Timber flooring on the Northern Beaches

A house four hundred metres from the water behaves differently to one in the Frenchs Forest hinterland. The equilibrium moisture content the timber settles at is higher near the coast, and the seasonal swing is sharper. That is why we take meter readings on every job rather than working to a standard acclimatisation period — the same product, laid the same way, needs different handling in Avalon than it does in Belrose.

The other Beaches-specific issue is underneath. A great many homes here sit on suspended timber floors over sandy or damp ground, and over decades the subfloor vents get painted over, built over by a deck, or blocked when paving went in. That is the single most common cause of the cupped floorboards we get called to look at. Fixing the ventilation is often most of the repair.

The area is also unusually strata-dense in its coastal strip. Dee Why, Manly, Brookvale, Narrabeen and Collaroy carry a large stock of walk-up apartments where hard flooring is governed by an acoustic by-law, and where getting the approval right matters as much as getting the floor right.