Protect Your Hardwood Floors From Summer
Hardwood floors may be lovely, long-lasting surfaces that warm up the look of any room in a house, but they’re also far from indestructible. This applies especially when certain types of threats reach them, and summer is the time in which several of these can arrive all too easily.
The summer damage that your floors can suffer from sunlight, temperature changes, increased humidity, and simple wear by unusual amounts of dirt or sand. All of these small threats can turn your wood floors from rustic to just plain ugly. Here’s how these summer issues can cause problems and what you can do to prevent them.
Sunlight
Having the lovely summer sun pour into the rooms of your home at certain times of day may be beautiful and relaxing, but to your floors, it can cause significant problems. You should remember that this same beautiful sunlight is filled with bright ultraviolet rays whose daily job it is to slowly bleach the color from all things, including your wood flooring, while also making it brittle. It would take a lot of time for it to be a major issue, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening little by little.
Bleaching is what sunlight inevitably does over time, and it’s the reason why the phrase “sun-bleached” is a thing. Your floors are especially vulnerable and even more so if they’re of the dark hardwood flooring type.
How To Prevent Sunlight Damage
In the preventative sense, simply do your best to keep the sun off your floors during summer daylight hours of peak solar intensity. In the United States, these are generally between noon and about 5 p.m. Lowering the blinds or setting up sunlight-filtering curtains that still let some light come through will both work to keep the sun away during this UV-intense period of the day. It will also help keep your home cooler by the evening.
You may have your hardwood floors professionally treated to minimize solar damage. UV-resistant floor sealant, wax, and varnish solutions are available. You should have one of these treatments applied to your floors periodically by an experienced hardwood floor maintenance service. Recoating isn’t the same as refinishing, but that you can find on another page.
Temperature Changes
Temperature changes are an inevitable part of living in Minnesota. From January to July and back again, temperatures change drastically, causing certain materials like wood in particular to expand and contract. This expansion and contraction of hardwood floorboards will eventually cause them to warp, split, squeak, or come loose.
How to Prevent Temperature Damage
In the winter, preventing something like this means making sure to keep your house relatively warm. In the summer, it means keeping the house cool. The main point is that your home’s internal temperature range should be kept as moderate as possible throughout the year. This, combined with well-sealed and insulated floors, will fight heat and cold-related damage.
Insidious Summer Humidity
Related to summer heat is the issue of humidity. It can be a powerful destroyer of wood flooring combined with heat. In some drier and more arid parts of the United States, humidity is barely a problem but in other regions, like the Midwest, it can be a persistent summer discomfort. Humidity will eventually rot wood of any kind and can also contribute to making wood warp more quickly during temperature changes.
How to Prevent Humidity Damage
The first step for humidity damage prevention is to minimize how much moisture reaches your wood floors. At a basic level, you should avoid having water touch them more than necessary. Thus, if your hardwood floors get wet, dry them off rapidly and if you’re cleaning them, avoid using tools like overly wet mops or steam mops.
Secondly, as we already mentioned above, simply keep your floors well sealed and treated. Finally, try to achieve ambient humidity in your home year-round. You can be successful with good ventilation, humidity control devices, or a robust HVAC system.
Summertime Sand, Grit, Dirt, and Grime
Summer is a time for frequent outdoor adventures, beach trips, and fun right outside on the lawn if you have one. But unfortunately, all of these activities will probably mean more dirt, sand, and grime getting tracked into the home and across your glowing hardwood floors. This is a problem because dirt, in particular, can create a breeding ground for fungus infestations. At the same time, grit and sand can start scouring your floor’s varnish or wax coat layers, letting humidity and sunlight cause additional damage.
How to Prevent Summer Dirt Damage
The solution to keeping sand, dirt, and grime from damaging your floors is simple enough. First, be proactive by asking everyone in the home to take off or clean their footwear before they go indoors, and if dirt, sand, or grime do get in, just sweep them away as quickly as possible. If your hardwood floors are looking less than, we can help refresh whatever damage from summer comes your way!
Give Your Floors the Treatment They Deserve
Whatever the cause of wear and tear to your hardwood floors, and regardless of the type of flooring wood you have, having them refreshed with a professional makeover by trained experts will make a world of difference. Dave’s Floor Sanding & Installing offers precisely this. It can rapidly deliver a wide range of recoating, sanding, repair, and installation options for one of the most important parts of your home.