Caring for wooden flooring - The Do's and Don'ts

1. Caring for wooden flooring “the do’s and don’ts”

2. If you have a wooden floor or you are going to purchase one, it is vital that some aspects are taken into account to give the floor a long life. It may sound strange but a wooden floor can be spoiled in weeks if you want to. Let us look at some basic parameters how to handle a wooden floor. These four points give you the basic ideas and the background why this is important. 1. Inside humidity. 2. protect the legs or moving parts on the floor. 3. Prevent debris, sand to come on the floor. 4. How to handle the coating.

3. (1) Inside humidity Wood is dried to be in balance for an indoor humidity as this is call a normal living condition. This normal condition is restrict in the relative humidity range: 45-65%. If we keep wood more than 3 days under or above these value the moisture balance start to adjust to the wrong values and this will trigger working of wood like, shrinking, expanding, cupping, twisting or even splits. In case of engineered wood, a high tension in the product with the risk of delamination here we can really spoil a floor in a short time.

4. Most people think that temperature is the critical parameter, but mainly humidity is. For sure, temperature and humidity are connect, low temperature will give a higher moisture while frost will drop the humidity quite severe and temperatures above 35 degree will drop humidity. Fact is that the main amount of damp in the air is what causes wood to work.

5. (2) protect the legs or moving parts on the floor. It seems an open door, use floor glides, most of them, felt patches with a sticky glue on one side. Easy to put under the legs of a chair, but put them on all furniture that can move. It is not ok if wood, steel or polymer parts are just move without any protection and be in open contact with wood. This can lead to severe scratches, that is not only because of the surface of the furniture but indirect, these furniture parts can pick up hard debris and than will be squeeze between the leg and the floor and can show a nasty scratch or multiple scratches.

6. Than every week one have to clean these patches as these are great materials to capture all kind of debris and than they turn into mini sandpaper and you might know what sandpaper does to wood and the coating on top of it.

7. (3) Prevent debris, sand to come on the floor. The idea here is to protect sand and hard debris to come from outside to the wooden floor. For this the market has dry running mat in different colors and sizes. A great material to clean your shoes in or to keep them. As hard debris and sand will works like sandpaper if it stays on the floor and people walk in it or the small particles come between moving furniture that stand on the floor. In case you walk with shoes on the floor, be careful that the shoe profile not keep small stones or sand in the profiles as this can make serious damage to wood.

8. (4) How to handle the coating The goal is to keep a coating in a good condition as if the floor looks still new. For sure the above points will prevent damage but one have to life on a floor. Living goes hand in hand with resistance towards the coating, so the coating will get more thin in the areas we walk the most. Some of us even use wood in the kitchen, so that area is a heavy duty walk area where one have to keep the coating in a good condition. In basic we have two kind of coatings: 1. lacquer 2. Oil

9. Lacquer can be clean and protect with a polish. Side effect is that polish will have to add on certain times otherwise you get a floor with and without polish and that can show different gloss on the floor until one polish it again. Actually a good way is to add one new layer of lacquer at the time the floor coating gets more thin. The coating itself will protect the floor the best, not the additives on the lacquer. An oiled floor is a different story. There are real maintenance products that can extend the life time of on oiled floor but stay away from any polish. If one works with a top coat. Same as lacquer, just apply one more coat if the oil gets too thin and we see the life time of the floor be extend more than significant.

10. We are here to help you,,,,, Company - Arrow Wood Co., Ltd. (พื้นไม้) Website - https://www.arrowwood.co.th/ Phone - +66 32 828 040 or +66 891334481 Address :-4M 13, Huana Saingam rd, Tambol Tabtai, Hua Hin, Prachuapkirikhan, 77110 Thailand