Been busy over the last couple of weeks so only limited progress on this project. Finally managed to clean up sufficient blocks for the whole room (I hope) and in the end decided that I had to run the blocks through the thicknesser rather than rely on a floor sander - the top surface was just too manky to rely on a sanding belt to clean them up. I have currently run through approx 900 blocks. Lost a few due to tearout and a few more due to edge 'chipping' but these are likely to be usable around the edge where part blocks are needed, so have put these to one side for now. I then got impatient and decided to begin laying blocks!
First of all I had to lay a fire hearth area. This revealed that not only was the fireplace not square to the wall, it was not square to the room either. Currently I have cut the hearth tiles but they are not stuck down yet until I know whether I have to tweak their position or not. I could have squared up the hearth to the room, but this looked odd when I laid it out, so had to have the tiles square to the fireplace. This gave me a major problem when starting to lay out the parquet - did I lay it to square to the room (which is almost certainly not square anyway) or square to the fireplace. In the end I laid out both options dry to see how much a discrepancy there was. The chalk line (blue) below is square to the room, the pencil line is square to the fireplace:
By the other side of the room furthest from the fireplace the discrepancy was approx 8 inches, big enough to be noticeable. The problem with laying out to the room was that the herringbone wouldn't be square to the fireplace. However if I ran it square to the fireplace it would then be out down both sides of the room. I laid it out dry to the fireplace and left it overnight to think about, but this morning decided to go to the room and moved it over to the chalk line. This means cutting the end of the pattern close to the fireplace, but hopefully this will be less noticeable than it being out at the edge of the room - especially as the room edge will be visible from the doorway. As a consequence, the fireplace edge now looks like this:
I really hope this was the right decision! Anyway, once that decision was made it was time to stick down the blocks. The Lecol 5500 comes in a metal drum weighting 25kg (approx 55lb) and is a pig to move around, but not as much of a pain as it is to work with - it's like treacle in consistency, and once it has dried for 30 minutes takes on the consistency of chewing gum. It is almost impossible to clean off excess from the floor or tools - it doesn't scrape terribly well at all. I did order a proper spreader with it however, which is a godsend - I was going to use a standard notched trowel I use for tiling but so glad I didn't
After that it is just a case of spreading and sticking! I found it best to dry fit 15 or so blocks to make sure they went together well (no bitumen left in the grooves to inhibit the tongues engaging properly etc) and then spread adhesive and line up the blocks. It is recommended to do a mid line first then work outwards. YouTube video's show people laying an entire floor in one hit, but I found this impossible - these blocks are not simply able to be placed into position but need a tap or push - doing so then affects the row and knocks previously placed blocks out of line. I tried to stop this with a batten, but in the end I had to lay approx 30 blocks then wait for the adhesive to go off - thus it has taken almost a day to lay a line and a half, but now the mid line is fully fixed it should be faster.
Slow progress, but getting there. Still not sure if these are teak or iroko, but my money is still on iroko.....
Steve