Category Archives: Hardwood

Just How Hard is Hardwood Flooring?

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The actual hardness of hardwood flooring is a very important feature to consider. The durability of a hardwood floor primarily determined by it’s degree of hardness. Now, while all hardwood flooring is “hard,” the fact is that there are degrees of hard. Will your choice be hard enough to deal with the high-traffic areas of your home? Will your hardwood flooring cope appropriately with moving furniture and the pitter-patter of little (and no-so-little) dog and kitty feet?

Image by Nasa-verve via Wikimedia Commons

Hardwood flooring’s hardness is determined using a procedure called the Janka Hardness Test. The test measures the hardness of a given piece of hardwood flooring by carefully quantifying the force needed to embed a .444-inch steel ball to a depth of half its own diameter, or .222 of an inch. The measurement is given in something called pounds-force (lbf). Here are some numbers so you can wrap your head around it:

  • Brazilian Walnut – 3684
  • Mesquite – 2345
  • Birch – 1470
  • Red Oak – 1290
  • Walnut – 1010
  • Balsa – 100

As the numbers above suggest, balsa is not one of the more popular hardwood flooring varieties! And, while these numbers provide a good baseline for a floor’s durability, other factors such as finish and construction (All hardwood floors installed in Florida need to be engineered floors.) Must be taken into account to determine a specific hardwood flooring’s wear characteristics. One of our award-winning representatives can help you make an informed choice.

Continuing Education Is Key to Doing Great Work

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Training Session on Karastan's line of area rugs. Yeager Flooring is Tampa Bay's only Karastan shop-at-home dealer.

Our first training session on Karastan’s line of area rugs. Yeager Flooring is Tampa Bay’s only Karastan carpet and rug shop-at-home dealer.

Like any field of endeavor, there are constant improvements in the fields of flooring and home remodeling. New technology, materials and techniques are continuously being introduced. Many of these novel processes and products promise new efficiencies and solutions to persistent issues of the trade. That’s why continuing education is as important in the flooring industry as in any other.

Just in the past few weeks we’ve had training sessions with representatives from Stauf USA, Quick Step, NuStair, Karastan, and Adore Touch.

A training session by Stauf USA at Yeager Flooring

Stauf USA trained our sales staff and installers on how to apply their newest sealers and adhesives.

Stauf showed us a new line of revolutionary floor sealers and adhesives that will go along way to protecting a customer’s investment in wood or laminate in our moist Florida climate.

NuStair brought us their new patented staircase refinishing system. It promises to save time and hassle when revamping your stairs, from treads to balustrade.

Qucik Step Training at Yeager Flooring

Quick Step educated us on the finer points of laminate flooring construction.

Quick Step introduced us to their latest advancements in laminate construction and showed us the new styles and finishes these allow.

Karastan came by to train us on their selection of area rugs. Yeager Flooring has been a Karastan “broadloom” (wall-to-wall carpeting) dealer for many years, and now we’re a Karastan rug dealer as well.

Adore Touch impressed us with their new line of luxury vinyl tile (LVT). Forget what you think you know about vinyl; Adore’s line of versatile LVT gives you more flooring options for high-traffic, high-moisture environments.

Adore Touch LVT Training at Yeager Flooring

Adore Touch brought out their newest styles and finishes.

Coming up next week we’ll have representatives from Shaw here to bring us up-to-speed on their product line.

Continuing education is just that: ongoing and continuous. It’s the only way to make sure Yeager Flooring stays at the forefront of our industry.

 

New Condo Floors? Some Things to Consider

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A beautiful luxury penthouse in Downtown St. Petersburg floored and decorated by Yeager Flooring.

Condo living is as popular as ever in the Sunshine State, with luxury developments  crowding coastlines from Miami to Jacksonville and Palm Beach to Pinellas. With the depressed real estate prices of the past few years, many homeowners—particularly “empty nesters”—have taken the plunge.

I’ve you’ve lept from a single-family home to de-luxe apartment in the sky, then you’re probably among the many condo-dwellers looking to personalize your space by upgrading your condo floors. Like many other aspects of condo life, installing your new condo floors is a little different when your floor is someone else’s ceiling.

If you’re installing carpet, then you’re home free—it’s just like installing carpet in any home. But, for today’s more popular flooring choices like hardwood and laminate, some special procedures must be followed.

Florida building codes maintain a set of requirements that must be followed when replacing existing condo floors with hardwood or laminate, and these requirements deal mostly with noise abatement. State of Florida Building Code sec. 1207.3 lays out the law when it comes to how much sound can make it’s way through to the unit below from the one above:

Structure-borne sound: Floor/ceiling assemblies between dwelling units or between a dwelling unit and a public or service area within the structure shall have an impact insulation class (IIC) rating of not less than 50 (45 if field tested) when tested in accordance with ASTM E 492.

Got that? No? That’s okay, because we do. When installing hardwood or laminate in these circumstances we use DriTac 1001 All-in-One Green Urethane Adhesive Concrete Moisture Control, Sound Control System and Crack Suppressant (admittedly, quite a mouthful). It makes what used to be a multi-stage process and turns it into one simple step, and exceeds the specifications of the Florida building code.

So, short of staging a tap-dance recital in your living room, you and your downstairs neighbor need not have a an angry word. Who needs that?

Solid Hardwood Flooring and Florida: Not A Good Combination

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On August 13th, 2004 Hurricane Charley made landfall in Southwest Florida near PortHurricane Charley caused billions of dollars in damage to solid hardwood flooring all over fForida. Charlotte with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph. It was the strongest hurricane to hit the United States since the infamous Andrew in 1992. It cut a large swath of devastation through the counties of Charlotte, Sarasota, Desoto, Hardee and beyond. As little as 2 hours before landfall, the forecast radically changed from a 110 mph storm targeting the Tampa Bay area to a 145 mph tempest coming ashore much further south. The Pinellas-Hillsbrough-Pasco tri-county area was spared a direct hit from a very dangerous storm.

All told, Charlie did $15.1 billion in damage. While most of that happened near the area of landfall, some of it happened right in our neck of the woods, and in a most unexpected way.

The quiet community of Cobb’s Landing—a residential subdivision in Palm Harbor, FL—took quite a hit. Not that you could tell from the sidewalks. “I saw, in that one community alone, over one million dollars in damaged solid hardwood flooring.” Yeager Flooring’s Jim Yeager remembers. “Just because the power went out, the air conditioners shut off, and the floor boards warped due to of all the humidity in the air.”

While solid hardwood flooring is a great choice for homes in most parts of the country, it is a very bad idea to install it in Florida and, indeed, anywhere along the Gulf Coast from Mobile to Galveston. Under adverse conditions—like high humidity—solid hardwood floors can warp, cup, swell, or split apart. Fortunately, engineered hardwood floors work just fine in our sometimes soupy climate.

Engineered hardwood flooring features a hardwood veneer over a multiple-ply plank.

Engineered hardwood flooring features a hardwood veneer over a multiple-ply plank.

Engineered hardwood flooring overcomes these issues by layering a finished hardwood veneer over a multiple-ply plank. This counteracts twisting and curving and remains flat and intact. This makes engineered hardwood flooring appropriate for installation over radiant heat sources, over concrete—whether it’s below grade or above—and in rainy, humid climates.

We’d be truly remiss if we installed solid hardwood flooring in this climate. So we just don’t do it. Quality engineered hardwood adds as much equity to your home ($12 per square foot) as solid does, and they can be sanded and refinished as well.

Hardwood Floor Maintenance Questions from Hardwood Floors Magazine

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Q: Can I use one of those steam cleaners advertised on TV on my wood floor?
A: Everyone has seen the commercials showing a steam cleaner magically sanitizing, disinfecting, deodorizing, and cleaning a wood floor. But that doesn’t mean that wood flooring manufacturers or finish manufacturers think steam cleaners are appropriate for hardwood floor maintenance; in fact, some have begun to specifically mention steam cleaners in their list of don’ts. Inspectors are also starting to come across floors that appear to have been destroyed by repeated steam cleaner use. Peeling finish, whitening finish and cloudy finish are just some of the side effects being reported by people looking at floors after steam cleaning. In general, the oft-repeated industry saying “Water and wood don’t mix” holds true. Unless the wood flooring or finish manufacturer says it’s OK, it’s safest to assume steam cleaning is a no-no on a wood floor.Bona products are some of the best for hardwood flooring maintenance.

Q: I read that a good wood floor cleaner is vinegar with water. Is that okay?
A: Vinegar and water used to be a typical recommendation for cleaning wood floors with a urethane type of finish. These days, however, most manufacturers recommend cleaners that are specifically formulated for wood floor finishes; in fact, vinegar is acidic, and using too much could damage the finish. People who insist on still using vinegar should use plain vinegar—not apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar or any other type, which could leave a sticky residue on the floor.

Q: I keep hearing that I should find out which maintenance products are recommended by the finish manufacturer, but I have no Idea whose finish is on our wood floors. What should I use?
A. The vast majority of wood floors around today, whether they were finished on-site or are factory-finished, have some sort of urethane-type finish. For those finishes, a cleaner recommended by any major wood floor finish or wood floor manufacturer should be just fine. A safe bet is to stop by a local wood flooring retailer and find out what they recommend and sell for use on wood floors. Not all maintenance products that are labeled for use on wood floors are recommended by major finish and wood flooring manufacturers. (In fact, some may even void your floor’s warranty.) For one reason, see below.
(Yeager Flooring recommends Bona Floor Cleaning Products)

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