I installed a prefinished hardwood floor a few months ago. It was 3/8 inch thick pre-finished koa from lumber liquidators. The homeowner called me the other day with the complaint that it is severly bowing up in numerous places, probably due to the sudden increase in temperature around here… and they have been a little stingy with the ac.
I’ve looked at it now, and pulled up a few peices to see what’s going on.
When the customer purchaced the floor, they did as I advised an let it set in the house for about a week prior to installation. For the install I used the bostich 3/8 pnumatick floor stapler with 1 1/14 staples which I installed about every 6 inches, which was about twice as often as I had been advised to do. Around the parameter of the room, I did leave a 3/8 expansion area to be hidden under the wall trim, (which I don’t think is that important with a nail down floor like it is with a floating floor, but I did it anyway.)
At the areas where the boards are buckling up, (which is enough to trip over) which is about ever 4 feet more or less (perpendicual to the run of the boards) it looks like the boards have become over size by 1/16 of an inch. The staples are all stead fast into the floor, but have pulled thru the tounge of the flooring
I’ve started repairing the floor by taking out rows that are buckling where the boards have become to big to fit side by side anymore, and I’m planning them down to fit widthwise, and re-installing with generous PL underneth direct glue to subfloor, and pin nails through the top to tack in place while glue dries. It’s fixing the problem now, although of course I do imagin when the boards shrink back in the colder seasons, there will be some gappage where I made the repairs.
Anyone run into this before. Anything special about koa (forgive the spelling if I got it wrong), or is there anything that would not have been strait forward about installing 3/8 prefinished flooring.
Thanks
One other detail… it’s on the 2nd story of a slab foundation house, and I did put tar paper under the flooring.
Replies
Sounds to me like a week wasn't long enoug to acclimate, or it was left boxed up. Sucks .
Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
"We strive for conversion,we get lost in conversation, and wallow in consternation. "
Me.
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I installed a prefinished hardwood floor a few months ago. It was 3/8 inch thick pre-finished koa from lumber liquidators. The homeowner called me the other day with the complaint that it is severly bowing up in numerous places, probably due to the sudden increase in temperature around here... and they have been a little stingy with the ac.
betcha $50 a moisture meter will tell you excess moisture
the owner is the only one who can control the interior Relative Humidity... and sinced you're in NC... that means they have to turn on their A/C
if they don't change their ways, this is only the beginning of the buckeling
edit.... i know nothing about koa.... or even what it is
and i have zero faith in Lumber Liquidators
Edited 6/6/2008 9:42 pm ET by MikeSmith
Koa is a beutiful Hawaiin wood, often used in stringed instruments.
No charge.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
"We strive for conversion,we get lost in conversation, and wallow in consternation. "Me.
I'm guessing the flooring being 3/8 is going to make it more prone to buckling as well, where as 3/4 stuff, while still could buckle, might resist a little better due to the thicker sides against each other. Perhaps if I do another 3/8 solid wood floor, I'll be even more generous with the staples...
I did check back with the homeowner tonight, and he concured that flooring sat in his house (upstairs) for 2 weeks before we installed it... of course that was toward the end of winter, and this is summer. Still, it just dosn't seem right to have to keep your house perfectly climate controlled to keep the hardwood floor from explodeing into a buckled up mess.
Coincidintally, I'm getting ready to start installing another prefinished floor of the exact same kind of wood from lumber liquidators, for another customer. He will be using 3/4 material though. ...I'll be paying a lot of attention to any post that show up here in the next few days.
Thanks.
If you don't own a good moisture meter, either buy one now or stop installing wood flooring. The subfloor and the flooring need to be within ~1% MC of each other. If not, you could easily have problems. A week to acclimate might be enough if the materials are very close in MC, otherwise you need to wait until they are.
You mention the material is 3/8" thick, but how wide is it?
If you install during a dry heating season, I would install with some space between the boards. Hard to do with a flooring nailer. You may need to use very thin shims between rows to prevent them from driving tight together. I have seen installers use a putty knife between the boards to prevent the gap from closing. Then they pull it out and move on to the next fastener. Tedious but maybe necessary.
Re Lumber Liquidators, I have heard tons of negatives about their material. I've never been there or used their stuff, but it sounds bottom of the barrel.
Edited 6/7/2008 12:39 am by davidmeiland
I'll get a moisture meter. Any recomendations to which one to get?
and I am curious... I sounded like you already didn't like lumber liquidators. Bad experiences there before?
Just curious is it true Koa since Koa is extremely rare? At least in Hawaii.
Wallyo
The wood you used was Brazilian Koa?
AKA: Tigerwood
This is a beautiful but insanely hard wood and very prone to splintering. I would not nail tigerwood closer than 3" from the end of a board. A 3/8" solid hardwood floor is very prone to movement and its environment needs to be controlled. Too wet and it will buckle, too dry and it will cup.
Check the spacings at your walls, it is likely the room left for expansion was not enough. If it is tight, cut back the drywall or the floor.
I'm not a big fan of PL-Premium in floor repairs. It expands slightly as it sets.
"Perfect is the enemy of Good." Morrison
I'll be getting a moisture meter, and the other stuff I've been reading on the web is saying to be with in 4% of the moisture of the subfloor prior to installation.
We did let the wood set in the house for 2 weeks after they bought it which exceeded the directions on the cartons for 72 hrs. What would be a real world worst case senario for how long wood might have to stay in a house before it aclimated to the subfloor?
It does sound like they should be keeping their house better balanced thru out the year as far as humity and temperature (although I still don't buy that extreme inside temperature changes should cause a floor to buckel up - maybe severe cupping, crowning, cracking or whatever... this thing self destructed). I'd say they proabley had it in the upper 60so to low 70's when I installed it, and it sounded like they let it get in the upper 80's or maybe low 90's when it started buckling the other day. What would be a "window" that they should stay in... "+ or - 5 degrees"?
Does this mean spring or fall are the perfered times of year that a hardwood floor should be installed? I'm also starting to guess that while the wood is being aclimated, the thermostat should be set to an "average" year round inside temperature.
It is not the tempature.It is the HUMIDITY.Wood moves a lot in width with increase in humidity..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
"What would be a real world worst case senario for how long wood might have to stay in a house before it acclimated to the subfloor? "There is no good single answer for that.While 2-3 weeks is typical for me, the answer is the amount of time it takes for the flooring to approximate ( within 2-3% MC ) the subfloor MC.Typical proiblem is to assume just placing it in the house for a week or soo does it, but when the product is boxed and wrapped, no air flow gets to it, so almost no moisture exchange happens. That is why the rec of using a meter to check before install.The big Q that has been ranging in my mind over this is how wide is this flooring relative to the 3/8" thickness. Wider than 2-1/4" is disproportionate, but it would not surprise me to hear that yours is 4". Also, was this prefinished on one side only? I follow the theory that this sort of wood should be treated equally on both sides so that moisture movement is the same or more nearly so on both sides. I pre-seal flooring on the back sides before installation. The wider the flooring is relative to the thickness, the more necessary this is.I also question the wisdom of using twice as many staples as recommended. This forces all the movement to happen in each individual piece - adding to the damage, instead of letting the whole floor stretch as a unit.Finally as to LL, they are a terrible place to do business, and half their product lines are culls, IMO.
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"There is no good single answer for that.While 2-3 weeks is typical for me, the answer is the amount of time it takes for the flooring to approximate ( within 2-3% MC ) the subfloor MC."I hope that you mean within 203 percentage POINTS..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
two hundred and three ???NO, what I meant was that if the subfloor is 11% MC, the new flooring should be 11% plus or minus three percent or 8-14%
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That was a typo 203 should have been 2-3."NO, what I meant was that if the subfloor is 11% MC, the new flooring should be 11% plus or minus three percent or 8-14%"But you are talking about percentage POINTS, not percentage.Plus or minus 3% of 115 would be 10.67 - 11.33%.Don't worry. Most newspaper reports don't understand the difference either..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Edited 6/14/2008 11:50 pm by BillHartmann
I really think that overnailing is a problem, not just with flooring. You covered the subject of expansion well, but nobody has addressed the issue of expansion for very different types of wood, from a moisture perspective.
If the subfloor is a typical subfloor, which it probably is, it will absorb and release moisture at a different rate as compared to some exotic hardwoods.
My guess is that those posters who talked about flooring staying tight and true over many years are dealing with a subfloor that has a close relationship with the finished floor, from a moisture transport perspective.
My point is: Even if you acclimate the new flooring to the home at the time of installation (whenever during the year that might be) and make sure that the moisture meter registers approximately equal for both subfloor and finish floor, if the expansion and compression ratios are significantly different, there is no good way to prevent buckling issues in moist times and shrinking issues in dry times.
I think that even if the subfloor and the finish floor have a similar rate of moisture release, they also need to be of approximately the same thickness as this would also limit the expansion differential.
I got down in the crawlspace with the moisture meter today, and found that everything down there was reading high, at least compaired to the rest of the house. in the crawlspace I was getting around 17% on the joist, etc...
I found that about a 3rd of the cs vents were not open, so I opened them. The do have a vapor barior spread out better than most houses do (98% coverage - pretty much everywhere, just not glued to the walls or anything like that). I saw one place where the soil looked a little wet adjacent to a pipe penatration thru the foundation wall. nothing major, about a 2 or 3 square feet of moist soil... nothing I having seen under a hundred other houses after a rainy day, but perhaps that's all it takes for this one.
The do have a slope toward the house on one of the gable ends, which does have a few rows of landscaping timbers to somewhat slow the flow of water... so I talked to him about at least putting in a landscaping drainage pipe on that side of the house.
He's going to stick some fans under the house to assist the venting, and we also mentioned putting a perminent de-humidifier down there.
I'm starting to visualize a waiver getting signed before I put this floor in.
I see that youare in NC.Wny do you want to pump moisture into the crawlspace?.
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Don't understand why you ask that question... none of us want to pump moisture into the crawspace. Are you saying that putting a couple of fans in the crawspace vents to increase air circulation or a dehumidifier will only make matters worse?
Should I be going for the "clean space" approach where we seal everything down there airtight and then open it to the HVAC system?
Edited 6/17/2008 8:25 am ET by drbgwood
crawl spaces are difficult.. in our coastal climate.. vents CAN add to the moisture
especially in a foggy August
i like making the crawl part of the conditioned space.. either with the dehumidifier... or including it in the AC system..
the other thin is the huge winter swing... the heating system will shrink everything right up ( some will get down to 6% ) unless you add humidificationMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
I lived in an area that got 80-140 inches of rain per year and there it was required to have a lot of venting under the floor in the crawl space. If you open the crawl space to the outside then it will come closer to having the same percent moisture as the outside air. If you close it up then you are asking for problems. Closing it up would be like sealing a box to the ground. All of the moisture would have to pass through the floor for the air conditioner to get it out of the building.If the dew point is reached inside of the subfloor or on the bottom the subfloor most likely mold would form. Linoleum floors would not help that matter either.
We're going to stick a de-humidifier down there and see what happens over the next few days. A friend of mine has had one in his crawspace for some time now and says it works just fine. Seems like the most practical thing to try at this point. We'll close all the vents once it's down there as well. If it does the job, it will become a perminent fixture down there.
don't forget ... the RH will swing the other way in the heating seasonMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Got it. I'm thinking the defumidifier will have a sensor - a humistat, that we can set to maintain constant year round humidity.
but inside the conditioned space ... th e DEhumidifier will not help you in the wintermost homes need a humidifier in the winter... at least in or heating zone or colderMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Another question... How important is an "expansion gap" around the parameter of a nail down hard wood floor. I've always givin about 3/8 to 1/4 for floating floors, and I did so with this nail down as well, but it dosn't seem like it would really matter that much with a nail down... and I have seen other installers nail down floors right up to the wall.
Expansion gap is only important when a problem starts to happen. I always try to make mine the max it can be and still be covered by the base board I usually have a sample piece of base w or w/o shoe base depending. with me as I am putting the floor in to be sure there are no gaps between floor and base. Gaps are less critical on board ends, and more important on the width side of the boards.I have seen a house with no gaps, just did a bath remodel on one, sub floor was framed exterior walls put up roof on, then they laid the oak exterior wall to exterior wall . After that the interior walls were framed the flooring runs under all interior walls. The floor is 40 years old, no problems, luck of the draw I guess.I think a quarter inch is too tight, 1/2 + - a bit unless I have a real wide base then I go bigger.If you pulled up the base is the flooring expanded so as to hit the walls?What does the supplier have to say?Also 3/8 is thin and proven to more movement then a 3/4 floor.Wallyo
The word is perimeter, not parameter, but it is extremely important. The larger the room and the more unstable the wood, the more important it is, or the larger that gap needs to be.I have seen and done wood flooring with very stable wood placed after the baseboard is down with no reveal at all, but I have seen other wood floors need every bit of that half inch space that I left it.
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Was this the engeneered flooring?
If it was, I was told to glue the floor down not staple it.
In general engineered flooring can be floated (either snap lock T&G or glued T&G), nailed down or glued down.Some brands can be any of the 3. Other are limited to one or two.Then you need to also match it to the substrate.Nailing into concrete is not easy..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
It was solid natural hardwood... so not engineered.
I did finish the repair over the weekend... Basically took up rows as needed and carfully planned them down to fit again, and glued them down direct to the subfloor using pin brads as needed. Long and painfull process, but looks great now and I think it will hold up fine. If the floor shrinks back in the winter, my logic thinks it will shrink evenly across the floor and not open up any large gaps in any one place.
So I've fixed the floor from earlier in this post... they're happy now.
Getting ready to install the other koa floor - 3/4 thickness, and planks about 4 inches wide.
I did buy a nice moisture meter today and checked everything out this afternoon. The moisture of the new flooring is currently 6%, and the current condition of the sub-floor is an average of 12% (I checked it in numerous locations, mostly 12%, ocasionally it droped to 10% . They have already had the flooring sitting in the house for about a week now. It looks like it would have been the perfect senario for a repeat of the problem I previously had, so thankyou to those who advised me to get the moisture meter.
How much longer should it take for the floor to acclimate and be in balance with the sub-floor?
Seem's like just a few days is typical, but remembering the last house it was there for 2 weeks before installation, and still didn't aclimate. Since they didn't start having problems till about 4 months after I did the install, does that mean I should have let the floor aclimate 4 months at the previous house before I nailed it down?
A side note of information.. it's on the first floor with a crawspace underneth, but they do have a plastic vapor barior wall to wall in the crawlspace.
go down in the crawl space and read the moisture content of the joists & sillif it's high.... then you have a continuing problem of the subfloor trying to acclimatethe other major thing that happens is the seasonal swingsin a typical coastal new england home... the moisture content by the middle to end of teh heating season is about 6% ( my estimations ).... that is in a house with almost any kind of heat... and no humidification then in summer... after a typical wet spring... and the high humidity of summer.. teh wood will be at 19 - 20 %if you install at 10% and the house goes to 20%.. you got problemsif you install at 20 % and the house goes to 10%... you got problems
so... solutionhumidify in the winter.... dehumidify in the summer .. the woodwork and the respiratory systems will thank youMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
I stack and sticker the flooring, with AC on and a fan blowing over the supply stack to move air.Then when it tests good, I spend a few hours to handle it again, shellacing the bottom of the flooring and restacking it. The next morning, I am ready to start laying.
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I have built furniture out of Koa and found it to be a great wood to work with. When I worked in a hardwood lumber yard that sold it we never heard any complaints about the wood.
First off: I would never install any flooring that was that thin. Most any kind of wood that thin will cup due to moisture and temperature changes even just due to the fact that there is more air circulation of the top surface then underneath. The sun will also hit on the top surface. Even if you took wood that thin and put it on saw horses the top would change respective to the underside because of the difference between the bottom and top surfaces. Every home I have ever seen that had a hardwood floor with wood that thin has had cupped flooring.
I agree with your comments 100% as applies to solid hardwood. 3/8" is too thin to remain stable in changing climates. Nor is the tongue thick enough to support a good nail down. But my own kitchen, engineered maple now only one year old, has survived a season remarkably excellent including spills and a 130 # Lab, still tight, flat and quiet. For the price at $1.50 per foot it's probably the best deal China has sent over here lately.Just a thought, having stared at lots of floors and noticing that some floors at 100 years are still tight winter and summer and when resanded can look all as good as new. And there was no AC then to control the climates at all tells me that there is enough give and take to withstand the shrinkage and expansion without buckleing or cracks showing if enough attention is paid to the origial match when it is first laid. In short, the time to do it right is when you do it. Who can argue with that?Just one more thought as long as it's late and nobodies listening anyway, I think I've lost my high regard for glueing down a floor. When a glued floor expands there is no tension to make it want to return tight again. When a nailed down floor gets walked on it tends to want to return to where it was. Anybody have any experience with that?
I agree with your comments about glue down floors. I have seen many with serious problems. A friend of mine who does wood flooring for a living puts down bituthene over concrete and nails plywood down on top of it to the concrete. Then he nails the flooring down to the plywood. They have never had any problems with any of their floors. Everything they do is nail down and mostly 3/4 x 2-1/4.
I checked the width today... 5", so I'm giving thought to the idea mentioned about finishing the back side before the install, however long from now that turns out to be. Sounds like a time consuming add on... I'm thinking laying boards out upside down in as big a group as I can fit on a drop cloth and spray in batches with the airless gun. It was mentioned using shellac, which I'm thinking will dry fairly quickly and hopefully be re-stackable in short time.
We did un-package it all today and put it loosely stacked sitting on the subfloor that it will eventually be installed to.... and the waiting continues.
When using your moisture meter - don't overlook the fact that sometimes you need to adjust the reading depending on what type of wood it is. For instance, Pine and Oak may read the same moisture but after adjusting for wood species type, they may be a bit off from one another.I have a Delmhurst digital meter - seemed to be the best value for about $120 and was pretty well recommended.Good luck!JT
AFAIK there is nothing that will seal out/in mositure.All a finish does is slow the rate at which the wood changes..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
I'm still on the fence about finishing the back of the boards... I'm sure it wont hurt, but I was looking at the rest of the hardwood floor in the house, which is also 5 inch planks.... it's fine, and I'm 99.999 percent sure it's not finished on the bottom. Got a few more days to think about it anyway.
A new twist to my puzzle though... I got to checking the moisture of the other wood work in the house - the trim, cabinets, even the existing hardwood floor that goes right up to the exposed subfoor we are talking about. Everything eles in the house is at 6% moisture, just like the stack of new flooring I need to put in. I stuck the pins in the egde of the existing hardwood plank floor and read 6%, then put the pins in the exposed subfloor 1/4 of an inch away and got 12%. What's up with that? Is it that two dfferent types of wood are just going to read dramatically different no matter what?
I think the meter I got is a fairly good one. It's a Delmhurst (spelled something like that) that cost $170 from Woodcraft.
meant to put "to all" in the last post
did you go down i the crawlspace and read the joists ?it may be a continuing moisture travel from the crawlspaceMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Na, not yet... I should have today, but got side tracked with other stuf and ran out of time before I could get the gumption go crawling around down there. I'll check it first thing monday.
Sounds like a moisture control problem in the crawlspace. Check some framing down there.
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Fast dry is why I use the shellac. I can do a couple rooms worth of flooring in 5-6 hours with a roller and brush. I lay out a table with plywood and cover it with the wood on stickers, roll the shellac on and brush it out. By time I get across the four foot width, the first are tacky but dry enough to restack.I neve5 did this with prefinished though. Seems that could be a problem that would take an extra alcohol wipe
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Just a thought, having stared at lots of floors and noticing that some floors at 100 years are still tight winter and summer and when resanded can look all as good as new. And there was no AC then to control the climates at all tells me that there is enough give and take to withstand the shrinkage and expansion without buckleing or cracks showing if enough attention is paid to the origial match when it is first laid.Well first off have you ever looked at 100 year old wood? it was tight grain that expands much less and is much more stable then today's wood cut from younger faster growing trees.
You can still get tighter grain wood but it cost more. also if the grain is vertical wood cups much less but only wood from the center of the tree has vertical grain so most of the stuff sold at the cheapest price is not vertical grain. Companies like carlisle wide plank floors still take the time to select vertical grain boards but most mass produced flooring is not and that is the difference between old floors and today's floors
http://www.wideplankflooring.com/?utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=hardwood2&gclid=CNuaw7Cu9JMCFQQbFQodFUyaWw
That is true as day is long, but I doubt you can find much fine CVG in prefinished products
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In the case of maple flooring vertical grain would be a very blah, bland and just plain ugly floor. So, for flooring it would always be flatsawn. In the case of oak, if it was vertical grain or quartersawn it would be beautiful and truly unique and if is flatsawn as at least 90% of flooring is it would be just only beautiful. I wouldn't want to claim to know much about each of the foreign exotics. The two examples above are enough to show that all species shouldn't be lumped together and they don't follow the exact same rules. I didn't even mention that in the case of maple only the sapwood is used and with oak only the heartwood is used. What I would like to get across though is that there are good woods growing right here east of the Mississippi in the northern woods. In fact I just [yr 2000] sold the maple off 90 acres and was surprised that old maple wasn't wanted. The demand was for 13" to 24" maples and the big old dogs went for pulp and/or firewood. The 13" to 24" went to Japan. I wouldn't want to read too much into a difference between oldgrowth maple or oak.
"I wouldn't want to read too much into a difference between old-growth maple or oak"There is a difference when the distinction is between trees that grew in a mature never clear cut forrest and those of today. Remember almost all of the forrest on the east coast today is re-growth even those trees that are 100-200 years old are re-growth compared to the trees that once grew in virgin forrest. The thing is the lumber even from just 80 years ago was still coming from trees that grew in forests that had never been clear cut yet but sadly there is little left today."The demand was for 13" to 24" maples and the big old dogs went for pulp and/or firewood. The 13" to 24" went to Japan. I wouldn't want to read too much into a difference between oldgrowth maple or oak."
You are confusing old trees with old growth. Old growth refers to a forest that has never been clear cut. a old tree like those you cut are not old growth. In fact they grew faster then the smaller 13-24" trees you say the demand was for and that is the very reason they are not wanted. I have a maple in my back yard that is 4 feet at it's base it is not a old growth tree. It got that big in less the 150 years. But it is a old tree in fact it probably will not live much longer. Trees that grow fast also do not live as long their wood is softer and grain more open and they are more susceptible storm damage and insect damage. and they rot away even as they are still standing.To get tight grain wood the big trees of today need to be left alone they grew fast after the land was clear cut so they do not have the tight grain anyway the trees growing in their shade will be the new old growth trees (the 13-24" ones) they need to be left until they have trees growing in their shade and then the next generation after that is the good wood once it reaches 100-200 years old. I third generation tree growing in the shade of much larger trees could take 100-200 years to get 20 inches and 500 years to get as big as the trees we call big today. but that tree will be stronger and produce much better wood then the it's parent tree. But it will never happen because we cut these smaller trees when they are only 20-30 years old and they also cut the larger trees then replant. Then replanted trees grow fast and then they are cut when they are only 20-30 years old. and after a while they are good for nothing but pulp and chip board. but the lumber industry is not in the business of growing old growth stands of timber if they can make money selling wood for paper today they are not going to care if some furniture maker might get a great piece of wood 500-800 years from now.This does not just apply to hard wood in fact most of the east coast was covered with huge pine trees and I mean huge the cutting of those tress was what allowed the maples and oaks to grow to dominate the land scape of today's new england if not for the harvest the pines trees buy the early settlers we would not have the beautiful fall colors New england is know for. (not that there was no oak or maple trees they were just not the dominate species.In CT we lost one of the last stands of virgin white pine to a tornado it was called the cathedral in the pines it was just out side of the village of Cornwall CT those trees were 5' across at their base and were already that big 200 years before that.
That stand of trees was pre-columbian and the trees that grew in the shadow of the oldest trees themselves were huge but it took them hundreds of years to get that big.
I do not mean 100 or 200 years it takes more like 500-1000 years for a forrest to achieve the kind of ecosystem that promotes the type of growth that produces the tight grain wood you get from virgin forests.Now all this has nothing to do with the flooring issue except that selection of wood does matter even within today's wood you can find boards that will be more stable then others of course it is often the board with the most interesting or more beautiful grain that will be the most prone to twisting and movement. But beautiful is a matter of personal preference situation. What would make a beautiful board for one purpose would not be great for another. I have some beautiful burled walnut but I would not try and make a floor out of it or even make door or case frames out of it but for the panel in a door that is allowed to float inside a more stable quarter sawn frame it would be great.
nice disertation... did you read "Mayflower" ?lot's of description of circa-Plymouth colony and priorMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore