With Thanksgiving come and gone, Christmas lights are coming on and the ground is turning white with snow. Across the country, temperatures are falling and, in many places, humidity levels are falling with them. Those seasonal changes in humidity can take a toll on beautiful hardwood floors over the years, damaging their integrity and appearance. There are steps you can take as a homeowner to combat damage to hardwood floors over the seasons, depending on your region and individual home’s needs.
But first, let’s take a look at what’s happening.
Humidity and hardwood
The relative humidity percentage describes how much evaporated water is present in the air. It will naturally equalize its water content with the pressure of the water in the air. The amount of water it absorbs or releases to equalize its pressure depends on the kind of wood, according to the Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service. Different kinds of wood have different abilities to absorb humidity, so that’s something to consider when designing a wood floor in your home.
The National Wood Flooring Association calculates that a 10-foot floor made of red oak will contract up to 2 inches when the humidity drops from 60 percent to 30 percent, and vice versa. Unless the contractor left a two-inch gap between the wall and the floor — which a typical floor installer wouldn’t do — that will lead to damage to your baseboards and wall, as well as to the integrity of the floor.
Wood changes over the seasons, so a little gapping during the winter is normal. As the humidity rises in the spring, the wood will swell again and the floors will look good again. A good target humidity level should be between 35 percent and 55 percent in your home.
What influences humidity?
An enormous country like the U.S. has variable climates. As a general rule, when it gets colder in the winter, the humidity tends to drop. Cold air can hold less water because the it will condense. However, in some regions such as the coastal Pacific Northwest, the relative humidity will actually increase in the winter due to wet weather and temperatures above freezing.
The Midwest, being inland, has more extreme climate swings than coastal zones—the air can go from practically dripping to arid between the summer and winter. Naturally, then, solid wood floors in homes in the Midwest tend to expand and contract regularly in accordance with the relative humidity level. Humidity readings in homes in this area can swing from 15 percent in the winter to 70 percent in the summer.
Activities in your home can also influence the humidity inside the house, from bathing to cooking. Some heating appliances, such as unvented natural gas or kerosene models, can increase humidity, while other activities, like a dry-air heating system, can reduce it. Having exposed cool surfaces, like uninsulated cold-water pipes, can also increase humidity by allowing moisture to condense on them and running down.
Monitoring humidity in your home will help identify if you need to take action. A hygrometer, a device to measure humidity, can cost less than $10, and many digital clocks have one installed. It can be a good idea to have several, as the relative humidity may vary between rooms or floors of a house.
Controlling humidity levels
There are a number of solutions to controlling humidity in a home, both increasing it and decreasing it. In most regions of the country, you’ll want to make sure it stays sufficiently high in the winter to prevent your hardwood from drying out.
Heating systems in the winter will likely decrease the humidity in your home by blowing in dry air. A humidifier can help to combat the problem. There are multiple types of humidifiers, including warm mist, steam, cool mist and console humidifiers, all of which work a little differently. Though the type of humidifier you choose is up to your taste and home’s needs, a cool mist humidifier is the most effective in increasing humidity and has no risk of burning you with hot water or steam.
Professionals can also install units that humidify a whole home, which cost about $400 and can help preserve wood floors, according to professional services director Angie’s List. It’s also very important to have the floor contractor working on your wood floors acclimatize the wood to your home before installing them.
Make sure you know what kind of wood your flooring is made of, as it will tolerate different levels of humidity differently. When purchasing a hardwood floor you often do not think about this fact; the wider the flooring, the wider the seasonal gapping is going to be, also, square edges will show more gaps than a beveled edge, and give a year or two for the wood to fully acclimatize to the seasonal changes in your home.
Asking your professional installer for advice and making sure you know what to expect is important before you make the investment in hardwood floors, and taking care of the conditions in your home will help preserve it far into the future.
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