Besides the traditional floor coverings used in the past, there are now many new styles and materials of flooring to choose from that can definitely define a room’s style. Because of today’s modern technology, many manufacturers are coming up with great new synthetic flooring that not only looks good, but is also durable and low-maintenance—a definite plus for those who are always on the go but want stylish floor coverings. Besides that, many of the new synthetic coverings are easy on your bank account as well!

Even though synthetic flooring is a great alternative, many people still crave the look and feel of all-natural floor coverings such as stone or wood. For some reason, there always seems to be something about “natural” that nothing synthetic materials can acquire. In many flooring plans, wood brings a great deal of atmosphere and surrounding to a room and makes it feel just so much “roomier” and “natural”.

When you are deciding on what type of flooring is right for you and your home, the first step to making sure it’s really right for you is to question AND answer those questions with complete honesty. Keep in mind that the flooring you choose is not only right for your stylish tastes, but also for your lifestyle and finances. The flooring you choose should be suitable for every aspect of your circumstances, as you would not want to regret upon a floor covering you spent too much on or one that you could’ve spent more on.

For natural flooring plans, wood has been a long-time winner with many homeowners due to its lasting nature. Not only does it add a natural kind of warmth and hominess atmosphere to a room, it’s also quite “elastic” and can cope well with structural movements that are common in older homes as well as heavy trafficking in a family area. Wood floors, however, need a lot more attention and caring compared to other flooring alternatives. Wood floors aren’t also recommended if you live in an area that’s usually damp or if you live in an area prone to flooding, as wood isn’t easily maintained in a moist environment. In such a case, you would definitely not want to keep the expense of installing new hardwood floors every so often to keep up with the damage that moisture and floods can cause to these natural floor coverings.

BASICS

These days, anyone and everyone to be installing hardwood flooring. It’s very frustrating as a consumer to gain any real information as to the pros and cons of each of the different types that are available laminated, solid, engineered since everyone seems to be saying something different. It is the goal of this website to help in sorting this information and increasing customer awareness.
First, lets address the difference between hardness and durability of different types of wood. This is the area that people have the most difficulty understanding. The following chart contains species of wood showing their respective hardness listed from softest to hardest.

Notice that out of the species shown Black Cherry is the softest and Brazilian Cherry is the hardness. It seems simple but if you use only hardness as your guide to durability, you will come to the conclusion that Brazilian Cherry is the harder, therefore more durable than Black Cherry. Wrong! The hardness of wood only has to do with how much denting will occur, not durability.

Technically, deterioration of a hardwood floor can solely occur if the surface of the floor is wearing down – the finish, not the wood itself. Dents, scratches and similar types of abuse are not relevant when it comes to durability. The more durable a floor is the longer than finish will last before requiring a re-coat. Meaning, it will take more abuse before it really begins to look abused.

The real question that one should ask is how much will the floor dent, not if the floor will dent. See the problem that most people have is because of the new finishes available, most of them include Aluminum Oxide (or some variant thereof) they all now feel that the floor will be indestructible. Unfortunately, these misconceptions are being encouraged by some of the companies involved, but in the end the flooring that we use is wood, and wood dents. Therefore no matter whether it’s Brazilian Cherry or Black Cherry – they will all dent and they will all scratch.

If that’s not enough, the different grains of wood will show the dents to different degrees. The “closed grain” hardwoods – usually Maple, Birch, Beech have such a subtle grain, that they will show more than the “open grained” hardwoods. Now, the “open grain” hardwoods – Oak and Ash, might be a little softer than say Maple, Birch or Beech but since they have such wild grains, the dents will show less. See the chart.

Basically, what we're saying is that even though the Hard Maple is 12% harder than Red Oak, since the maple is a closed grain wood, while the oak is an open grained product, they will show marking and denting very differently. Not something to be scared of, simply aware of. It all comes back to what I've read all above - wood dents.
Wood is living product. We consider this to be true because even though the tree has been cut down, it still maintains a cellular structure that is affected by moisture. The moisture to affect the wood could be in the air, the ground, or even our sweat. Different species of wood move more or less because of moisture. This chart shows species from most affected to least.

The numbers themselves don't mean much to the end user of wood flooring, but basically what the chart is saying, is that a floor made with American Beech will have more movement than a floor made with Purple Heart. By movement, we mean that if the air gets too dry the boards will shrink, and you will notice gaps between the boards. If there is too much moisture in the air, the boards will cup and the edges will be raised.
To minimize the extremes of moisture in our homes use humidifiers and de-humidifiers, but it will only minimize what will naturally happen. In the winters, since our heaters are draining the air of all moisture, the floors will shrink slightly. In the summers, when there is a lot of moisture in the air, the floors will expand back to their original shape.
That covers the more basic points that all consumers should be aware of prior to investing in a new wood floor - Hardness, Durability, and Stability. In the end, no wood is superior to another; it is really a personal choice, as long as the consumer has been informed of their wood's characteristics.
We are now ready examine the different types of hardwood that are available. There are pros and cons to each of the different types, let's look at them right now.

MOISTURE

Advances in wood flooring during the past few years mean that you now can have wood flooring anywhere in your home or business. Where you want put it, however, will determine the type wood flooring you can use.

Water In Wood
The living tree uses water as the medium to convey food between the roots and the leaves. The living tree, therefore, contains large amounts of water. For every 1 pound of wet, living wood, about 55 to 60 percent is dry wood (that is, cells) and 40 to 45 percent is water. Some of this water is contained in the cell lumen and some is contained within the cell wall itself. Water in the lumen is called free water while water in the walls is called bound water. These terms arise because the free water is not held chemically within the cell, while the bound water is held by hydrogen bonding. Free water evaporates as easily as water from a tea kettle; however, bound water requires a little extra energy for evaporation. Further, and most importantly, when the bound water leaves the cell walls, the cells shrink.

GAPS IN HARDWOOD FLOORS
The beginning of October, customers start calling us up and asking, " Gee, the beautiful hardwood floors you guys installed for us last summer now have some gaps between the boards, how come??"Usually I begin by saying, " You ain't seen nothin' yet." As winter progresses the gaps can widen if left unchecked. Let's take a look back to the summer when the installation took place. Around Chicago land, the relative humidity stays up around 80%-90% from June through Sept. This means the lumber gets delivered to the job-site with a moisture content of about 9%. The floor is then installed and the boards are nailed tight to one another so there are no gaps between the boards. Everything is hunky-dory until October the relative humidity drops like a rock, suddenly overnight, down to a nice comfortable 50%-40% or less. As fall and winter progress we begin to turn on the heat. Now we're really drying out the lumber. The 9% moisture content drops 30% to 6%. The individual boards begin to shrink in width. Gaps open up. Oh my! Call that *&$#@!&^%$#@! floor guy and yell and scream blah, blah.:') " This is normal." The wood expands and contracts with the seasons. Floors, trim, all the wood moves." For most customers, at this end of the 20th century, don't give a hoot about my little nature talk and want a solution to the problem of the gaps. The answer is usually found in adding a humidifier to the heating system, which keeps the humidity of the house at 45% during the heating season. This adds moisture back into the atmosphere of the house, bringing the moisture content of the floorboards back up to around 8%. does the trick 99% of the time. Sometimes even a child's cold mist humidifier is enough in a small area to solve the gapping problem. A humidifier added to the home heating system runs about $400 and is said to be good for the people in the house as well as the floors.