Avoiding Flooring Problems: Controlling Humidity Levels in Your Home

As a natural product, hardwood floors react to temperatures and humidity levels in your home. For example, when the humidity level in your home is high, wood flooring expands. Conversely, when humidity levels fall, a home’s flooring contracts.

This sequence of expanding and contracting can cause needless and detrimental wear and tear to wood floors over time if the humidity levels are extreme enough. There are strategies that can and should be implemented to attend to the matter of rising and lowering humidity levels in a home to extend the life and shine of hardwood floors.

Install Humidity Controls Before Placing Hardwood Floors

If the plan is to install hardwood floors, be preemptive when it comes to increasing and reducing humidity levels. Before hardwood floors are installed, have a humidity control system added.

This type of system is allows for constant and dependable control over shifting humidity levels. Once the system is programmed, the work is done for homeowners.

Ideal humidity levels are between 40 and 60 percent; hardwood flooring can be impacted adversely if it strays beyond this zone.

Regulating Humidity During Winter

During winter, particularly when the furnace runs, humidity levels fall, which causes the wood to contract, which may produce spaces between hardwood floor planks.

If humidity control system is not installed, consider placing a portable humidifier in the room or rooms with hardwood flooring.

Managing Humidity in Summer

In summer, humidity levels can increase significantly inside a home, which causes the wood to swell, possibly resulting in planking. If this continues, the wood planks that make up a wood floor can lose their integrity and become damaged permanently.

Floor Cupping

Cupping, which occurs when hardwood floors bow up, is a critical issue homeowners may face with hardwood floors when homes have humidity issues. Cupping may also be the result of a plumbing leak, usually in the basement under the floor. In most cases, cupping corrects itself when the source of the moisture, a leak or humidity issue, is corrected.

If cupping is substantial, additional work, such as sanding and refinishing, may required to restore the floor to its original condition. The floor must be totally dry before the restorative process can begin.

Exotic vs. Domestic Wood Flooring

Keep in mind that some exotic types of wood flooring are more vulnerable to cupping and other problems associated with variable humidity levels. Domestic woods tend to be less inclined to experience substantial problems associated with humidity fluctuations.

Your Health and Humidity

In addition to a regulated humidity level being good for wood floors, a constant humidity level is considered to improve the health of those that reside in the home, including reducing the occurrence of lung related issues and other illnesses like the cold and flu.

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