Moisture meter: the easy way to avoid callbacks
Checking Moisture Conditions for Hardwood Flooring Installations
When installing hardwood floors, use a wood moisture meter like the TechScan Needleless Meter to check the moisture content (%MC) of the wood before installation. Pinless meters are especially good tools for checking %MC of hardwood floors because they can measure in these materials without leaving unsightly pinholes in them.
With a pinless meter, you simply press the scanning plate onto the sample material, take a reading, and repeat the process until you get enough readings from different samples of hardwood flooring to ensure the %MC is within the correct installation range.
Check subfloor
In addition to simply checking the moisture content of the hardwood flooring you are installing, you also need to check the moisture content of the sub-base that your hardwood flooring is installed on.
Why? Because, even if your top layer's %MC is good, building over a wet subfloor can still cause problems as excess moisture from one material will seep into the other.
For subfloors, the type of meter you use will vary based on the type of subfloor you have. For wooden subfloors, both pinless and pinless moisture meters are useful. Pinless meters are great for quickly assessing large areas of subfloor, while pin meters can help you pinpoint the depth of moisture pockets. In fact, many contractors use two types of meters when inspecting lumber.
Let Sure Wood adapt to the environment
When preparing to install wood flooring, it is important to ensure that the wood material you are using is properly tamed. Different regions of the United States have different ambient humidity levels, which in turn means that wood materials will reach their equilibrium moisture content (EMC) at different %MC by region.
Even within the same area, different buildings may have different humidity conditions because the building owners operate their HVAC systems in different environments. Therefore, it is important to acclimate wooden floors inside the building to the environment in the days before installation.
To check if your wood floor has reached the EMC for its construction condition, check the wood's %MC with a moisture meter every day for a few days. When moisture readings no longer fluctuate from one day to the next, your wood has reached an EMC environment and is ready for installation.
While adapting to wood, it is important to ensure that the HVAC system is running and using a setup that will be used for the day-to-day operation of the building once completed. This way you ensure that the wood is not exposed to a significantly different climate after installation as it absorbs or exudes moisture to reach equilibrium with its surroundings, potentially causing expansion or contraction.
By using a moisture meter to check that the wood and subfloor materials are properly adapted before installing hardwood floors, you can help ensure that you don't have to go through a time-consuming and expensive callback.
