Easy steps to protecting your hardwood floors this winter

In the strangest turn of events ever, summer has already disappeared (did it even happen?) and the winter months are moving in at a pace.

We think it’s important to get ahead of the cold weather and ensure your hardwood floors and fixtures are protected from warping, shrinking or any other unwanted changes.

Here are some key things you can do to save your floors and save you money.

Shifting boards

Have you ever noticed a gap appearing between your hardwood floorboards? This happens often during the colder months as a lower humidity causes a lack of moisture in the air and the boards, causing them to shrink.

To avoid this happening to your beautiful floors, bring a humidifier into your home. By feeding water into a humidifier, you’ll be introducing the necessary moisture back into your home and therefore protecting your floorboards from shrinking.

You’ll probably need between 3-5 pints of water per hour to make up for the lose in moisture.

Bringing the outdoors, indoors

With the winter months come an unfortunate amount of snow and hail – both of which call for the gritters to come out. When grit gets caught in your shoes and brought indoors, it can really damage your hardwood floors.

Calcium chloride can cause scratches and scrapes on your floor, so to avoid this, the best thing to do is introduce floor mats beside every outside-facing door and wipe down shoes when you enter.

And it’s important to remember that calcium chloride can cause a wood floor to lose its shine, so by wiping your shoes, your floor protection doubles.

Avoid warping

Whilst we’re normally used to tracking in dirt and debris into our homes after any prolonged time outside, during the winter months you’re more than likely going to bring in moisture – from rain, sleet or snow.

One of the biggest issues here is the possibility of your floor warping – by adding more water to the wood, the moisture levels become unbalanced and a hardwood floor can warp. And there’s still every possibility of you bringing in dirt and debris into your home during the winter months causing scratches, so the best way to avoid all of this is to sweep and mop your floor daily.

Warping, shrinking and other damages can be quite expensive to fix, so by introducing these very easy, straight forward solutions, it’ll save you a lot of money in the future.

And that’s it

If you’d like to speak to a timber consultant about our product range, or want a bit more information on what we can offer you, get in touch and we’ll be able to help you out!

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