Flooring, Warehouse-Direct From Reservoir

Most flooring decisions get made from a photograph, and photographs are the worst way to choose a floor. Colour shifts under different light, and the thing that decides whether you like a floor — how it feels underfoot, how the grain reads up close, whether the sheen is right for your room — does not survive a screen.

Being close to the stock changes that. You can come and handle the boards, take samples home, look at them in your own light, and come back. That is a different process from ordering online and hoping.

It also changes what happens when something goes wrong. A supplier ten minutes away can look at a problem. One that shipped from another state cannot.

These are straight-line distances from our warehouse to the suburbs we work in most. Distance affects scheduling more than it affects price — we install across Victoria — but it does decide how easy collection is.

The corridor is not one kind of housing, and the flooring answer differs by which you have. These pages cover what each suburb's stock actually needs:

In-stock products can be collected from the day of purchase. For anyone in the northern suburbs that usually means a floor decided in the morning is in the house by the afternoon.

Collection carries no delivery charge, and a forklift is available for loading larger orders. Arrange your pickup with us in advance so the stock is picked and someone is free to load you.

There is no minimum order either. One box is fine — which matters more than it sounds if you are finishing a room or replacing damaged boards.

The corridor is not one kind of house, and the flooring answer differs by which one you have.

Post-war brick veneer through Reservoir, Preston and Thomastown usually means a timber subfloor on stumps, sometimes with particleboard sheeting over it. Those subfloors move, and they are the ones most likely to need levelling before a floating floor goes down. A thicker, more rigid board — AXEN 9mm rather than SILVA 7mm — is often the better choice over an older subfloor.

Newer townhouse and apartment development through Preston, Coburg, Brunswick and Northcote almost always means a concrete slab, and usually means a body corporate with an acoustic requirement. There, the attached IXPE underlay and the test documentation matter as much as the colour.

Renovated period homes in Northcote, Thornbury and Brunswick tend to be a mix — original boards in the front rooms and a slab in the extension — which means planning the transition and the height difference before ordering.

Anything above ground floor usually comes with an acoustic condition in the owners corporation rules, and the wrong floor is expensive to discover after installation.

Our hybrid and EVSPC ranges ship with high-density IXPE acoustic underlay bonded to the plank, which is what these rules are generally concerned with. Acoustic test reports for the hybrid ranges are available on request; for EVSPC, supporting technical documentation may be available to Square Flooring customers on request, where applicable.

Get the building's actual requirement in writing first, then ask us for the reports for the range you are considering so the two can be checked against each other. That is a ten-minute job before you order and a very expensive one afterwards.

We install across Victoria, and our installation service is available for flooring supplied by Square Flooring.

One company owning both the product and the workmanship means there is no argument about which one caused a problem. Installations carry a workmanship warranty separate from the manufacturer's product warranty.

Subfloor preparation, removal of existing floor coverings, waste removal, stairs, door trimming and scotia are quoted as separate lines rather than folded into a square-metre rate.

The warehouse is at Unit 48, 2 Cobham St, Reservoir VIC 3073, open Monday to Friday, with Saturday by appointment.

Free samples are available to everyone, so you can take colours home and look at them in the room before committing to anything.