Healthy
Home Information
Regular
Maintenance | Establishing A New Lawn
| Wood Floor Maintenance
 You've
invested in your home and want to maintain your home at
its optimal condition. To achieve this goal, it is necessary
to perform regular maintenance both in and outside of your
home. This includes establishing your yard as well. Below
you will find tips and information to help you keep your
new home looking new for years.
Regular
Maintenance
Anytime
-
 Spring
March
April
- Exterior Walls: Check painted surfaces
for deterioration
- Heating and Cooling: Evaluate and
service central air conditioning or humidifier every spring
- Roof: Check for damaged, loose, blistered
or missing shingles.
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May
- Foundation: Maintain grading sloped
away from foundation walls.
- Plumbing: Check faucets, hose bibs
and valves for leakage.
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Establishing
A New Lawn
Establishing
a lawn is labor-intensive and often an expensive process.
You should seriously consider having a soil test as it is
impossible to determine what the existing fertility level
of a soil is by looking at it. Once you have established
the appropriate fertility and seeded the lawn area, you
will want to mulch the area with a light layer of straw
to help conserve moisture. After germination, do not attempt
to  immediately
remove the straw. Until seeds germinate and emerge, it is
necessary to keep the top half inch of the soil moist. This
may require watering every day. After emergence reduce the
watering but maintain adequate moisture in the top six inches
of soil. Begin mowing the grass as soon as it is high enough
to be mowed, and do not remove more than one third of the
top growth in a single cutting. Do not cut cool-season grasses
lower than three inches.
Download
a Maintaining
Your Lawn Brochure in Virginia from the Virginia Tech
web site.
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Wood
Floor Maintenance
Wood floors can be kept looking like new, year after year,
with minimum care. A good rule of thumb is vacuum and/or
damp mop weekly. A damp mop can be used for spills, and
when necessary general cleanup on floors which have non-waxed
polyurethane or a similar surface finish. Never pour water
on the floor. While a damp mop may be used on polyurethane
and other surface finishes, excessive amounts of water seep
between the boards and into small scratches causing deterioration
of finishes. Basic rules relative to floor maintenance:
 Gaps
are the most common cause of complaints on wood floors. It
is normal for the interior of homes to become dry during heating
seasons. Under this circumstance wood floors also dry out
and shrink slightly. Properly made and properly installed
wood floors should be expected to have hairline gaps between
boards in dry months in most areas. Depending on the width
of the boards used, the size of the room and the severity
and duration of low outside temperatures (and the intensity
of heating), the term hairline gaps can have various interpretations.
Generally, hairline gaps can be considered to be normal if,
in strips 2-1/4" wide or less:
- The gaps close up during non-heating
months
- The gaps are not wider than the thickness
of a dime in some locations
- The gaps vary from the thickness
of paper in most areas to scattered large gaps up to the
thickness of a dime
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Plank or strip floors sometimes "panelize"
due to movement of under floor construction, or if the finish
cements individual boards into panel, so that all the shrinkage
is concentrated into only a few gaps, with other joints remaining
tight together. In this event, the gaps that do appear will
be considerably wider than the thickness of a dime. If the
floor expands so that the gaps disappear in high humidity
season, it should be considered normal.
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There are several other reasons for
gaps in floors and these have little relationship to jobsite
moisture. These include:
- Foundation settlement
- Over-drying above forced air heating
ducts
- Fatigued sub-floor materials
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Normal gaps: If normal,
in the sense the gaps close up in summer months, no repairs
are practical. Any filler used to fill up gaps when they appear
(i.e., when the floor is dry) will be pushed out as the wood
expands when it picks up moisture. In the process fillers,
some of which are as hard as wood, can crush and damage edges
of boards. Thus, the fillers may cause uglier gaps than those
Mother Nature forced on the floors, and the process of filling
solves nothing.
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Abnormal gaps: Even floors
which have gone through a very high period of moisture absorption,
then dried to leave abnormal gaps, can be repaired by a professional
however, gaps may never be completely mitigated. If the floor
has a surface finish (i.e., Polyurethane), matching filler
should be troweled into all gaps. When dry, the floor can
be screened and a new coat of Polyurethane applied.
Installation of a whole-house humidifier
can help relieve gaps associated with over-drying of hardwoods.
We recommend each Purchaser research and consider installation
of an adequately sized humidification system.
Our recommendation: Enjoy your hardwood
floors. Follow prescribed maintenance procedures and accept
that gaps, as defined above, are inherent characteristics
of this beautiful but imperfect product.
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