How Does Your Home's Indoor Environment Affect Wood Flooring?

When you feel cold inside your home, you turn up the heat. If you have air conditioning, you turn it on when you feel hot. Did you ever think about how the living conditions inside your home affect your wood flooring? Most people don't, but it is important. Here's why:



While wood floors are made from "dead" trees, the flooring reacts to temperature and humidity changes inside your home as if it were alive. Your skin reacts to low humidity. So does wood flooring. High humidity and high temperatures affect your skin. These conditions also affect your wood floors. What is comfortable for you is also ideal for your wood floors.

It doesn't matter if your wood floors are solid wood, engineered wood, or laminate. It doesn't matter if the wood is oak, mahogany, or bamboo. It doesn't matter if the wood is nail ed down, glued down, or floating. Regardless of the installation method, all wood flooring absorbs or loses moisture as conditions change slowly or rapidly inside your home.

Every wood flooring manufacturer only allows their products to be installed indoors, with a stable, maintained environment. This means that, in order for the wood flooring to perform as designed, the temperature and humidity conditions inside of your home must be kept continuously within a certain range. This range varies slightly depending on the manufacturer and type of wood flooring. Generally, the required range is between 60-80 degrees with a relative humidity range of 35 percent to 55 percent. Wood floors don't like sudden indoor changes. So what happens if you don't maintain the temperature and humidity within these requirements?

As I said, wood shrinks and grows with the weather. If a wood floor is installed in a home that sees wide fluctuations in temperature and humidity, it reacts accord ingly. When the humidity jumps, the floor will swell and expand. Wood floors are installed with gaps around the edges (covered with baseboards) to allow for some expansion. The gap along each wall is usually equal to the thickness of a board. But if the humidity really jumps quickly, the floor can Best Remodeling Company In Houston expand beyond these expansion gaps. Just think about it. Let's say the boards are each 5" wide and your room is 15' across. So you have 36 boards across the room. If each board swells 1/16", the entire floor grows more than two inches! The gap on each side of the room is probably 1/2" or less. That means a total planned expansion of 1" in each direction. If your floor gains an inch beyond the existing gaps, where does that extra wood go? Up! You wind up with a buckled floor. It's like walking on a trampoline. So what, you say. Once the humidity drops the floor should shrink back to its original si ze. Not so fast. It may shrink back, all right. But the Best Remodeling Company In Houston edges of

each board are now crushed. They are permanently damaged. Once the floor shrinks,

you may see gaps between the boards.



And what happens when the humidity drops quickly? The floor shrinks! You may see gaps suddenly appear along the sides or ends of the boards. The boards themselves may split or crack in the centers or at the ends, or both. This damage is also permanent. Rising humidity w ill not remove the splits, although some gaps may disappear.

To add insult to injury, none of this damage is covered by the flooring warranty. It is your responsibility to make sure you have a stable environment in your home.

When you bought your wood flooring, did anyone ask you if your home has air conditioning? A humidifier? A dehumidifier? All of these devices are needed to keep your home within the required temperature/humidity ranges as stated in your warranty. Does every wood floor fail because the inside temperature/humidity levels greatly fluctuate? No. Do wide temperature/humidity swings greatly increase the odds of flooring failure? Yes. If your wood floor self-destructs because of a rapidly changing indoor environment the blame, unfortunately, falls on the homeowner.

If you are a "snowbird" and leave your home unoccupied for weeks at a time, don't turn the heat down low. You could come home to unhappy wood floors. If you go away on a long summer va cation, leave the A/C on. Otherwise, the inside of your home could resemble a swamp. That is no "vacation" for your wood floors.

Remember, when your skin feels good inside your home, your wood flooring feels good, too!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-revere/how-does-your-homes-indoo_b_5556419.html

13 Things Your Landscaper Won't Tell You: Expert Landscaping Tips Add to Home Value

"GMA" is teaming up with Reader's Digest on a special series of "13 Things Your ____ Won't Tell You." Add as much as 15 percent to your home's value with these expert landscaping tips.

1. Ditch the mower bag. Those grass clippings will become food for earthworms and microbes that will help make your lawn green and healthy.

2. Sure, the view from the street is important, but don't forget to look at your landscape from inside the house. If you have a room with a big window, make sure it looks good from there too.

3. Don't fill every inch of your space with plants and flowers. By next spring, you'll have a weeding and pruning nightmare.

4. That "pretty" red mulch you love? It has been found to contain arsenic and other harsh chemicals that can be harmful to children and pets and will contaminate your soil.

5. Hate bagging leaves? You don't have to. If there's just a light layer, go over them with your mower and leave them on your lawn. As they brea k down, they'll help limit weeds from popping up.



6. You can send a sample of your soil to a local agricultural agency to have it tested. Dig down six to seven inches deep and then gather two cups of dirt into sample bags. Mail them off to find out what nutrients you need.

7. If you find a flower you like, always buy more than one. Plant clumps of species in odd numbers, such as http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=sprinklers five or seven in one area, or repeat the groupings throughout your landscape for a unifying effect.

8. Do-it-yourself landscapers tend to make their planting beds too narrow and too close to the house. You want to extend your beds out at least one to two thirds of the house's height, if not more.

9. Laying weed fabric is generally a waste of money and time for the lo ng term; weeds just grow on top of it. I once had a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRbW3ayDWVQ customer whose beds had seven layers of weed fabric, yet she still had weeds. I guess she kept thinking, If I put down just one more layer, the weeds will stop coming.

10. Most lawn fertilizers have about 30 percent nitrogen, which is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRbW3ayDWVQ way too much. Look for fertilizer with time-releasing water-insoluble nitrogen and use it only twice a year on a steady schedule, like on Memorial Day and after Labor Day. In general, well-irrigated and older lawns need less fertilizer.

11. Watch out for a gorgeous plant called purple loosestrife, or Lythrum salicaria, which a lot of nurseries still sell. Though it's inexpensive and has a lovely flower, it's an invasive species that will spread everywhere and choke out other plants.



12. To keep from overwatering your lawn, remember that one inch of water once a week is ideal, maybe once every five days in extreme heat, depending on your soil. Infrequent watering encourages roots to grow deeper to find groundwater, creating a stronger plant.

13. Looking at a color wheel is a great way to choose garden flowers. Colors that are opposite each other, like yellow and purple, look beautiful together.

For even more things your landscaper won't tell you, click here.

More 13 Things from Reader's Digest:

13 Things Experts Won't Tell You About Weight Loss

13 Things Your Real Estate Agent Won't Tell You

13 Things Your Grocer Won't Tell You

13 Things a Movie Theater Employee Won't Tell You

13 Things Your Pizza Guy Won't Tell You

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/13-things-landscaper-expert-landscaping-tips-add-home/story?id=16150240

Sprinkler System Overspray & its Hard to Remove Window Residue

We Don't Do Windows...

Window cleaning is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKWCB_3nMJg a daunting task that some housecleaning services decline to do with out additional fees. While getting a streak free shine is a chore, doesn't mean it has to be an excruciating chore. learn how to give your windows a polished view on both inside and out, making them seemingly invisible.

What Makes Water Hard & Hard Water Spots

Almost a quarter of water we call fresh travels underground which is rich in minerals deposits. As a natural solvent, water in its travels, inadvertently picks up soluble particles of these deposits altering the water hardness. Most notable of the mineral deposits, calcium and magnesium can be held responsible for the hard water spots of white chalky residue. When water drops from the sprinklers land on your cars & windows, the water from the drops evaporate leaving mineral deposits behind. These m ineral deposits become nearly impossible to remove from surface areas such as out side windows, kitchen sinks and bathroom fixtures. Deposits built up over time in your plumbing can actually cost you money for increased electricity use.



Not only Problematic to things like Windows & Plumbing

Residue produced through the mineral deposits or hard water can linger in places like your hair or coat your skin causing dryness, irritation and itching. One solution for this would be the use of a water softener. There are different types of wa ter softeners that vary on methods to achieve softer water. A common type of water softener works to replace the extra calcium & magnesium deposits found in hard water with sodium, neutralizing the waters hardness. Although; according to the, Water Quality Association, water through this method is not really suitable for drinking. That being said; water softeners and treatments are widely available in many variations. Seek the advise of a water treatment professional in your https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKWCB_3nMJg area for more information.

Continue Reading To Learn How Easy It Can Be To Remove The Residue From Windows

Hard water spots from sprinkler over spray can be stubborn over time. If you find them near impossible to clean use a sure fire method I call Scrubbing Bubbles.

How I Know This..

Before you continue on with the goods I would like to share how I know this works. I have read a few other methods and must say I am intrigued, although I can not attest to the other methods. As much I am not saying this is the best or easiest or any other thing except this works. After a good 40 minutes of toiling around with all my might, to get the gosh for saken hard water spots off an apartment window the sprinklers had became quite accustomed to spraying - for geez who knows how long - I had a Thought. I thought well self lets say we work smarter not harder and round up some mussel. the mussel SCRUBBING BUBBLES! Easy peasy pumpkin pie kiss them hard water spots goodbye.



Instructions Begin by getting any surface dirt and debris off with water and shop towels

Squirt, Splash or Spray the window with water and use fresh shop towel to wipe off and repeat

Now take your SCRUBBING BUBBLES to coat the entire window

Step Back and Breath While it sits briefly

Carefully use your razor scrapper holding it at an angle to make vertical scrapes over the top portion of the window then again over the remaining portion

After you are satisfied with the results douse with regular water again and use crumpled up pages of newspaper to dry

The news paper shouldn't get to damp for streak free shine so don't be scared to throughout any pieces that have worn out the fresh dry crumple we want and grab another



Please be careful and avoid eye contact or inhalation of the scrubbi ng bubbles as it is harmful to do either please reference the product for more information on safe handling

BlogThis!