Few things will ruin your day than coming home to find your brand new wood floor buckled and broken off your floor. Regretfully, the only cause for it is moisture, and it didn’t come from installation, unless of course, the installer didn’t place enough expansion space between the wall and the wood.
Water comes from many areas, and few people even think about it until it becomes a problem. Unfortunately, by that time, it is too late. They should have planned ahead. A professional hardwood reseller knows how to look for problems before they become issues. I’ll give you a personal example from yesterday.
I had a customer who came to my store to purchase hardwood, and she knew what she wanted before she visited me. She had hardwood installed by us over ten years ago, and she wanted to match the product. I happened to recognize the product on the floor immediately and was able to satisfy her product requirements immediately. After conducting a measure and estimate, she was satisfied with the price and wanted to move forward. Now, I told her that I needed to do a moisture test prior to completing the work, but mind you, most people take a look at the two existing rooms with wood and decide that since no issues happened with the existing wood, what could possibly happen? HA!
I took my moisture meter to the home, picked a corner of the room on an exterior wall, pulled the carpet back to expose the concrete, and immediately saw a problem. Not only was the concrete visibly wet, underneath the carpet and pad, but the tackstrip was black and rotten. Needless to say, it pegged my meter. I found the same situation on the back exterior wall in another room, but not nearly as bad.
Hardwood is not for the faint hearted, and neither is it for the inexperienced. I had to find the source because believe it or not, I’d still like to give the customer what they want: hardwood in all rooms. A quick look around the house revealed several things to me: landscape mulch piled against the house, sprinklers hitting the home, no gutters, poor drainage, and the list goes on.
By doing this simple inspection, I found some good information for the customer. Regardless of what she does with me and my hardwood product, she needs to fix her problem lest she find bigger ones later on: rotten walls, termites, etc…
I am glad I know what I know, but I am not happy with how I had to learn sometimes. I made many mistakes, but I swore not to let them happen again. If you are interested in hardwood in your home, take a look at your home to ensure you are not welcoming moisture indoors: affix gutters to your roof with downspouts leading several feet away from the home, ensure the ground slopes away from the home and the foundation is clearly above ground level, look for visible signs of moisture damage inside the house around baseboards, and hire a professional to check the moisture in your subfloor. It will save you an arm and a leg…
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