BEFORE
We did a big glue-down installation for a renovated store and they are wondering what kind of walk-off mats are OK to use on the wood floor. We have a lot of rain and snow in our area. What should I tell them?
Mike Dittmer, president at Michael Dittmer Wood Floors in Putnam, Ill., and NWFA Regional Instructor, answers:
I had an interesting situation with those mats on a job I did many years ago. We had glued down a rotary-veneer engineered floor that was common at that time in a local beauty salon with an 80-year-old slab. Of course, here in Illinois we also have a lot of moisture. Over the years we had repaired the area of the floor where the rubber walk-off mat is several times. We always figured there was just a lot of moisture getting to the floor from people walking in and out. But recently when we went back to repair it again, I noticed the bottom of the mat was wet but the top wasn't. It dawned on me what was really the problem: When we originally installed that floor we didn't have the moisture barrier products we have today to encapsulate moisture, and that rubber walk-off mat was trapping the moisture traveling up from the slab through the wood floor. Even though the slab was 80 years old, it was still absorbing moisture.
AFTER
RELATED: Clear Up Confusion About Wood Floor Maintenance
Walk-off mats are necessary in commercial facilities at all exterior doorways. If the walk off mat is not breathable, you will undoubtedly trap moisture and damage the floor. There are many quality walk-off mats available designed to allow the floor to breathe. That's what we ended up using in the beauty salon, since there was nothing I could do retroactively to control the moisture in that slab. I also refinished the entire floor using a charcoal color, which was a perfect color to disguise the deterioration under the rug (everybody thinks the owner bought a brand new floor!).
