Just How Hard is Hardwood Flooring?

Posted on October 15, 2012 by C. Vazquez

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.

New Condo Floors? Some Things to Consider

Posted on June 5, 2012 by C. Vazquez

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

Posted on May 7, 2012 by C. Vazquez

On August 13th, 2004 Hurricane Charley made landfall in Southwest Florida near Port 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 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.

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