To the uninitiated, hardwood flooring simply consists of planks cut from a tree.  The popular conception of lumber is that it is all cut in basically the same way.  This does not match reality, however.  In actual fact, there are three main ways in which timber for hardwood flooring may be cut.  Planks may be riftsawn, quartersawn or plainsawn – terms that the average hardwood flooring customer has probably never heard before.

Plainsawing is the most popular technique, in part because it possesses efficiencies missing from the other methods.  When lumber is plainsawn, the first cut of the saw is applied at an angle to intersect the length of the log.  All subsequent cuts are made parallel to the original one.  This method is efficient because it minimises the amount of the log that will be wasted; in addition, it creates the widest possible boards from any given log.

Plainsawing a log will produce planks with a flat grain pattern.  This tends to produce a high degree of variability in the grain from one plank to the next.  Plainsawing, however, does have some disadvantages.  Floorboards produced in this way will exhibit less dimensional stability than lumber that is quartersawn instead.  This means that the planks that make up the floor will be subject to more expansion and contraction due to weather or humidity conditions than is typical for quartersawn wood.

The average hardwood floor is made from plainsawed lumber.  Like all hardwood floors, it will need periodic attention from a wood floor repair firm.

Most people would love the opportunity to remodel their home from basement to roof, incorporating the kinds of modifications and fashion upgrades that would make it the ideal dwelling place for us.  Unfortunately, like many things in life, there is bound to be a conflict between what we want and what we can realistically afford.  When it comes to home renovation, what we would like is often far, far beyond the limits of a realistic budget.  This is only to be expected, since home remodelling projects can be one of the most expensive things the average person will ever undertake.

How then to stretch your budget for home renovation?  One of the first things that any homeowner must do is to make a “priority list” of his or her true needs, placing the most vital items at the top.  There is a trick to this, however.  Homeowners should balance their needs with the increase in value that a particular home renovation element will carry with it.  Some upgrades tend to pay for themselves later on when the house is sold since they encourage buyers to pay more for the home.  Others do not.

One of the best possible home upgrades is to install a new hardwood floor.  Such floors add beauty as well as value to a home.  To preserve the value they add, however, homeowners must keep them in good shape by periodically doing wood floor repairs as needed.  For example, all wooded floors need periodic hardwood floor sanding to renew them back to a new-looking state.

Badi and Tali are two varieties of African hardwood that have grown in popularity over the course of the past decade. There is nothing new about hardwood floors in and of themselves, of course; they have been a prominent form of flooring material for many centuries. During ages past, however, virtually all people were limited in their choices to the species of hardwood that naturally grew near their homes.  The revolution in modern transportation, however, has changed all that. Consumers in Western Europe are now able to obtain hardwood flooring from Africa without paying a premium for these exotic hardwoods.

Janka Hardness Ratings for Badi and Tali

Red oak planks have a Janka hardness rating of almost 1300. This is quite impressive and entirely adequate for flooring purposes as wood with a rating that high can stand up well to floorboard sanding.  Exotic hardwood species, though, frequently put numbers like that to shame. For example, Badi wood scored a rating in excess of 1600 on the Janka test and Tali achieved a score of almost 3000. This means that both Badi and Tali are highly resistant to surface damage as it takes a great deal of force to penetrate the wood.

As such, both species will normally need wood floor repairs less often, though, of course, such repairs will eventually be needed. When performed, both woods will tolerate repairs well.

Most consumers who purchase Badi and Tali flooring are more interested in the lovely hues and markings of these exotic hardwoods.

Rabo de ignana, which translates to mean “tail of the iguana lizard” is a high-density exotic hardwood used for both factory and household flooring.  A product of the Latin American nations of Columbia, Venezuela, and Peru, rabo de iguana goes by several trade names including huilca, bocachico, carbonero and carabali.

The botanical name of the tree species that produces this wood is Piptadenia pittieri.  Individual trees may grow as tall as 65 feet, though trunk diameter rarely exceeds about two feet across.  However, this wood is highly desired because the species grows largely without branches, leading to very few knot holes in the finished wood product.  It is not unusual for stretches of trunk to be branch-free for up to 50 feet – most of the tree’s entire height.

Rabo de iguana is also appreciated by woodworkers and those shopping for flooring because it possesses a texture that varies from fine to medium that is highly lustrous.  Grain is highly variable, however, with some planks exhibiting a very straight, regular pattern while others are quite irregular in their grain lines.  The heartwood is usually either reddish brown or yellowish brown, while the sapwood can be almost whitish in colour, though in some cases the heartwood and sapwood can be almost indistinguishable.

This wood should be fully sealed after each wood floor repair or wood floor restoration because otherwise, it can be susceptible to decay because of the action of insects and fungi.  With proper sealing a rabo de iguana floor can remain beautiful for many years.

At first glance, it would seem that floating flooring would be something only seen in science fiction movies, but the term actually refers to a special way to install hardwood floors. Normally, such floors are fixed in place by stapling, nailing or even gluing floorboards to a dwelling’s floor surface.

A floating floor, in contrast, is installed by gluing one floor plank to another in order to create a continuous whole. The individual boards, however, are not affixed to the floor beneath them. This means that the whole floor can shift and move a small amount, which is ideal in many ways because it can mean that when the floor is under stress, it shifts over instead of developing cracks in the boards.

Benefits of Floating Flooring

One significant benefit of a floating floor is the ease of installation. Since regular installations have to be attached to the floor beneath them, that floor must be carefully prepared – only certain kinds of subfloors are appropriate. Should a home’s existing subfloor not meet the requirements, it will have to be fixed first before a traditional hardwood floor can be installed.

Floating floors, however, can be installed on top of practically any kind of existing flooring, including even ceramic tile and linoleum. In addition, floating floors are ideal wherever there are conditions of high humidity – wood tends to swell slightly, but a floating floor has room on the edges to expand, since a proper installation leaves a little bit of room around all edges of the floor.

Floating flooring needs regular care and maintenance, including period wood floor repairs such as floorboard sanding and polishing.