Floor Sourcing Services
Home floor installation and maintenance

How moisture affects Flooring

2017-12-20

In our inspection, moisture is one of the most important test results (see Figure 1). However, moisture of flooring is not only concerning the flooring itself, but also involving the relative humidity of your house in using.


how to do a moisture test on a concrete floor


Figure 1. Flooring Moisture Test before Shipment


No matter how durable the flooring materials are, you also need periodic maintenance and a few special considerations for your floors to get the lifetime service. One of those special considerations is the relative humidity level.


Relative humidity is the amount of moisture in the air, and warm air holds more water vapor than cold air, so hot days are far more humid than cold days. And the ideal relative humidity level for your hardwood or bamboo flooring is between 40%-60%. Because wood and bamboo flooring are natural product that responds to humidity variations by expanding and contracting, both low and high humidity can wreak havoc on your floors. Almost every floor endures some expansion and contraction as seasons and humidity levels change, among all of the floor kinds, the flooring with artificial board core may be more obvious to be affected by humidity (see Figure 2 & Figure 3). In sweltering summers or frigid winter, you could use more attention on flooring maintenance.


hardwood flooring moisture content


Figure 2. Expansion Test of HDF Board



laminate flooring moisture test


Figure 3. Expansion Test Results


In our inspection, we found that during warm and humid summers when indoor humidity can rise up to 90% (depending on the geographical locations), your floors will absorb moisture undoubtedly. Even just a few days of exposure to high humidity can cause flooring to cup, warp or swell.


When the weather turns cold, if the relative humidity suddenly dips below the recommended range, your floors may shrink as moisture is pulled out. This may causes gaps between the boards, especially on solid wood floors. Normally, we consider it is acceptable if the width of gap is below 2mm. But It may led to splintering or splitting along the grain if you keep on ignoring the gap, and in many cases, it can damage the finish (see Figure 4).


Moisture Content Of Wood Flooring


Figure 4. Finish crack after expansion and shrinkage


While both high humidity and low humidity are bad for your floors, what ends up causing the worst damage in the long run are the drastic changes in humidity from one season to the next. Maintaining stable humidity in your home year-round is crucial for protecting your floors.



About Us

Global ZX Floor Doctor Limited Professional China Floor Inspector We focus on floor inspection only! After high school, Peter Zhang (President of Global ZX Floor Doctor Limited) directly went into foreign trade for 5 years. This trade normally has nothing to do with the inspection work, but it led to his first connection with import/export business, and made him know clearly about the different desires of international buyer and seller. From 1995, Peter started to run flooring export business of his own in China, called “New Century company”. The export volume of this company was in the top three of local area since 2003. This experience also introduced many important friends with sparkling ideas to us. And in 2012, our factory “VGreen flooring” was first founded. In this capacity, our team not only saw how flooring was made but also many manufacturing defects, which are crucial to the flooring buyers and the final use of terminal consumer. With sense of responsibility, the thought of “find a way to help foreign buyers reduce import risks” was inspired among us. A reliable friend of Peter, whom own his flooring wholesale mall in Russia called Michael suggested, “a professional inspector or quality control manager in China locally is what I am looking forward to, that may ease burden and save my time.” This great idea is quite a proper answer and very specific to our long-time preoccupation----all clouds were dispelled, thus Global ZX Floor Doctor Limited Company (A.K.A. CFI) is ready to be born. As an independent third-party, we chose Hongkong, a neutral and open city, as our basement to offer the international flooring services. Over the past 20 years worked in flooring field, the crew  have learned deeply inside the China flooring Industry and maintained communications with hundreds of Chinese floor factories and suppliers that involving various kinds of flooring, such as bamboo, hardwood, laminate, engineered, WPC, SPC, etc. With advanced management system, professional training and long-term contact with Chinese flooring suppliers, the team of Global ZX Floor Doctor is mainly specialized in “flooring inspection of origin” and “flooring field advisor”. With efforts of more than 20 professional Project Managers, our services of inspection and advisor are available for flooring importers, distributors, contractors, architects all over the world; or anyone on the globe concerning a flooring import business with China. CFI SPECIALIZES IN FLOORING INSPECTION CFI inspectors will examine the floor factory, carry out your order specifications, inspect random units and identify defects. You are in control of the whole processes through our constantly updated reports on quality and producing progress. Onsite Monitoring CFI personnel are available to monitor production at your floor supplier factory to ensure all customer requests of quality are full satisfied. Customized floor Inspection Options CFI strictly assist in customized inspection criteria to meet your special requirements. Detailed Inspection Report CFI personnel will submit detailed flooring inspection report on specification and models, assembled appearance, T&G deformity, color variation, moisture content, coating adhesion etc.. Various floor styles inspection We can handle most types of flooring: Bamboo floor, Hardwood floor, Laminate floor, Engineered floor, Outdoor Decking, WPC floor, LVT, Cork and floor accessories.

Global ZX Floor Doctor China Floor Inspection
Along with the increasing global trade needs, and supply chains get more and more complex. Floor buyers of brands, retailers and importers are urgently need to strengthen the communication with their manufacturer around the globe. Our target on Flooring Inspection is to make this process much more easier for our clients to control over the quality and seize more latest information of China flooring industry by our services. CFI would like to be your eyes in China floor factories, we do hope to be your best valuable partner in Flooring Industry of China.

Tags

Quick contact

OUR

NEWSLETTER

   

A free consultation

We focus on floor inspections only, we try to help you to solve all the questions in flooring line.