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Flooring Company In Orlando, FL
Global Arch Construction installs hardwood, laminate, vinyl plank, LVP, epoxy and floor coatings for homeowners across Orlando and Orange County. Almost every job we quote starts in the same place: the concrete underneath.
That part rarely comes up when you’re shopping for floors. Orlando is slab-on-grade country. Your subfloor is a concrete pad poured on Florida sand, and it pushes water vapor up through itself all year. Summer dew points here sit in the low seventies for months at a stretch. Put a floor over a slab nobody tested and you get cupped planks, popped seams, and a warranty claim the manufacturer will deny, because nearly every flooring warranty in the country requires a documented moisture test first.
We run an in-situ relative humidity probe on the slab before we order material. It takes 72 hours and it’s the cheapest insurance on the whole job.
Services
Flooring Services We Install In Orlando
Six services cover almost everything homeowners call us about. If your project mixes two or three of them, that’s normal, and we price it as one job rather than three.
Hardwood Flooring Installation In Orlando, FL
Real wood in a Florida house is a moisture problem before it’s a design choice. Solid hardwood moves with the seasons, so over a slab it needs a plywood subfloor fastened down first, which raises your floor height and usually means shaving doors. Engineered hardwood has a plywood or HDF core that moves far less, and it glues straight to the slab with a moisture-blocking adhesive. For most Orlando homes we recommend engineered, and we say so even though solid costs us more.
Whatever you pick, the wood sits in the room for three to five days before we touch it so it can reach the same humidity as the house. We also refinish existing hardwood: sanding, staining, and either an oil-modified or waterborne polyurethane finish depending on how fast you need the room back.
Species we work with most often here are white oak, red oak, hickory and acacia. White oak is the one that keeps its color under Florida sun better than the rest.
Laminate Flooring Installation In Orlando, FL
Laminate is the value pick. A modern AC4 or AC5 wear layer scratches far less than the laminate people remember from twenty years ago, and the printed surfaces have gotten good enough that most guests won’t know until they look at the edge of a plank.
The catch in Florida is the core. Standard laminate uses HDF, which is wood fiber, and wood fiber swells when it gets wet. Water-resistant laminate handles a spill you wipe up. It won’t survive a dishwasher hose letting go while you’re at work. We install laminate in bedrooms, living rooms, hallways and offices without hesitation. For kitchens, laundry rooms and bathrooms we push people toward vinyl plank instead, and we’d rather lose that upsell than replace your floor in three years.
Every laminate install gets a 6 mil vapor barrier over the slab, an acoustic underlayment, and a quarter inch expansion gap at every wall and vertical obstruction. Skipping that gap is the most common reason a floating floor buckles.
Vinyl And LVP Flooring Installation In Orlando, FL
Luxury vinyl plank is what we install more than anything else, and for Central Florida that’s the right answer. An SPC core is limestone composite. It’s waterproof, it doesn’t swell, and it barely reacts to temperature swings, which means it’ll work in a lanai conversion or a Kissimmee rental that sits empty with the AC at 80 degrees between guests.
There are three install methods and your slab picks which one. Floating click-lock is fastest and easiest to repair. Glue-down is what we use in large open spans and in rentals, because it won’t shift and it feels more solid underfoot. Loose-lay works over a slab too uneven to float on cleanly.
The thing that separates a good LVP job from a bad one is flatness. Vinyl is thin and it telegraphs everything under it. Manufacturers spec 3/16 inch of variation over 10 feet, and very few Orlando slabs meet that out of the box. We grind the high spots and pour self-leveler in the low ones before a single plank goes down.
Epoxy Flooring In Orlando, FL
Garage floors, workshops, patios, storage rooms and small commercial spaces. A flake or metallic epoxy system turns a dusty slab into something you can hose off. It also stops the concrete shedding grit into the house every time someone walks through the garage door.
Prep decides whether it lasts. We diamond grind the slab down to open concrete rather than acid etching it. Acid etching is faster and cheaper, and it’s why so many Orlando garage floors are peeling in sheets after two summers. Grinding gives the coating a mechanical profile to bite into, and it lets us find the cracks and spalls that were hiding under the old surface.
Standard buildup is a moisture-tolerant primer, a pigmented epoxy base, broadcast vinyl flake, then a clear topcoat. You can drive on it in about 24 hours with a polyaspartic top, or 72 with a straight epoxy.
Floor Coating In Orlando, FL
Floor coating covers the systems that aren’t epoxy: polyaspartic, polyurethane, densifiers, penetrating sealers and moisture mitigation membranes. These come up on driveways, pool decks, lanais, warehouse floors and any slab reading too high on a moisture test to take a normal floor.
Polyaspartic is the one worth knowing about here. It cures in hours instead of days, it holds its color under UV, and it doesn’t soften and grab tire tread the way cheap epoxy does when your garage hits 100 degrees in July. It costs more per square foot, no way around that. On a west-facing garage or an exposed lanai, it’s worth it.
If your slab tested above the manufacturer limit, a moisture mitigation coating is the fix. It’s a two-part epoxy membrane that seals vapor in the slab so your finish floor can go down with the warranty intact.
Floor Removal And Subfloor Prep
Old floors have to come out before new ones go in, and this is where the surprises live. Ceramic tile set in thinset over a slab is slow, loud, dusty work, and we use dustless grinders and containment so the house stays livable while it happens. Carpet and pad come out fast. Glued-down vinyl from the 1970s gets tested before anyone touches it, because sheet vinyl and adhesive from that era can contain asbestos.
Once the slab is bare we grind, patch, self-level and moisture test. We quote this separately so you can see what the prep actually involves instead of finding it buried in a per-square-foot number.
Material selection
Which Floor Belongs In Which Room
People usually arrive with one material in mind for the whole house. In Florida that’s rarely the right call, because the rooms behave differently.
Bedrooms and living rooms take anything. That’s where hardwood earns its money, and where laminate makes the most sense if the budget is tight. Kitchens and laundry rooms go to vinyl plank, every time, because those are the rooms where a slow leak sits under a cabinet toe kick for a week before anybody notices. Bathrooms are vinyl plank or tile. Garages, workshops and lanais get epoxy or a polyaspartic coating rather than any kind of plank.
Second floors have their own rule. Sound travels through a hard surface floor in a way it never did through carpet, so anything going upstairs gets an acoustic underlayment whether the HOA requires one or not. You’ll notice the difference the first time someone walks across it at six in the morning.
What goes wrong
Three Things That Ruin Floors In Central Florida
These are the failures we get called out to fix, and they’re nearly always preventable.
Slab Moisture Nobody Checked
Concrete that reads above 80 percent relative humidity on an ASTM F2170 probe will push vapor into an adhesive until the bond gives up. You’ll see it as edge curling on vinyl, or dark staining under wood, usually six to eighteen months after install. Testing costs almost nothing next to a replacement.
The AC Turned Off In An Empty House
Vacation rentals and second homes around Kissimmee and Davenport sit empty with the thermostat pushed up to save money. Indoor humidity climbs past 65 percent, wood absorbs it, planks cup. If the property sits vacant, keep the AC at 78 or below and put a humidistat on it.
HOA Sound Rules Found Out About Too Late
Most Orlando condo associations require a minimum impact insulation class rating, commonly IIC 50 or higher, for any hard surface floor above the ground unit. People find out after the floor is down and a neighbor starts complaining. Pull your association documents before you order material and we’ll spec an underlayment that meets the number.
Process
How The Job Runs
- We come out and measure, look at the slab, and talk about how the rooms actually get used. Usually about 45 minutes.
- You get a written estimate with material, labor, tear-out and prep on separate lines.
- We set moisture probes in the slab and leave them 72 hours.
- Material is ordered and acclimates in the house for three to five days.
- Old flooring comes out, slab gets ground, patched and leveled.
- Install, then trim, transitions and baseboard.
- We walk the whole floor with you before anything gets invoiced.
Service area
Areas We Serve
Our office is at 9640 Sidney Hayes Rd Ste 777, Orlando, FL 32824, just south of the airport near the Taft area. We work across the Orlando metro, generally within about 30 miles.
Orlando, Winter Park, Lake Nona, Dr. Phillips, Windermere, Winter Garden, Ocoee, Apopka, Altamonte Springs, Maitland, Oviedo, Casselberry, Longwood, Kissimmee, St. Cloud, Celebration, Hunter’s Creek, Conway, Baldwin Park, College Park and Avalon Park.
If you’re outside that ring, call anyway. We take work further out when the schedule allows.
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Related Services
Tile installation for bathrooms, showers and backsplashes
Remodeling services when the floor is part of a larger project
Water damage restoration if a leak got to your floor first
Custom cabinets, usually installed before flooring in a kitchen
FAQ
Flooring Questions We Get Asked
What Flooring Holds Up Best In Florida Humidity?
Waterproof luxury vinyl plank with an SPC core handles Central Florida humidity better than anything else in its price range, because the core doesn’t swell when it gets wet. Tile and properly sealed engineered hardwood also do well. Solid hardwood and standard laminate can work here, but only over a slab that’s been moisture tested and sealed first.
Can You Install Hardwood Floors On A Concrete Slab In Orlando?
Yes, and most Orlando homes are slab-on-grade so this is the normal situation. Engineered hardwood glues directly to the slab with a moisture-blocking adhesive, or floats over an underlayment. Solid hardwood needs a plywood subfloor fastened to the slab first. Either way, the slab gets moisture tested before anything goes down.
Do I Need A Permit To Replace Flooring In Orange County, FL?
A straight floor covering swap normally doesn’t require a permit. You do need one if the job involves structural subfloor repair, moving walls, or changing plumbing. Condo and HOA rules are separate from building permits and often require a specific sound underlayment, so check your association documents before ordering material.
How Long Does A Flooring Installation Take?
A single room is usually one day. A typical 1,500 to 2,000 square foot Orlando home takes three to five working days for vinyl plank or laminate, and four to seven for hardwood. Add a day or two if we’re removing old ceramic tile, and add drying time if the slab needs self-leveler or a moisture mitigation coat.
Is Epoxy Or Polyaspartic Better For An Orlando Garage Floor?
Polyaspartic cures faster, resists yellowing from UV, and tolerates hot tires better, which matters in a Florida garage that hits 100 degrees by mid afternoon. Epoxy is thicker and costs less. Most of our garage jobs use an epoxy base coat with a polyaspartic top coat, which gets you the build of one and the durability of the other.
Which Rooms Should Not Get Laminate In A Florida Home?
Kitchens, laundry rooms, bathrooms and any room opening onto a pool deck. Standard laminate uses an HDF core, which is wood fiber, and wood fiber swells once water sits on a seam long enough. Waterproof luxury vinyl plank is the better choice in those rooms and looks close enough that most people can’t tell the difference.
Do You Offer Free Flooring Estimates In Orlando?
Yes. We measure on site, check the slab, and give you a written estimate with material, labor, tear-out and prep listed separately so you can see what you’re paying for. No charge and no obligation.
Get started
Talk To A Flooring Contractor In Orlando
Tell us which rooms you’re doing and roughly when you want it done. We’ll come measure, test the slab, and send you a real number.
Global Arch Construction