weight/quality. We have something very similar to this product in our garage/workshop - and it really is very good. It has been down for 5+ years and is still like new.

https://carpetcourt.nz/product/carpet/irvine-garage-carpet-crazy-xl/

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neb

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#2611739 27-Nov-2020 12:39

mdf:
I've previously used 300mm sq ones like in your post and they were much easier to get lined up properly. We used the proper carpet tile glue which was great. Basically smear a bit around using a pointy edged spreader or trowel, line up the tile and put something heavy on it for a few minutes. And then when you spilled something on it, you can just pry up with a metal spatula or scraper.

Good to know, thanks! So I'll go with the 300mm ones because they seem to be the only size that doesn't come in an attractive range of black, dark grey, very dark grey, charcoal, black, and black.