RE: ¾ x 3 ¼ solid maple - prefinished

Hello.

I am going to be picking up our wood in a couple days. The humidity in our house has been hovering around 35% lately. Assuming we don’t get any rain in the near future, I don’t see why this figure would change. I don’t want to install the wood when it is that dry, because I imagine the wood will cup come summer. We have central air, and a dehumidifier we use in our finished basement, but there is no way we can get the humidity down to 35% during the summer months.

I have a small single room humidifier. Could I put that in the room where the wood will be acclimating to bring the humidity up to around 50 or 55%, as I think that will be close to what it will be during the summer months? I would rather put the wood down a little wet more than dry. I could handle some minor gapping, but don’t want to see any cupping.

I guess my other option would be just to wait until spring or summer to install, but I think the wife would not care for that.

I hope this isn’t a stupid post. Thanks.

I'm a DIYer and I'm about to purchase my Beech hardwood (1200sf) and have the same concern.

Here's a great NOFMA publication I found:
http://www.nofma.org/Portals/0/Publicat ... mation.pdf

I'm in central Canada (just above ND) and our winters are very dry. I will be installing in Dec/Jan, the driest time.

I've seen suggestions re whole-house humidifiers, perhaps we both need one. I'm still pretty lost when it comes to this.

Do you plan on running humidifiers then so in future winter and fall months you do not have gapping between the boards?

I think you are being a bit to careful and just running the central air will prevent cupping and you will have a nice tight floor in the fall and winter. I had my floors installed and waited until the late fall to install to avoid the gapping and I have had no problems in wisconsin, I did use Owens engineered flooring(not solid 3/4") and it is very consistently tight and flat. I will be interested to see what the pros think JMO

Your actually on the right track.

You can acclimate it to the lower humidity, and then calculate, the swell cofficient, to determine the small gaps to level in the rows.

You will need a pin type wood moisture meter.