If you have your wood flooring milled, shipped to your site, and placed indoors (non/ac or heat)
and DID not get it installed for a month or so what could happen?
Would it be better to store it in a/c? Keep it bundled until ready?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
I expecting my shipment and a snag has arisen and I will not be able to install immediately.
—————————————————————————–
WWPD
Replies
Your snag is good--you should not install immediately. Leave the material indoors, unbundled, and spread around for a couple of weeks prior to installation. Check the MC of the material and the subfloor with a moisture meter every few days until the two are within about 2% of each other. Flooring should be installed with interior conditions as close to normal as possible.
Thanks for the input David !!-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
WWPD
I'd sticker em'. To me,,,the longer the better...and in the rooms they're gonna go in.
" If you do not make it empty, how will you fill it up again?"
Neem Karoli Baba
Letting the material acclimate is definitely a good idea. I'd be careful about sticking them though especially if the wood is unfinished.
just my two cents...
BrianPittsburgh, PA
Edited 10/1/2006 11:58 am ET by ubc
If you sticker them, the stickers should be dry and, ideally, of the same species as the flooring to avoid cross-species staining.
What, you mean you haven't invested in a quantity of plastic stickers? Then you can use them with any species!
I have had good luck leaning flooring against the wall, arranged short to long. No stickers needed, no problems dealing with all the different lengths, easy to pull from as you lay it. Just make sure to lean it against the wall that you're not starting against.
Leaning them against the wall is fine but if you had as much wood as I did that would be a problem. And I wasn't getting to it for months. It was just in the way. Good idea on the plastic stickers not that I needed them in my case. If I was a wood flooring company though and did it every day it'd be a great idea!
Be well David
andy...Creation arises, is sustained for awhile, and then things change. That’s the dance.
I figure out how much goes in a room, and lean that much against the wall for a short while. If I had the patience and the stickers to stack a whole sh!tload of random length wood then I might do that, but the easy access to any length during install is a big plus.
Yeh, I agree. In my case here though....with the random widths as well as the lengths on the wide plank stuff I was using I needed to separate the widths as well. It did get a little confusing with an entire house full of that stuff. I didn't wanna use up more of one width than another and wanted to save the really wide cool planks for obvious areas. I needed to check it out as I went along.
I thought for sure that the wide plank flooring would be the easiest floor I ever put down yet little did I know it was BY FAR the most difficult for all kinda reasons. I can't even begin to imagine what I'd have to charge a customer...and to try and explain it all to them..whewww.
I never met a floor sanding company that wanted to do this kind of floor and now I know why. Pine is a serious bidtch!!!
I'll say this though...after living with it for a cpl of years. When people would say that the scratches, nicks and bumps give it character...its true. Most people that said that to me I KNOW were just talkin' shid cause they never ever lived with a floor like this. At least the people that said that to me. I do have to say though, from experience it really does get nice looking. Its always those first few scratches that irk you. Its not like a new car. LOL.
BTW...How's the island? I STILL keep thinking about moving there. Too bad there's no real tennis there for Katrina. Your island still intrigues the hell outta me and I still keep checking properties there on realtor.com.
Be well dude
andy...Creation arises, is sustained for awhile, and then things change. That’s the dance.
I don't know how long the pieces of flooring are, and I've never installed hardwood flooring, but having been around lots of wood in my time, I'd be wary of leaning it against the wall for storage. Long planks can easily bow enough to create a hassle during installation, especially if they are going to join together as tongue and groove.
Also, and I doubt this would be the case, if you are storing them in a room with an unfinished concrete slab, you are inviting water to wick up into the wood just like groundwater traveling up the roots of a tree.
Better safe than sorry, sticker them nice and flat, use the same species for stickers - or something harmless like plastic or rips of clean plywood. Justin Fink - FHB Editorial
Your Friendly Neighborhood Moderator
Yep...I agree. Thats how I stickered all mine. For the most part the wood came pretty dry already so...
I "was" afraid of the pieces of wood leaving marks so paranoid me cut up some of the same wood to sticker with and used them on the tippy ends and at the very edges in the center of the long pieces. No problems at all. whewwwwwww.
Also, I did sand everything so any little marks weren't an issue.
It's always sumpin' ain't it...lol?
Be well Notch
andy...Creation arises, is sustained for awhile, and then things change. That’s the dance.
Another thing; some species, like Brazilian Cherry, are pretty UV sensitive and, although sticker "shadows" would probably sanded off, care should be taken with the finished floor to move rugs and furniture and such on occasion to keep the toning even.
And you be well yourself!
i install about a floor a week as i¨m one of them piss poor flooring contractors..... and i always leave it inside the room im going to install for at least 48 hours, a week or two is better, a month is great. but i open the boxes but never spread the planks out cause then they tend to warp and bend and cause me PAIN installin g them
One time I had to install a floor in a couple weeks and the wood that arrived was all green (!) owing to my stupid ordering error.I stickered the lot in the middle of the workshop floor, got some panels of rigid insulation, duct taped them together to form an enclosure over the pile of wood, cut a hole at one end for a flue and a hole at the other end for a kerosene space heater with a blower. Amazingly, it worked like a charm.
Speaking of which, I had 500+ sq ft of solid 3/4" T&G maple (Bruce) that was pretty dry in the box. Unpacked and stickered in August in SE MN...then realized relative humidity was HIGHER than moisture content in the maple.
So I re-stickered in the small unfinished laundry room, sealed door with poly, and kept a de-humidifier running in there non-stop for a week and a half. Put floor down and have very minimul opening in winter and nice and tight with no buckling in the summer. And this over radiant heat sleepers with plates.