What Not Using a Wood Moisture Meter Could Cost You

Moisture issues aren’t always obvious, and they can cost you more than you think.

Time. Money. Materials. Warranties. Reputation. Just to name a few.

You put these things at risk if you skip accurate moisture testing with a wood moisture meter.

And moisture-related woodworking issues aren’t specific to one profession.

Hardwood flooring installers could wind up with cupping, gapping, or buckling in an otherwise perfectly-installed floor. Or woodworkers with cracked tabletops, luthiers with split soundboards, cabinet makers with doors that don’t line up, sawmill operators with stacks of lumber with significantly reduced value…

You get the picture.

Improper moisture levels make up one of the biggest culprits of wood product failure. And it can lead to costly customer callbacks and even litigation.

But relax. When you regularly monitor moisture levels with a wood moisture meter, you’ll crack more smiles instead of cracking pieces of wood.

Let’s talk about:

• Why Moisture Matters
• The True Cost of Not Using a Wood Moisture Meter
• The Risk to Different Types of Wood Professionals
• Flooring Installers
• Woodworkers, Cabinet Makers, and Luthiers
• Lumber Suppliers and Sawmills
• How to Avoid Costly Mistakes
• Why Use a Wood Moisture Meter?

You’ll get a clear picture of exactly why accurate moisture testing matters and how to avoid costly woodworking mistakes.

Let’s start with an overview of the basics.

How Moisture Affects Wood

Wood is hygroscopic, meaning it absorbs and releases moisture based on the relative humidity (RH) and temperature of the surrounding air. When wood absorbs moisture, it swells. When it loses moisture, it shrinks. This process is normal. But extremes in either direction can lead to warped wood and product failure—especially after you plane it and use it in a project.

Wood will continue to shrink or expand until it reaches equilibrium moisture content (EMC). That’s when the moisture content (MC) in the wood and air become equal.
But wood will start trying to reach EMC all over again if the humidity or temperature in the air around it changes. It can even happen to kiln-dried wood.

And it’s important to keep this in mind, because as a study from Purdue University points out:

“Moisture content changes of only a few percent are sufficient to cause significant shrinking and swelling of wood.”¹

If you assume wood is fully acclimated without using a wood moisture meter to confirm it, you’re taking an expensive gamble.

Wood dries from the outside in, meaning moisture content in wood isn’t usually obvious by look or feel alone. Wood hides most of its moisture in the middle.

If you start a project before wood reaches EMC throughout, you risk warping, adhesive failure, poorly aligned joints, mold growth, and more.

That’s why measuring wood moisture beneath the surface is a must at every stage of the project—from the sawmill to the moment the customer takes ownership.

And to do that, you need an accurate wood moisture meter.

What Moisture Issues in Wood Can Cost You

Since wood is so responsive to moisture, you can see why moisture meters aren’t a luxury. They’re a necessity.

Whatever wood-related profession you’re in, you put your work at risk if you don’t monitor moisture content in wood.

Here’s what’s at stake:

• Money – You risk paying for extra materials or court costs, not to mention losing money from other jobs you have to put on pause.
• Time – Time is one resource you can’t ever recover. And it disappears when you’re sorting through who’s at fault, returning to finished jobs, and delaying your next project.
• Opportunities – Tackling problems caused by moisture on your last project can cost you other job opportunities that you no longer have time to accept.
• Reputation and Referrals – Even if you fix the wood moisture damage, a damaged reputation is much harder to fix. Reviews and word-of-mouth referrals are the lifeblood of business.
• Business liability – Without proof that you took the right steps, you’re more likely to wind up stuck in court, which hits your profit margin and your business reputation.
• Voided Warranties – Many flooring manufacturers require documentation showing their products reached an acceptable MC range prior to installation.

The costs can look a little different depending on your line of work, so let’s break down those details next.

The Risk of Not Testing Wood Moisture to Different Professions

Do moisture testing before installation to prevent flooring failures.

Whether you’re a flooring installer, woodworker, luthier, or lumber mill operator, you’re at risk of moisture issues undermining your work. Here’s the good news: With a reliable tool to measure moisture, you can protect your investment.

But depending on your profession, the cost of skipping moisture measurement might look a little different. And the type of moisture measurement tool (or tools) you need may differ, too.

Let’s break down the costs and solutions for three major categories of wood professionals.

Flooring Installers: Costly Callbacks and Flooring Failures

Picture this. You finish a hardwood flooring installation and move on to the next job. But a few weeks later, you get a gut-sinking call from the customer or contractor. The flooring failed, and they expect you to replace it.

Maybe it was buckling, cupping, adhesive failure, or something else too severe to reverse or repair.

You pause your next project, scrap the failed materials, and reinstall more hardwood flooring. That’s time and money you can’t get back.

But let’s say you were confident you weren’t the one at fault. Without proof that the flooring materials reached the right MC prior to installation, it limits your options. It can void the flooring warranty, the customer could take you to court, and you could lose tens of thousands of dollars.

However, if you measured and recorded acceptable MC in the planks with a moisture meter before installation, you can prove that fixing the floor isn’t your responsibility.

In the long run, having a quality wood moisture meter worth a few hundred dollars is a pretty low-cost piece of insurance.

Here’s one last thing to keep in mind when it comes to preventing moisture issues: Subfloor moisture can also cause flooring failures.

If it’s a wood subfloor, you can test MC with a wood moisture meter.

But concrete subfloors need to acclimate, too. And this requires concrete-specific moisture testing prior to installation.

The gold standard for making stand-alone flooring installation decisions based on the slab is with RH moisture testing. Wagner’s Rapid RH® L6 is one tool that does this. It reveals moisture deep inside the slab, where the moisture hides. You can get close numbers within a couple of hours, and it only takes 24 hours to get full ASTM-compliant readings.

But if RH testing simply doesn’t fit your budget or timetable, you have the option of using a concrete moisture meter (like Wagner’s C555).

Concrete moisture meters satisfy the ASTM F2659 standard for locating moisture hotspots in slab. But since they don’t meet the ASTM F2170 standard for making a final installation decision, it’s best to follow whatever the flooring manufacturer requires.

Bottom line: You can arm yourself against costly flooring failure with the right tool.

Woodworkers, Cabinet Makers and Luthiers: Warped and Cracked Creations

A woodworker prepares wood to use for a project.

Here’s another scenario. You craft a unique tabletop from a beautiful piece of black walnut. But the next morning, you notice a crack. Thank heavens you caught it before you shipped it. But it still costs you time and money. And what if that had happened after your customer already received it?

You shudder to think of the potential cost to your reputation.

Whether you’re working with furniture, musical instruments, cabinets, or custom woodwork of other kinds, moisture issues can hurt your success.

We already talked about the loss of time, money, and reputation.

But let’s look at a few moisture-related issues woodworkers can prevent.

• Furniture makers: Poor-fitting joints, cracked and warped tabletops, dull finishes, glue failure, sticking drawers, and more.
• Cabinet makers: Doors that don’t line up, joint separation, twisted frames, and more.
• Luthiers: Splitting soundboards, neck warping, poor sound quality, and more.
• Artisanal woodworkers and wood turners: Warped bowls, uneven finishes, distorted shapes, and more.

Prevention is simple.

It often comes down to using a high-quality wood moisture meter to measure moisture content in wood. Then you’ll know when it’s safe to start your project.

Lumber Suppliers and Sawmills: Inventory Losses and Refunds

Proper drying and storage is critical to the future use of wood in any project

If you’re a lumber mill operator, wood drying is a major part of what you do. Proper drying and storage on your end can make or break the lumber quality for other professionals who purchase from you.

Gene Wengert, “The Wood Doctor,” reported that even a “3% MC loss will result in ¾ percent shrinkage in width across the grain.”²

This might not sound like much at first, but if the bulk of the drying happens in your customer’s hands, they’ll take notice. And next time, they might take their business elsewhere.

If you sell lumber labeled as “dry” but still harbors moisture in the middle, or if you sell lumber that was overly dried, it’ll shrink or expand to reach EMC at its new location. And both cases can lead to moisture-related wood damage.

Here’s what that can cost you:

• Refunds
• Lost sales
• Unhappy customers
• Damaged business reputation
• Loss of major, consistent clients

Let’s look at the cost and impact of lumber moisture issues related to drying.

Over-drying softwoods can cause:

• Degrade, such as knots, falling out, twisting, cracking, blemishes, and dullness
• Reduction in board value
• Losses of thousands to even millions of dollars

Over-drying hardwoods can cause:

• Serious and often irreversible damage—like brittleness, cracking, excess shrinkage, and warping
• Defects in the producer’s final product, which can cause them to question lumber quality
• A damaged reputation for the producer, which can also reflect poorly on the sawmill where they sourced their wood

Under-drying by softwood and hardwood mills can cause:

• Excess wood shrinking as it tries to reach the EMC of the customer’s environment—which can cause cracks, splits, warps, and more
• The customer having to take on most of the drying costs
• Returned lumber and requested refunds
• Injured business relationships and reputations

What’s a simple solution to guard against the cost of lumber moisture issues? Consistent moisture measurement during the drying process.

For large operations like lumber mills, you’ll want a moisture measurement system specific to sawmills, planers, and kilns. For example:

• Industrial Handheld Moisture Meters and Lumber Probes, like Wagner’s L620. It was built to provide accurate moisture testing in an industrial environment.
• In-Line Systems, like Wagner’s Omega In-Line Moisture Measurement System. It provides moisture measurement, detection, and data analysis for primary and secondary wood product manufacturers.

Before we wrap up, let’s dig into a few more details about problem prevention.

How to Use a Wood Moisture Meter to Avoid Costly Mistakes

By now, you probably know the answer. You need to measure moisture with an accurate wood moisture meter. But we’ll cover a few details about how to choose the best moisture meter and how to use it.

We’ll focus on handheld, non-industrial moisture meters.

Pinless vs. Pin-Type Moisture Meters: Which One Works Best?

We recommend using a pinless wood moisture meter because it accurately measures larger areas without damaging the wood. But we’ll list a few pros and cons of each so you can choose the best wood moisture meter for your typical project.

Pin-type Meters (meters with damaging pins):

Pros:

• More attachments for measuring different depths
• Works on rough and uneven wood

Cons:

• Requires a hammer probe with insulated pins to read beyond the surface
• Pokes two holes in every part of the wood you test
• Pins can break, bend, or corrode
• It only measures the area between the pins
• The pins are sensitive to temperature
• Some find it challenging to fully press the pins into the wood.

Pinless Meters (meters without damaging pins):

Pros:

• Takes readings much, much faster
• Doesn’t damage the wood
• Easier because you don’t need to puncture the wood
• Has a plate instead of pins, making it capable of scanning larger areas
• Some can measure two depths with a single meter (like Wagner’s Orion® 950)

Cons:

• Limited number of depths available (usually 0.25″ and 0.75″).
• Must measure on smooth, dry surfaces

A few other qualities to look for in any moisture meter:

• High quality. Cheaper ones can give inaccurate readings, which defeats the entire purpose.
• A good warranty, like the 7-year warranty on Wagner’s Orion meters
• Calibrated for many different wood species—the more the better
• On-demand calibration, so you don’t need to return it to the manufacturer
• Does EMC calculations for you
• Smart app integration, like FloorSmart™ or Woodshop MC, so you can monitor moisture using your phone
• Data collection and storage—great for liability protection

Now for a quick run-through of how to use a moisture meter.

Best Practices for Checking Moisture Before You Choose or Use Wood

A Pinless Wood Moisture Meter Makes It Quick and Easy to Prevent Moisture Issues

Wood moisture meters do more than help you decide when your wood is acclimated. You can prevent moisture issues right from the start by taking one with you to select wood. Choosing wood that’s close to the final EMC for its environment can speed up acclimation and lower the risk of cupping, buckling, warping, and other moisture-related issues.

Let’s go through some basic steps for using a pinless wood moisture meter:

1. Turn it on.
2. Set it to the wood species you’re measuring.
3. Find a smooth, flat, and dry surface on the wood and press the meter against it.C
4. heck the reading.
   • It gives you the wood’s MC percentage.
   • Some also calculate EMC for you based on the RH and temperature.
5. Take readings of a few different spots on the same board.
   • Do two to three scans per board, with a combo of faces and edges.
   • For a load of lumber, the general guideline is to check 40 pieces for every 1,000 square feet³. Or 5-10% of the total number.
6. Take an average of your readings.

Once you use a pinless moisture meter a couple times, it’ll only take seconds to get accurate moisture readings.

It’s smart to take measurements during three crucial stages of a project:

1. When selecting quality wood to purchase
2. Right after the wood arrives at your storage area or jobsite
3. Right before you start your project, to make sure the wood is fully acclimated

It may feel like you’re adding extra steps, but in the end, it’s well worth it.

Arm Yourself With a Wood Moisture Meter

Why use a moisture meter if it takes more time and money on the front end? A high-quality, pinless wood moisture meter can cost you between $200 to $700. But preventing moisture issues can save you thousands of dollars, countless hours, and devastating blows to your reputation in the long run.

So it’s not hard to see why every professional who works with wood needs an accurate wood moisture meter.

Whether you install floors, build bookshelves, or run a lumber mill, here’s what a moisture meter can help you do:

• Start with wood that’s closer to the desired EMC
• Get a clear picture of when your wood is acclimated
• Feel empowered to adjust and accelerate acclimation
• Cut down on the costs of fixing moisture-related issues
• Reduce the chance of ending up in court
• Receive more job referrals and have the bandwidth to do them
• Protect your reputation and your business

Don’t let your projects, your profit, or your business go unprotected.

Invest in a high-quality moisture meter today.

Explore Wagner’s line of wood moisture meters and moisture measurement systems.

Jason Wright

Jason Wright, Business Development Specialist for New Products, joined Wagner Meters in 2019. He comes to Wagner with over 35 years of experience in the flooring industry.