Do You Need a Flooring Jack?

Tough question, so before we talk flooring jacks, let’s ask about your circumstances:

Are you a professional installer?  If yes, then you need a flooring jack.  But you probably know this already.

Tougher question:  Are you a DIY floor installer?  If yes, then we’ll ask if you have more than one room to install.  A multiple room installation makes it worth renting or buying a flooring jack.  But first, let’s get down to basics:

What is a Flooring Jack?

Jacks tend to be used vertically, right?  After all, whether raising a house or raising a car, that’s the direction of gravity.

But when you’re installing floors, you care less about up-and-down stresses than you do about lateral stresses.  Wood floor installation is all about getting those floorboards tight into place, and sometimes all the pounding and smacking will do nothing.  In fact, pounding and smacking is not always the best option, or even a viable one.

How Will You Use a Flooring Jack?

You will use a flooring jack for many things:

• If you are installing wood flooring by yourself, a flooring jack is your helpful “second hand.”
• To hold in a course of floorboards that you are nailing.  After all, sometimes the boards don’t always cooperate.
• For those critical situations where you might otherwise try to “improvise.”  Say you’ve got a slightly bowed floorboard.  The flooring jack will down in the bowed-out side so that you can nail it into place.