Posts Tagged ‘low-VOC hardwood floor finish’
Cure time, dry time, when to move back home
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011
A frequent discussion I have during estimates is regarding when people can have their home back. When can they walk on the floor? When can they put back area rugs? I’ll dive into this as best as possible.
Cure time- A finish is technically cured when 100% of the solvents have left the coating. This is quite variable between the types of finishes. A general rule follows:
- Waterborne finishes-(7-10 days)
- Oil modified polyurethane- (30 days)
- Conversion varnish-(30-60 days)
- Allow 24 hours following the application of a final coat until you return and walk on the floor
- Allow one week until you put down area rugs.
- Replace the felt on your moving furniture and allow 2-3 days before using chairs that move or slide.
Tags: hardwood floor finish, hardwood refinishing, low-VOC hardwood floor finish, Swedish finish, waterbased finish
Posted in Floor Finishing | No Comments »
Community Cycling Center floors restored!
Friday, March 4th, 2011
We had the honor and privilege of being selected to refinish the hardwood floors at the community cycling center in northeast Portland in the Alberta area. The cycling center is a non-profit organization that helps educate consumers on bike maintenance, provide bikes for low income residents so that they have transportation to work, and restores bikes that otherwise would end up in a landfill. Having seen their work, I can tell you that they do an amazing job bringing bikes back from the dead.
Up to the challenge and believing that almost any floor can be restored, we refinished the fir flooring in the center. The turnaround time for our part had to be done very quickly. We used a low VOC hardening oil on the floor that has a 12 hour cure time. The video of the project shows the before and after conditions of the floor.
Tags: Fir flooring, hardwood floor finish, low-VOC hardwood floor finish, sustainability
Posted in Floor Projects, Project Videos | 3 Comments »
Home Depot refinishes hardwood floors?
Thursday, January 6th, 2011
Not really. Let me explain in case you were wondering.
- Sign up for a refinish with Home Depot
- They send out EnHance (another franchise company)
- EnHance does the job, but gives 20% of the gross cost back to Home Depot
- The owner then does the job and afterwards pays fees back to the franchise
That’s a big chain of bureacracy if you are simply looking for someone to refinish your hardwood floors. You have two layers of cost added to the project because two different companies get a cut of the money before it makes it into the hands of the actual franchise owner. If you assume 30% goes back to various sources then let’s do the math.
Home Depot charges $4.25 per square foot here in Portland to refinish hardwood floors. That means that the owner is actually charging around $2.97 sq ft for refinishing. I know firsthand that EnHance uses three coats of single component Bona Mega for their floor finish. Despite all the marketing in the world, I can tell you that it’s a junk product. In fact, in our project gallery the project titled Battleground had been refinished by EnHance two years beforehand and was badly worn at the time when we added the new custom floor and refinished everything.
I’m not speculating about the information on this blog because I’ve had conversations with previous owners of an EnHance franchise. I know what product they use because we purchase from the same distributor as EnHance. Consumers please don’t put all of your faith in Home Depot. They’re great at marketing, but they don’t really refinish floors, install windows, flooring, etc…
Tags: Hardwood floor Portland, hardwood refinishing, low-VOC hardwood floor finish
Posted in Contractor Perspectives, Floor Finishing | 1 Comment »
OSMO hardwax…So what is it?
Saturday, October 30th, 2010
One thing I have observed over the years in hardwood flooring is that a number of floor finish manufacturers are exceptional at marketing and miserable at doing adequate quality control of a product prior to release. It can end up a little frustrating as a contractor, especially regarding the waterborne finish market.
OSMO Poly-X Oil is a product that I have seen stand the test of time. This product is in a class of floor finishes known as hardening oils. Essentially these products all integrate deep into the fibers of the flooring and cure and harden within the floor. The oils are very high solids (usually 90% or greater) and essentially fill all voids between the wood fibers. The appearance of the finished floor is very matte and “real” looking as opposed to conventional floor finishes.
The Good News about these finishes is:
- They are very low in VOC (Volatile Organic Compunds) which is nice for returning to your home after the refinishing process is completed
- The cure time is very rapid. Most of the finishes are able to be walked on and have furniture applied within 12-24 hours. In fact hardening oils are a great choice for commercial applications such as bars and restaurants because of the turnaround time.
- Improved slip resistance is a less mentioned benefit, but still great for anyone concerned about slipping on a hardwood floor.
With the continued push towards lower VOC products, we actually are in support of products such as OSMO as opposed to waterborne finishes. This is primarily because unlike waterborne finishes, hardening oils are not prone to white lines syndrome. This makes them a much better candidate for radiant flooring, which can tend to exacerbate seasonal movement in certain flooring products thus increasing the odds of white lines syndrome.
OSMO finished floor
Tags: hardwood refinishing, low-VOC hardwood floor finish, sustainability, white lines syndrome
Posted in Floor Finishing, Sustainability Talk | No Comments »
Apples to apples floor finish
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
I do a number of estimates for my floor business and I am always perplexed by the lack of information other floor companies are providing for the homeowner. Let me bring about a few real world points for people in order to dispel the myths surrounding the “bidding” process.
1) Two coats versus three coats versus coverage rate
Honestly this is a six versus one half dozen comparison. Your average floor finish has a recommended coverage rate for application. Some finishes have an optimal application range of 300 square feet per gallon where others are at 500. This has a big impact on the “mil thickness” (durability) of the finish. Three thin coats will actually be less durable than a quality two finish coat job. Cheap contractors stretch finish thin when applying it. Three coats sounds like a better thing, but is only a repeat visit and more work for the contractor if the coverage is less than adequate.
2) Resins and solids content
This is a real hidden point of discussion for some floor companies, particularly low priced companies and large outfits. Waterborne finishes have a protective resin suspended in water that is the “thing” that provides durability. The chemical composition of this resin has a tremendous impact on durability. Cheap floor finishes have weak resins and are “watery” with coverage rates near 600-700 square feet per gallon. They are lower in solids (the resins that provides durability).
3) Two component versus one component waterbased finish
One component floor finishes have minimal scuff and scratch resistance. They rely simply on oxygen to link the finish resins. Two component finishes rely upon a chemical crosslinker to “matricize” the finish resins and form a really tough scuff resistant floor. In talking with several finish chemists during NWFA schools, I have found that two component finishes fare almost twice as well in taber abrasion tests that test durability. For a perspective single component finishes can be about $25-50 per gallon, where a quality two component waterborne ranges from $80-110 per gallon.
CHEAP ONE COMPONENT FLOOR FINISH
DURABLE TWO COMPONENT FLOOR FINISH
My Point!!!!
Ask your contractor about these points. Why? Because if they don’t have an answer they are NOT a professional. They are a “guy with a sander” who can multiply a square foot price and use a tape measure. Please make a fair comparison when evaluating floor refinishing estimates. Otherwise you will be taken for a ride by a snake oil salesman and have a worn out floor in two years.
Tags: Hardwood floor durability, hardwood floor finish, hardwood refinishing, low-VOC hardwood floor finish, waterbased finish
Posted in Floor Finishing, Hardwood floor durability | No Comments »
Real world waterbased finish
Sunday, April 4th, 2010
I get asked so often about finish durability. Honestly, my answer is always to explain the features of various finishes and suggest only the types of products I would use on my own home.
Two years ago in April 2010 I applied three finish coats of Glitsa HP two component waterbased finish to my floor (Matte sheen). Today while I was cleaning my floors using our suggested method and was really impressed with how they still look great. My children are two boys ages 4.5 and 2.5 (they’re wild and crazy) and they are my best testers along with my dog who is young and crazy. The photo below is pretty much the best proof I can give you for the real world performance of a finish. No hyped marketing behind this one, just real world for someone else to see if they are wondering about durability.
This isn’t that I am sold on only one particular finish, just that I have this product in my house on a daily basis and can personally vouch for how well it performs in durability.
Tags: Hardwood floor durability, hardwood floor finish, hardwood refinishing, low-VOC hardwood floor finish, waterbased finish
Posted in Contractor Perspectives, Hardwood floor durability | No Comments »
Hardwood finish and adhesion, the overlooked but critical factors
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
The tremendous range of hardwood floor finishes available these days has become almost exhausting to keep pace with any more. In the previous blogs we have discussed wood floor finish options and pro and cons. This blog has less to do with actual chemistry and understanding mechanisms of adhesion.
There are pretty much two ways by which hardwood floor finishes adhere to a floor, chemical or mechanical bonding. Chemically bonded finishes integrate into previous layers and essentially fuse into one layer of finish. Acid curing “Swedish” finishes will chemically bond to a wood floor and merge into one finish layer. The significant advantage of this type of bond is that it is virtually impossible for the finish to have adhesion problems to a wood floor regardless of the final burnishing steps or the species of the hardwood. Some species of hardwood contain a high content of oil and sometimes silica and this may create potential adhesion problems for a finish.
The second form of bonding of finish to a wood floor is a mechanical bond. A mechanical bond of a finish requires a roughed up surface so that finish can literally fall into the texture of that surface and “grab” the substrate. The layers of finish in a mechanically bonded system are much more sensitive to compatibility as they are applied in succession. For example, if you stain a wood floor with a penetrating stain, and then apply a weakly bonding quick dry oil sealer, followed by coats of waterborne urethane, there is a real chance for the finish layers to be torn off the floor following application of tape or some other sticky substrate. I have witnessed this firsthand and received many phone calls from distressed colleagues.
The final finishing grit of the sanding process can also affect adhesion. I know that there are sanding machines present that rotate with such significant speed that they may close down the grain of the hardwood floor at certain sandpaper grits so that a mechanically bonded finish will have problems sticking to the floor. In this case I recommend re-opening the grain by wetting or “water-popping” the floor.
A final and overlooked factor affecting finish adhesion occurs during abrasion of a finish coat layer in order to accept a new finish coat. The abrasives used to abrade the floor will typically become dull within a suggested square footage for usage. If a contractor continues to abrade the finish layer with a dull abrasive, the surface may again become too slick for the new finish layer to hold on. The result is that the finish will peel off the floor in big sheets.
Although this blog may not be particularly intriguing to all, it may serve as a reminder that there are sometimes questions to ask your contractor that go well beyond the price of the job.
Tags: adhesion, Hardwood floor durability, hardwood floor finish, low-VOC hardwood floor finish, Swedish finish
Posted in Floor Finishing, Hardwood floor durability | No Comments »
White Lines Syndrome
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
The latest trend in wood flooring has definitely been for darker floors and wider boards. Exotic wood flooring has also seen growth in market share. One of the unspoken problems is that when seasonal movement occurs within the boards of the floor some finishes can actually become stretched out during this process and they leave a white line down the seam of the boards. This problem is particularly bad with waterbased finishes that have come to dominate the market with low VOC laws emerging in many states. Waterborne finishes lay across the floor and essentially act as a hardened sheet of plastic that resists traffic.
Using an acid curing conversion varnish or true “Swedish” finish is the best option to prevent this problem. This is because the acid curing finishes will truly break their bond at the edge of each board and stick to the edges of that board during seasonal movement.
If you are planning a flooring project that requires wider boards, dark stain, or both I recommend thoroughly discussing the project with your contractor to prevent this problem. In fact there is so little published information for this problem because the industry doesn’t want you to know that there is a dark side to new technology. When white lines occur across your wood floor they almost always require a full refinish to remove and that is never a fun option for your time. If you would like more information please contact us for a PDF of the problem.
Tags: hardwood refinishing, low-VOC hardwood floor finish, Swedish finish, waterbased finish, white lines syndrome
Posted in Floor Finishing | No Comments »
