DESIGNERS and specifiers in workspace have been advocating for magnetic wood floors for a while now and it’s easy to see why: wood floors create a naturally inviting working environment and promote a sense of wellbeing, both of which are central to modern office design.

A magnetic fixing is a clean and easy way to fit to the metal raised access subfloors found in most large office buildings and enables crucial access to the services beneath.

Better still, in a world where genuine sustainability is increasingly important and the ability to disassemble and reuse is a growing priority across the construction industry, magnetic wood flooring can be removed without damage to the subfloor and reused.

Over a 20-year period in a commercial setting, this can reduce the amount of embodied carbon by more than 500% and costs by two thirds.

So why isn’t everyone doing it? The truth is like most innovations magnetic wood flooring has had some teething problems. Many of these have been blamed on contractors, and the result is that sadly most are now wary of magnetic wood flooring and reluctant to embrace this potentially revolutionary way of fitting wood floors in commercial spaces despite the enthusiasm of specifiers.

This reminds us of the early days of underfloor heating, when everyone seemed to have a disaster story about combining it with wood flooring. As one of the few pioneers who were succeeding, Broadleaf had a daily battle to convince contractors that if the product and the preparation were right, it would work.

‘We worked in partnership with underfloor heating suppliers to understand their systems and help them understand wood,’ says the company. ‘We improved the information available to help people avoid the pitfalls and shared our success stories, as did others.

‘Gradually, laying wood floors over underfloor heating became normal, so that these days it’s something that most contractors do regularly without a second thought. Now, we hope to do the same thing with magnetic wood flooring. We’ve been researching, developing and testing magnetic wood floors for nearly a decade, combining our knowledge as a wood flooring manufacturer with insights from contractors and magnet experts.’

The company continues: ‘The result is Magnetree, which isn’t just magnetic wood flooring, but a complete magnetic installation system that can be applied to our entire range of wood floors. Magnetree has been designed with contractors in mind; there are no added complications with expansion gaps; it doesn’t require fiddly machining on-site to create access hatches, or detailed mapping to identify their location; it retains full horizontal integrity and is designed not to track.

‘It’s been designed by wood people, for wood people. Now we know we won’t convince everyone straight off the bat, and nor do we expect to, but we hope even if you’ve had a bad experience with magnetic wood flooring before, you’ll give us a chance to show you ours will work, just like our floors for underfloor heating always have.’

Concludes the company: ‘Using magnetic wood floors to replace adhesive as standard in workspace would make a huge difference to the environment over the next 20 years, not to mention enabling us to reuse and recycle thousands of square metres of wood and metal rather than them ending up in landfill. That’s got to be an ambition we can all share.’

01269 851910
commercial@broadleaftimber.com
www.broadleaftimber.com/magnetree