The task: to fit a wooden floor in a new one-bedroom apartment. Not too difficult, you'd think. Until the first phone call. "Do you want a solid floor or a floating floor," asks the helpful salesman at Noyeks. "And what are you putting it on?"

"Er, concrete . . . we think," you say lamely. The conversation starts to go downhill as I grapple with the difference between solid and floating. It has to be laid on insulation, it's a condition of the sale. People have been sued for putting wooden floors into apartments because of the noise factor so it's vital to get this right.

"Okay," says the man from Noyeks. "Then you might need a Junckers floor unless you go for a semi-solid floor, 'cos it's the only kind that can be laid on foam."

"Foam?"

"The insulation," he explains patiently. "Usually, a solid wooden floor is nailed down, but if there's insulation, it has to float on it." We agreed that a trip to the Noyeks store in Ballymount Industrial Estate (bring your mobile phone in case you get lost looking for it) is in order.

In the meantime, hit the phones; you have to shop around after all. A friend suggests the House of Wood - they're expensive, but good, she reports.

By now, I knew that a semi-solid floor will cost around £30 a sq yd (make a mental note - double check sq yds and sq m. As someone who has major difficulties translating sq ft into sq yds into m sq, there's a constant danger of getting this wrong.) And Junckers, a brand name always mentioned with reverence by Those Who Know, could cost from around £40 a sq yd up to £60 and £70 a sq yd for top woods such as maple, ash and oak.

House of Wood specialises in another brand called Admont. The planks are about six inches in wide, and prices range from about £40 a sq m up to £90-plus a sq m. The helpful saleswoman at the other end of the phone says yes, it is suitable for either a floating floor, or for underfloor heating (we hadn't known we should worry about that), and it could take four to six weeks to supply.

The price to install a knotty maple floor at £62 a sq m in most of this 54 sq m apartment (that's about 550 sq ft) would be - gulp - around £4,051 for supply only, and very roughly, £4,981 for supply and fit. She points out that VAT on supply only is 21 per cent, while supply and fit is only 12 per cent. (This, we discover, is another vexed area, since most companies don't fit, but supply only.)

Next on the list to ring is the Brooks Group. A girl cheerfully announces that 2mm thick Alviol insulation at £1 a sq m would meet all building regulations and confirms that you have to get a floating floor if you're laying a solid wooden floor on top of insulation. She recommends getting a laminate or semi-solid floor for a low maintenance, cheaper and hassle-free solution, with dark warnings of how one party could destroy a floor.

Brooks also supplies Junckers. Solid wood such as beech, oak or ash would cost around £50 a sq m (depending on thickness), plus £18 a sq m to fit, plus VAT, bringing the total cost up to over £4,000.

Give Floortex a ring. They give me a range of prices for a floating floor, anywhere between £25 and £120 a sq m. "We do a Treadair underlay for insulation - 4mm to 5mm thick will cost £10 to £15 a sq yard."

A number of questions have to be, mmm, nailed down.

What's the difference between a semisolid and a solid wooden floor? If you decide that you want a solid floor on the basis that if you're going to get something, it should be the real thing, and not a lookalike and you have to put it on to insulation, is it absolutely definitely true that you are limited to just one or two brands?

Ring a number for Cronnan Hardwood, which is answered by a surprised but very helpful man, who says he isn't doing wooden floors at the moment, but believes there is a way around this business of insulation and solid wooden floors. It involves putting down cork, gluing plywood to it and then nailing floorboards to it. He recommends a Newry supplier called Murdoch for woods such as American beech, maple and birch, and a contractor who could do this job.

In the meantime, the people building the apartment are waiting for a decision on insulation, which they can put down. "You're required by building regulations to put down 6mm of Regipol," you're told. This will cost £7.51 a sq m, about £400 in all.

This seems reasonable. But we still want to know the facts about insulation and wooden floors in apartments, because all agree that they're noisy. So the next phone call is to the Department of the Environment construction section, where Pat O'Donnell explains that of course there's no simple answer. Technical Guidance Document E of the Building Regulations 1997, which governs sound insulation requirements in buildings, explains the basic concept that "a floor shall have reasonable resistance to airborne and impact sound". Six mm of insulation is considered "reasonable", he says, recommending a chat with Dublin Corporations's building control inspector, Leo Grehan.

The revelation here is how helpful both these public servants are: Leo Grehan confirms that 6mm has up to now been considered the standard insulation needed for apartments. The bottom line is that the insulation has to be a resilient layer of a certified material for a timber covered floor. Telephone Fiachra Mulholland in Moy Insulation, he suggests - they supply Regipol.

Supplied, but not fitted, this costs £4.90 a sq m, explains Fiachra Mulholland, who offers more information on the whole business of floating and nailed-down floors - still a concept a dull, untechnical brain is having difficulty coping with. And how much use is insulation anyway?

"Impact sound is high heels tapping across a floor, airborne sound is radios, talking; this kind of insulation deadens impact sound to a level of 17 decibels." But why not ring Noyeks, he suggests - they'll know about this, he tells me.

Full circle. The Noyeks salesman believes the business of insulation is debatable - he has seen 3mm insulation installed under wooden floors in some very posh developments and says you can put solid wood on top of insulation if you put plywood on top of the layer so you can nail it down unless, of course, it's a Junckers floor.

Is this where we came in? Yes, and there are further decisions ahead - if the skirting board is down already, what do you do? Would it be safe to put the wooden floor in the small galley kitchen? Should you include the bedroom?

Eh - what was wrong with carpet anyway?

Verdict: by cutting back on the area covered, it's possible to get the solid wooden floor for £2,000 to £3,000.