Hardwood Floors: When Is Hard, Hard Enough?
Here is a good article on hardwood floor care tips. Palmetto Hardwood has some great article on our regular website as well. For a quote on hardwood floors and floor care products call us or visit our website.
Hardwood Floors: When Is Hard, Hard Enough?
By Karen Lacasse
The Cat, the dog and the kids are all going to be running around on your new hardwood floor. The ball goes flying and the dog takes after it as you sit on the sofa and cringe thinking about the scratches that will follow. And getting rid of the house pet is not an option! So is there a solution?
The current inflow of exotic hardwood floors from around the world might offer some relief. They are generally much more dense then our local North American species. In many cases they are twice as dense. They come in rich dark colours in line with what you think of when dreaming of the tropics, but it is their resistance to dents that will be their true appeal.
But they come with their own issues. Some are so brittle that it is next to impossible to nail in place without breaking all the tongues. Some are so nasty that they just can’t be used in less then perfectly controlled environments. Some are so expensive that you and I must win the lottery to be able to afford more than enough for the bathroom. But these are all discussions for another day.
Today, I really wanted to talk specifically about a wood floor’s hardness. Most of the woods that we see on the market today are rated according to the Janka Wood Hardness Scale. This is an industrial measuring process that allows you and I to compare all the various types of wood for their resistance to dings and dents, without having an engineering degree.
It is a pretty simple process. They use a type of hydraulic jack and see how much pressure it takes to embed a .444 inch diameter steel ball down to its halfway point in a piece of wood. The more pressure it takes, the harder the wood. It is measured in pounds-force (lbf).
Thus, the higher the number the greater its density and its ability to resist life’s challenges. The lower the number the softer the wood, in other words, the easier it will be for the dog’s nails to dent your floor. (as an aside I also use it as a gauge as to hard it will be to cut, nail and sand in my woodworking adventures)
Species like Jatoba (Brazilian Cherry) and Tigerwood with a Janka Rating over 2100 are good examples of woods that would age with a little more grace, then say a black cherry with a Janka rating of 950. Don’t get hung up too much with the actual numbers but rather the relationships between the various species, as even the same wood can express variation in hardness as a function of its growing environment. At the end of the day, all wood floors with a high Janka rating have a place in tough wear environments, particularly if you have a 120lb sheep dog.
Thus it may be important, if you have analyzed your home environment as a high traffic zone to consider some of the exotic wood options. There is a full listing of the Janka Wood Hardness Scale on our website. Use it as a starting point when shopping for a harder, more dent resistant floor. Then don’t forget to ask if this wood species has other specific challenges in either instability or installation, that you should be aware of. Get the whole story!
Karen Lacasse draws on 25+ years of woodworking experience, both as a woodworking teacher and industrial woodworker/owner of Lacasse Fine Wood Products. She is the author behind http://woodsthebest.com/ where you will find articles and resources to help with all your home renovation projects. She designs woodworking craft patterns and shares her crafting knowledge at http://thewoodbox.com/
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