Wide Plank Flooring
Posted: April 26, 2011
We’ve been getting feedback from our customers regarding the amazing stability of our flooring. We never gave this much thought since our wood flooring is old growth and naturally cured and dried for years. It wasn’t until one of our customers cut some 8×16’s into 1×16’s and ran it into flooring that we started to think we just might have something really special on our hands. To confirm we contacted the leader in the forest products industry, Oregon State University. They have been running tests on our wood for the past 8 weeks and the results are staggering. We are still awaiting the final results but the reports we’re getting are confirming our Douglas Fir boards are much more stable than other woods produced into wood flooring.
Turns out that combination of tight growth rings, exposure to high temperatures from forest fires, and natural curing process is producing a wood flooring that shrinks and swells considerable less than the normal “live” tree that has been cut and conventionally kiln dried. What does this mean? Well basically we can sell our Douglas Fir flooring into just about any market around the world and have the peace of mind that it will preform as good or better than any other wood flooring on the market.
The problem most areas have isn’t shrinking, but instead swelling. If you install a wood floor in a dry climate and it shrinks it’s an eye sore, but if you install a wood floor in a humid climate it might swell and “buckle” which would require the wood floor to be replaced. This has been a major problem in areas like Florida. If the results from Oregon State University hold true, we will be able to sell our wood flooring into the most humid climates in the world and won’t have to worry about it swelling and buckling. To my knowledge there is little to no solid wood flooring on the market that can make this claim.
We will post the final test results from Oregon State once we receive them.
(Shown is a picture of our 1×16 wide plank flooring installed in Tennessee)