How dry times affect your timber flooring
Mint Floors & Shutters has some great advice on how to care for your timber floors in dry times.
Bushfires and hot dry weather we are experiencing lately can bring some surprises, changing your floor… Timber floorboards will usually shrink in width leaving some noticeable and maybe even some odd squeaks. It’s wise to know what to expect and how to minimize the weather effects.
Mint Floors main advice is:
- Fill sinks or buckets with water and leave sitting in the room. The moisture will evaporate into air and increase humidity in air.
- Mop floors regularly with damp mop.
- Indoors plants and fish tanks add to humidity.
- Using clothes dryer machine with laundry window closed and door open to rest of home, this will put moisture into the air.
- Pray for more rain. Or do a rain dance.
The gaps will close once more humid/wet and rainy conditions return. Some more factual details below regarding humidity and temps recorded by the bureau of meteorology:
- June averages are a max of 17.7 and minimum of 5.1. 2013 average was high of 17.8 and low of 8.5
- July averages are a max of 17.2 and minimum of 5.1. 2013 was average high of 19 and low of 5.6
- August averages are a max of 18.9 and low of 6. 2013 was average high of 21.1 and low of 6.4
- The average Rainfall for July is 44mm and this year we had 11mm. August average is 47mm and
we had 9.8mm. - The average Humidity for August is 76% at 9am and 44% at 3pm. 2013 averages for August were 57% at 9am and 33% at 3pm!!
As we all know September and October have been worse still!
If you experiencing something like these effect on your floor, don’t fear, the weather conditions are sure to change one day soon.
If you would like more technical details, please download the technical info sheet from ATFA (the Australian Timber Flooring Association) below.
CLICK HERE for technical Info Sheet
CLICK HERE for Gap minimisation in hot dry weather info sheet
If you have any other concerns, questions or need a flooring repair, please contact us.
Mint Floors and Shutters Team.
