Suntups Wooden Flooring

Suntups Wooden Flooring now established 20 years in solid wooden flooring now offer a range of 30 different floors hand picked by Steven Suntup. Steven is third generation in the timber business in South Africa. Even though all Stevens flooring is imported "Suntups" is a local South African Brand. All pictures on the Suntups website are of local South African jobs.

Steven "Suntups" range is distributed and fitted nationwide. Suntups floors have been used in projects in Seychelles, Mozambique and Angola and are currently busy negotiating a contract in the Caribbean. Suntups are the importers and distributors of the world patented installation system "Elastilon" this is a series of self adhesive permanent stick mats for installing of solid and engineered wooden floors. This mat is available in 27 countries and stops floor failures in their track, Visit Elastilon Website .

Occasionally we get people who ask us; "am I better off buying a solid or a Suntups
Super-Engineered™ wood floor?" Because of this, I have decided to add this section to
our site. Listed below is a cross section of a piece of both solid and a Suntups Super-
Engineered™wood floor. While a Suntups Super-Engineered™ only has the face above
the tongue in the solid exotic wood and the thickness below is made up of multi-ply
wood, the basic concept is the same.

In looking at these pictures, what's your first reaction? Like a lot of people, you probably
said to yourself, "the solid wood must be better because it's solid wood all the way
through". Well, guess what, you're not correct. Before I go into why, let me explain the
black line drawn on an angle on the picture of the solid wood. This represents where a
nail would be driven into the floor during installation. Now allow me to explain.
When comparing solid wood to a Suntups Super-Engineered™ wood floor, we tend to
think about re-sanding & sealing the floor years down the road. This of course is directly
related to the longevity of the flooring. Thinking about re-sanding the floor sometimes is
the reason we may be misled into believing that the solid floor is better or will absolutely
last longer. This is not so. Let's refer back to the pictures above. While there is no
question that the solid wood floor is all exotic wood, take a look at where the nail is.
When doing your resurfacing, maybe on the third or fourth resurfacing about 60 to 80
years from now, you are going to run into (literally) one of two things. It will be the nails
with the solid wood floor, or the plywood core on the engineered floor. So, with that
statement, now do you believe that the solid wood will really last longer? One can only
sand up until the top of the tongue on both floors anyway so there is actually no benefit
in the solid floor compared to a a Suntups Super-Engineered™ floor.

There are also other important factors to consider. A solid wood floor is usually less
stable than an engineered wood floor. When I say less stable, I am referring to natural
humidity changes from the dry season to the wet season and expansion & contraction
related to these humidity changes. During the change of seasons you get climate
changes in your home, which you absolutely will, wood flooring expands and contracts.
With solid wood flooring, it generally expands and contracts a lot more than a Suntups
Super-Engineered™wood floor, this can cause havoc or even failures with your flooring.
The Suntups Super-Engineered™wood flooring is constructed to be dimensionally
stable,in fact up to 70% more stable.

The Bottom line is that today the Suntups Super-Engineered™ floors are made with the
same thickness re-surface area as a solid, so if the thickness below the tongue is a ply or
solid wood it is still just thickness but with the ply you get stability and safety and 2/3rds
less exotic wood is wasted simply on thickness.

Steven is always available should you need to chat on 082 821 9899