Existing Laminate Floor Moisture Reading

For floating floors manufacturers often recommend installing a moisture barrier between the subfloor and the floating floor to prevent moisture intrusion.

Existing laminate floor moisture reading. To get more detailed information such as the exact depth of a moisture pocket in a wooden board an insulated pin wood moisture meter can be used. Pin meters use electrical resistance to. This means that an old concrete slab may be holding on to moisture that couldn t escape the older more moisture resistant flooring. By documenting your moisture readings you now have a reference point to go back to should a problem happen.

The difficulty of course is that if the moisture barrier is compromised in any way moisture from the slab beneath can still damage the flooring or finish. We are replacing our existing laminate flooring with new laminate. 27 29 fiber saturation. Failure to perform laminate subfloor moisture testing buckling cupping squeaking raised edges are but a few of the problems that result from ones failure to perform subfloor moisture testing.

The fastest way to measure moisture in floors is to use a moisture meter for wood. Many older flooring systems used products that were more moisture resistant but also had a greater environmental impact than many of the products used today. So what do they mean. Step 2 is documenting your readings.

Therefore it s advisable to have a floor tested for moisture content prior to installing flooring or moisture barriers. Moisture probes or sensors are used by professionals throughout the drying process and serve as a guide to let them know how they re doing getting the moisture out. Measuring moisture in wood flooring. Wood subfloors are actually easy to check for moisture content just test for moisture at several locations in the room and average the results fig.

These are all moisture readings which give you insight into the amount of moisture present in your floors. Failure to skip laminate subfloor moisture testing often results in laminate floor failures. Simply press the meter s plate flat against the floor take a reading and repeat the process at different spots until you find the moisture pocket. For instance you take your readings prior to installing a hardwood floor and the subfloor moisture content is 10 and the strip hardwood was at 7.

If your wood floors. November 6 2019 at 2 38 pm. Hi what is an acceptable moisture reading for laminate flooring. Testing wood subfloors.

Wood moisture meters for flooring applications come in two varieties. Often more than one method is used to get an accurate reading of actual moisture content. The wood materials in the laminate flooring expand and contract with moisture. These devices can be used to test the moisture content mc of wood flooring in mere seconds.

We talked about taking moisture readings. There are three standard methods for measuring concrete moisture.