Hardwood Flooring in Sunnyvale, CA

Hardwood flooring in Sunnyvale depends heavily on the foundation. The city has 16 housing tracts with more than 1,100 Eichler homes, many in its residential southern half, and those houses sit on concrete slabs with heating pipes in the slab. Other neighborhoods have raised wood subfloors over a crawlspace. The two need different products and installation methods, so the first thing we check at any Sunnyvale estimate is which kind of house we are standing in.

Eichlers: slab, radiant heat, no nails

Eichler Homes built more than 11,000 houses between 1949 and 1966, and Sunnyvale has some of the earliest: the first Eichlers went up at Sunnymount Gardens in 1949 and 1950. The Fairwood, Fairbrae and Fairbrae addition tracts add 400-plus homes built from 1958 to 1961. Their concrete slab floors with integral radiant heating rule out nailed solid hardwood.

What works:

• Engineered hardwood that its manufacturer approves for radiant heat, glued down or floated
• A moisture test of the slab before any adhesive goes down, following the adhesive maker's instructions
• Keeping surface temperatures within the flooring manufacturer's radiant limits
• Wider planks with a stable core, which suit the open plans and long sightlines of these houses

If your radiant system has been abandoned and replaced with forced air, we still treat the slab as the subfloor and plan for its moisture.

Postwar ranches and later homes

Sunnyvale grew from 9,829 people in 1950 to 59,898 in 1960, as orchards and sweet corn fields were cleared for houses and factories. Plenty of homes from that decade, outside the Eichler tracts, have raised floors with oak strip flooring, often under carpet. Those floors can usually be sanded and refinished, and new solid hardwood can be nailed down over the existing wood subfloor once it is checked for flatness and moisture.

Owners and renters

Sunnyvale's median owner-occupied home value is $1,801,800, among the highest of the towns we serve, while 43.8% of homes are owner-occupied. Owners tend to want a floor that lasts and can be renewed, so we lean toward engineered planks with a wear layer thick enough to sand later. Landlords often need quick turnarounds, and a screen and recoat on an existing floor is usually the fastest way to make a unit presentable.

Services we offer in Sunnyvale

• Engineered hardwood installation over concrete slabs, including radiant-heated Eichler slabs
• Solid hardwood installation over raised wood subfloors
• Refinishing of oak strip floors from the 1950s and 1960s
• Screen and recoat for floors that are dull but not worn through
• Repairs and board replacement, including patches where walls were moved in remodels
• Stair treads, risers and nosings

Climate notes

Summer days in Sunnyvale usually reach the high 70s or low 80s, winter highs rarely stay below 50°F, and about 17.52 inches of rain falls a year, mostly November through March. That is a mild range for wood, but radiant heat changes the picture in winter: a warm slab dries the boards above it. We acclimate flooring with the heat set the way you normally run it, aiming for the 60°F to 80°F and 30 to 50 percent humidity range the NWFA recommends.

Talk to us

Call (510) 751-0139 or send photos of the floor and a picture of your thermostat or radiant controls if you have them. We will confirm what is underneath, test moisture and give you a written quote.

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