Acclimatizing Hardwood Floors. While its not as important for our engineered hardwoods due to the stability in the way they are constructed solids will expand and contract considerably given the right conditions with wide changes in. For most wood flooring the wood floor must be within 4 of the moisture content of your subfloor.
Acclimatization describes the process of conditioning hardwood floor planks so that their moisture content is at the optimal level for the environment it is to be installed in. Use the chart below provided by the US Department of Agriculture Wood Handbook to see what your hardwoods EMC should be depending on your local temperature and humidity. You must allow time for the new wood to acclimatize to the environment.
Once your flooring has reached an EMC between 6 and 9 percent it has finished acclimating and ready for installation.
If the hardwood flooring is not acclimatized to the room that it is going to be installed in once installed it will acclimatize and that means that it will either expand or contract depending on the humidity level in the room. The National Wood Flooring Association NWFA describes acclimation as theprocess of conditioning wood flooring to the environment in which it is expected to perform To understand this lets think about how living trees prosper in nature and how they act after becoming hardwood flooring. Equilibrium moisture content is based on an unchanging environment. Acclimating hardwoods is the process of matching the woods humidity and temperature to the ambient humidity and temperature of your home.
