You have beautiful parquet in your apartment or house and are you thinking about its durability? Have you ever thought about the impact of humidity on the quality of wooden floors? This topic is often completely neglected and we do not take enough care of it. In this article, we bring you information on how you can improve the quality of wooden floors, but also the quality of the air in your home.
What you need to know is that wood is a hygroscopic material, that is it absorbs moisture from the air. We wrote recently about the importance of proper cleaning and maintenance, paying special attention to just sufficient draining of the wiping cloth, as well as the bad effects of steam cleaners on wooden floors. But with the arrival of colder days, space heating also enters the “story”, so a new question arises – how to ensure enough humidity in the room at the same time.
If you are more often tired, irritable, sleepy or have less concentration during colder days, this may be due to a lack of moisture in the space in which you live and stay. It is the dry air that will cause your skin to dry out and itch, and with the drying of the airway mucosa, we are more susceptible to various infections that we have been trying to avoid lately.
If dry air can harm your skin, have you thought about it being an enemy to your parquet as well?
All wood materials, including floors, react to the amount of moisture in the air, behaving literally like a sponge. Any change in humidity will cause changes to the wooden floors, and too much and too little moisture in the air can also cause damage. When the air is dry and the wood dries out, it reduces its volume, just like a sponge, and the wood can also crack and burst. A sure sign that the air in the room is dry is the appearance of “joints” and / or cracks between the parquet slats. To preserve the integrity of wood floors in the months when you heat the room or the air is dry for some other reason, it is essential to ensure that the room is humidified. It should be noted here that low temperatures do not mean higher relative humidity, and in winter, low temperatures are often the culprit for the appearance of cracks and “joints” between individual parquet slats.
How to humidify the air in the rooms during the winter months?
The optimal humidity indoors throughout the year is between 45 and 60% relative humidity, at a temperature of 18-22 C. All MOPAR wooden floors are manufactured just for these conditions and will be optimal with them. During the winter, that is, even more so during the days and months when we heat the space, the relative humidity in it is very often too low and should be increased. You can do this in several ways and very easily with the help of handy tools. We bring you a few ways and tips to achieve this, thereby improving the comfort of your stay in the space and even contribute to your overall health.
- If you are not at all sure about the relative humidity in your rooms, be sure to look for a device that will show you this. Today, many such devices can be found in stores at very affordable prices, and most often these are temperature indicators that measure the relative humidity.
2. Indoor plants significantly contribute to the maintenance of relative humidity in the room and the air quality itself. In addition, we feel calmer with them, and they have a positive effect on our health. The selection of houseplants is really diverse and there are species that are not at all demanding to maintain, so it would be a shame not to have at least two in most rooms. In addition, they are also a good indicator of the air condition of your rooms – if you notice that the plants dry out quickly, the air is definitely too dry, and this will quickly be seen on wooden floors.
3. Place a bowl of water on the radiator. With the presence of a high temperature radiator, the water will evaporate and humidify the space faster, and you can add a few drops of essential oil to the same container to improve air quality.
- Cooking on the stove in the winter months releases moisture into the air and thus increases the relative humidity of the air.
- By releasing the accumulated steam and moisture after showering by opening the bathroom door, the moisture will flow quickly through the nearby rooms in your home and very easily bring in the necessary moisture.
- Get a humidifier. The primary criterion by which you will choose this product should be the size of the room to be humidified. For smaller rooms, bedrooms, table humidifiers will be enough for you. But there are higher capacity humidifiers that require less frequent charging. Although you will think that larger humidifiers will solve the problem, you should be careful because they will produce too much moisture in smaller rooms, which is again the basis for the possible development of bacteria, and the wood in the room will have a bad effect. When choosing, you will come across different humidifiers with different tank capacities. The size of the device does not necessarily correlate with the size of the tank, so pay attention to this. You will also choose between a cool mist and a warm mist. Cool mist humidifiers consume less electricity and work on the principle of ultrasound (quieter and better quality) or a fan, while warm mist humidifiers heat the water in the tank with a hot mist and consume a lot of electricity.
- Get a diffuser with essential oils. In doing so, pay attention to the importance of the quality of your diffuser, as well as the high quality of the essential oils you will use. Essential oils should not be heated to the evaporation temperature as this will break down their compounds. Ultrasonic diffusers do not heat the essential oils, but spray them cold into the space in the form of tiny droplets and mists. Precisely such diffusers work on the principle of mixing water and essential oils.Water will have the effect of moisturizing your space, and a diffuser will help the well-being of your health. It is known that some essential oils have antimicrobial activity, as they contribute to strengthening the immune system, improve sleep quality and general psychophysical health. Although such diffusers consume a certain amount of water during their operation, they are not basically humidifiers. While humidifiers consume several liters of water, water diffusers measure water consumption in decilitres.
Finally, it should be mentioned that the relative humidity in the room is too high (in relation to the temperature) – although it is somewhat rarer in homes and workplaces, care should be taken that this condition does not last too long, because the wood will receive this moisture, and thereby swell or increas the volume like a sponge. As a consequence, damage can occur on the parquet, but also elsewhere.
With this we have given you only a brief description of the connection between wood, humidity and temperature and the most basic tips for solving the problem. If you are interested in more about this topic or have questions, write to us at a info@mopar.hr