I looked at a floor this week that fits in with last week's comments. It was a nail-down 3/4" bamboo floor recently installed in a house a friend was trying to buy. And it was cupped. The moisture content with my bamboo-calibrated meter was low to below-low. (The meter says "Low" when it's below 6%. Lower than that I get no reading.) Humidity in the house was 29%, and 31% in the basement.
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I looked at a floor this week that fits in with last week's comments. It was a nail-down 3/4" bamboo floor recently installed in a house a friend was trying to buy. And it was cupped. The moisture content with my bamboo-calibrated meter was low to below-low. (The meter says "Low" when it's below 6%. Lower than that I get no reading.) Humidity in the house was 29%, and 31% in the basement.
The flooring even looked like it had actually distorted. It was an "engineered" product made up of two layers of strips about 7/8" wide. The strips were stacked on top of each other, then the double stack was glued side by side to make up a piece of flooring. So glue lines ran from the bottom of the board to the top. The boards had distorted such that the glue lines were visible. Here's a photo:
The installer was not a professional installer. The flooring came from a big box store, and he had followed instructions. In the end, the flooring got installed too dry. A gain of moisture to even low humidity conditions in this house had resulted in cupped and distorted flooring. I would have hated to see what happened to this floor in more humid seasons. The seller has agreed to redo the floor.
All Things Wood Floor, created by Wood Floor Business magazine, talks to interesting wood flooring pros to share knowledge, stories and tips on everything to do with wood flooring, from installation, sanding and finishing to business management.
