What is Acclimation? (Part 1 of 3)

Acclimation of flooring products may vary from one home to the next.  Acclimation is done according to your lifestyle and living conditions.  Some products are temperature sensitive, some are moisture sensitive, and a few are sensitive to both.

Most manufacturers of flooring products require that their products be placed in the installation area for proper acclimation.  Some list that no acclimation is needed at all for their product.  However, most of these have very specific site storage conditions before they are brought into the home, and specify the conditions on-site when the product is delivered.  In other words, the product is acclimated before it is brought to the site.  This could work well if the storage conditions fit your lifestyle.  But what happens if these conditions do not match your lifestyle?

By lifestyle, I mean at what temperature and relative humidity do you keep your home?  This may vary from summer to winter as the climate changes.  These changes are what determines the acclimation point.  In my household, we hold the temperature between 70-74 degrees year-round.  Our relative humidity ranges from 30% in the winter to around 40% in the summer.  Thus, we will want to find a flooring product that fits these parameters to insure the best chance of success.  Another member of our family has a temperature range of 60-74 degrees in their home.  I don’t know where they keep their relative humidity, but the acclimation point between the two homes would be very different because of the different lifestyles.

I have done inspection work in homes where the flooring was acclimated off-site, and the homeowner was given the parameters to keep the temperature and relative humidity during and after installation.  If the parameters do not fit your lifestyle, how long is it going to take for the conditions to be out of sync with the flooring and possibly cause concerns?  You are going to live in your lifestyle comfort zone and not someone else’s.  Because each home has a different lifestyle, I prefer on-site acclimation over off-site acclimation.

What products need to be acclimated?

The types of products that require acclimation are Vinyl, Luxury Vinyl Tile, Luxury Vinyl Planks, Solid Vinyl Tile, Solid Vinyl Planks, Laminate, Hardwoods of all types, and even Carpet.  Yes carpet!  You can have problems with carpet if the acclimation conditions are not correct. I probably missed a few products, so make sure to review the product’s installation instructions.

In the next couple of articles, I will go deeper into the different temperature and relative humidity concerns caused by not properly acclimating flooring products.  What are some of the challenges you have seen that make it difficult to achieve the proper acclimation before flooring is installed?

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