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Hardwood Care & Maintenance Guide

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General Care and Maintenance Instructions For Allwood Hardwood Floors

Now that you have beautiful Allwood flooring in your home, proper care is essential to keeping your floors beautiful for many, many years to come. Allwood Hardwood & Bamboo floors are high-quality premium floors, meeting or surpassing the industry standard. We guarantee maximum performance, under the conditions that your Allwood floors have been properly acclimated, installed and that they will be maintained, following the Allwood instructions below.

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General Cleaning

  • Vacuum or sweep the floor as often as needed to remove grit and dirt before they scratch or are ground into the floor’s surface. Vacuum only with brush or felt type attachments. Never use a vacuum with a beater bar head.
  • To clean the whole floor, use a cleaner specially formulated for hardwood floors and follow the directions. Spray and mop dry. Do not allow excess cleaner to remain on the floors. Do not use steam cleaner.
  • For spot cleaning, apply cleaner onto a clean cloth and rub onto the spot. Do not use abrasive pads or cleaners as they may damage the finish.
  • Never clean your hardwood floor with water or wet mop. The water will get into the floor and then dry out. The repeated wet-dry process will cause your floor to deteriorate very quickly, especially along the edges of floor boards.
  • Do not use oil soap, wax products, or cleaners that contain acidic material such as lemon or vinegar.
  • Remove any liquid spills right away using a towel or cloth. Other sources of water might be a leaking pipe, refrigerator malfunction, blocked drainage, open door or window when raining, condensation, or too much liquid cleaner. Damage is unavoidable when excess water gets onto the wood floor, but drying it immediately may limit the damage to a minimum.

Avoid Scratches

  • Use floor protectors on the feet of furniture to avoid scratches. There are several sizes of floor protector pads available. Certain types of casters on furniture may damage hardwood flooring. Barrel-type caster wheels or wide, flat glides are best for protecting your hardwood floor. If your furniture does not have the right type of casters, we recommend that you change them.
  • When moving heavy furniture or appliances, use extra caution to avoid scratching, indenting, and gouging. Some objects may be too heavy to be moved across a hardwood floor without proper floor covering, such as sheets of wood panels.
  • If your floor abuts exterior doors, put outside doormats at the entrances to keep dirt and moisture from being tracked in.
  • Inside, you may want to add area rugs to further prevent dirt and moisture from being tracked onto your hardwood floor. Make sure the backing of the rugs is soft. Hard and rigid backing may act like a sand paper to scratch your floor. Don’t use rubber or impermeable plastic mats as they may trap the moisture causing the floor to discolor or deteriorate. Always use permeable material.
  • Spike or stiletto high-heel shoes may cause denting and related damage to hardwood floors, due to the extremely high compressive force they generate.
  • Keep pets’ nails trimmed and smooth.

Retain Color

  • The color shade may change over time, just like clothing materials, due to the sun and its UV light. Use drapery or tinted glass to avoid strong sunlight. Too much sunlight may produce too much heat, causing the floor to dry out, the color to fade and the floor to contract or its surface to split.
  • The color of the floor under area rugs, furniture or any other objects that might block the sun light, will differ from the rest of the floors over time. If that’s a concern to you, these objects should be moved around occasionally to allow the sunlight to shine evenly over the entire floor.

Limit Expansion & Contraction

  • Environmental changes can adversely impact your hardwood floor. With changes in humidity, the MC of the wood changes, resulting in expansion or shrinkage of the flooring. Simply put, the floor will expand when the interior humidity increases and shrink when humidity decreases. The goal is to keep the expansion and contraction to a minimum by maintaining a consistent relative humidity.
  • The interior humidity should be kept at 30% – 50% as recommended by NWFA Installation Guidelines, or within a range that you and your installer have discussed and agreed upon, which is practical in your geographical region, before the flooring is acclimated and installed. For example, 35% – 55% may be more practical and controllable in your home.
  • Monitoring and regulating devices such as thermostat and humidistat should be in place and functioning at all times. Heating and air conditioning may be enough in some geographical locations and homes to keep the interior conditions satisfactory, while dehumidifiers or humidifiers may be needed in other homes. Many factors will affect the interior humidity, so the key is to measure and regulate.
  • Do not use equipment to add or remove moisture to or from the interior without regulating it.
  • Wood flooring should be one of the last jobs completed on any construction project. Future remodeling that may generate lots of moisture within the interior, such as masonry, plastering, texturing and painting, should be properly monitored and may require extra heating and dehumidification equipment to keep the interior humidity at the desired level.
  • Heat from a fire place, wood stove, electric heater, or sunbeams can dry out the floor in certain areas. Keep the floor temperature below 85°F in any event, by adding area rugs in front of the heat source and using draperies to shade the strong sun light.
  • The subfloor should be dry and structurally sound at all times. Make sure the vapor retarder won’t be damaged by other projects that might allow moisture to seep in. Basements and crawl spaces must be dry and well-ventilated. If radiant heat is installed, make sure the temperature of the subfloor does not exceed 85°F.

Repair Tips

Stains-

Stain spots caused by food, grease, etc.: Place a NO WAX cleaner on a clean cloth to remove the stain or spot. For stubborn stains, rub the stain spot with a dampened pad with cleaner. The pad should not be abrasive enough to scratch the finish. Most problems can be prevented or minimized by wiping up any spills immediately. When removing a spot, always begin at the outer edge and work towards the center to prevent the spot from spreading.

Chewing gum or candle wax: Apply a plastic bag filled with ice on top of the deposit until it becomes brittle enough to crumble off. After deposit has been removed from the surface of the floor, clean entire area with a NO WAX floor cleaner.

Scratches-

If the damage is a light scuff or scratch, try burnishing (rubbing) the area with a walnut. No, seriously I mean it…use the meat of a walnut. Both the natural oils and the slight grit of the walnut can polish away most light traffic and scratches.

If that doesn’t work, you will want to consult a professional flooring installer to either perform a spot repair or help by replacing individual planks. Since your floors are factory-finished, individual planks that are heavily gouged or damaged can be replaced if your flooring style is still available.

Squeaks-

When interior humidity is high, the floor will absorb moisture and expand, and the edges of boards may rub together, producing a squeaky sound. Care should be taken to control humidity levels within the 30%-50% range (or other range determined before the flooring was installed.) To quiet it temporarily, sprinkling a liberal amount of talcum powder between the squeaking boards will usually quiet things down. For glued-down floors with squeaking boards or loose popping sounds, inquire about the standard adhesive repair kit at your local retailer. Take care to not obstruct the expansion joints around the perimeter of your floors.

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2 Comments

Leave your reply.
  • Thomas Clarence
    · Reply

    at 8:05 PM

    My wife and I are thinking it would be a good idea to have some hardwood floors installed in our kitchen, but we are worried that our kids will scratch it by dragging the chairs across the floor. We appreciate the advice you shared about using protectors on the feet of the chairs. Hopefully, by using protectors we will be able to prevent any kind of scratches from being created.

  • Rebecca Gardner
    · Reply

    at 6:22 PM

    Thanks for explaining that we can use a floor covering to prevent scratching when moving heavy furniture. My husband and i really want to have timber flooring installed in our living and dining rooms to make the space feel more elegant. I appreciate you sharing this info and teaching me how to keep the floors in the best possible shape!

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Discover Your Color

It starts here. The perfect color choice combined with the right wood will make the floor you will love for years and years.

Contact Us

Allwood Hardwood & Bamboo Flooring
PO Box 1788,
Tualatin, OR 97062
Tel: 503-225-7976
Fax: 503-225-2017

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Amazing products is what we make. Helping others is what we love. Our Story

DEDICATION TO CARING

Our promise is really very simple...we care. We care about the products we make, the people we work with, and the planet we all share.

Caring is why we are very selective of who can sell Allwood products, because we know how hard our retail partners work and we want to forge lasting relationships with them. Concentrating on hand-picked showrooms in strategic locations, and giving them the tools they need, helps our partners to provide exceptional service and creates the best consumer experience possible.

And Caring is also why we focus on developing products that are responsibly produced, precision crafted, and sustainably made from 100% real wood or bamboo. Not only do we want to be good stewards of natural resources, we strive to be conscientious of what we are leaving behind as well. Wood is the only flooring product that comes from, and returns back to, the earth. That’s why you will never find printed laminates, plastics, or unnatural materials at Allwood.

Builders prefer working with Allwood products because they are made to exact quality standards. Designers appreciate the selection of relevant colors and styles. And home owners love that Allwood floors continue looking great even years after installation.

This dedication to caring has underscored our first two decades in business. And now, as we move into our next twenty years, it drives us even more to make the best floors we can—putting people and planet first.

BECOME A DISPLAYING RETAILER

You’ve seen our products. You like how they look. And maybe you are wondering how to become one of our trusted partners. It’s important you know we select only a limited number of retail locations within each region. That way, we can focus on quality, availability, and great service. And you can concentrate on helping your customers with less worry about other competitive retailers in your area. We also understand the value of showroom real estate and want to give you the tools you need without eating up valuable space.We try to create a complete product offering in a small footprint. For greater flexibility, we have multiple displaying programs that include the entire Allwood portfolio or separate programs for the Hardwood and Bamboo lines. The Allwood brand is growing rapidly, we are adding new partners all the time. So, if you are interested, make sure to contact us today at 1-503-255-7976 or CARE@Allwoodgrp.com.

CARB2 COMPLIANCE

The California Air Resources Board Phase 2 (CARB2) is a certification process by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) with an aim to reduce formaldehyde emissions and protect the public from airborne toxic contaminants. Gaining the CARB2 compliant seal indicates a product has formaldehyde levels well within what CARB2 limits considers safe. Fitting with our values, Allwood ensures all of our products either meet or exceed environmentally conscientious standards, and make the choice to have our products all CARB2 certified.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Allwood Hardwood & Bamboo Flooring PO Box 1788, Tualatin, OR 97062 Tel: 503-255-7976 Fax: 503-255-2071 Care@allwoodgrp.com www.Allwoodgrp.com
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Mix them up and choose your favorite swatch.

All
Hardwood
Bamboo
Dark
Light
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Blacks
Neutral
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Grey
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Allwood Hardwood & Bamboo Flooring
PO Box 1788,
Tualatin, OR 97062

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Tel: 503-255-7976
Fax: 503-255-2017

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