Replacing Carpet with Laminate

Q: My home is a double-home trailer and I want to remove my carpet and install laminate flooring. What do I need to install this floor on my trailer?
Hope you can help me. Thank you.
A: When selecting your floor, make sure that you are also selecting a good underlayment. Underlayment is just as important a choice, if not more important, than the floor you choose. Even the best laminate floors will feel and sound bad when installed over cheap underlayment. If you want your floor to sound and feel like a solid wood floor, get something like cork. If your concerned about the height of your floor, but still want it to sound and feel good, look into something like Sound 6. If you are installing over a wood subfloor, you will not need moisture barrier, but if the construction makes it fairly similar to a crawl space, then I would suggest using a moisture barrier as a good insurance policy to prevent moisture vapor from coming up under the floor and ruining it.
When it comes down to installation, here are a few tips. Once you remove the carpet, make sure to remove all tack strips, loose nails, tacks, screws etc to ensure that you are working with just the subfloor. At this point it is good to check for loose or noisy areas in your subfloor, if you find any, anchor them down with flooring screws, screwed into the joists. Once this is done, check to make sure your subfloor is level and flat. If leveling work needs to be done, make sure that the variance in height of your subfloor is no more than 1/32″. From here just make sure that the subfloor is flat and dry and you will be set to move on with your installation.
If you are using a moisture barrier, install it first and make sure you use a wide seam tape to ensure plenty of overlapping. From here, install your underlayment and then you can move onto getting the laminate itself into place. I would highly suggest picking up an install kit, as this will give you spacers, a tapping block and pull bar which are all essential to successful floating floor installs. Take your time during the install, spend extra time planning and making sure your measurements are good – remember, measure twice, cut once. Beyond this, pull planks from multiple boxes of flooring at a time so you can get a nicely varied look over your floor.