Spent $800 on a moisture meter and it was the best call I ever made.

I was about to lay 1500 square feet of engineered hardwood in a basement remodel last month. The concrete felt dry, but I checked it with my new meter anyway. The reading was 5.2%, way over the 3% limit from the flooring maker. I told the homeowner we had to wait and fix it. They were mad at first, but if I had gone ahead, that whole floor would have buckled in a year. That one tool saved me from a huge callback and a ruined reputation. What's your go-to method for checking subfloors on jobs you walk into?

2 comments

2 Comments

joel5188d ago

Man, that's a win right there. I always do the plastic sheet test on concrete, tape a square down and wait a day. If there's moisture under it, you know you've got a problem. It's cheap and never lies. What does your meter do that the plastic test doesn't?

matthew_dixon7d ago

Plastic sheet test is solid for a yes/no on vapor, no argument. But a good meter tells you how much moisture and where exactly it's worst, which matters for glue down floors or coatings. Found a slab once that passed the plastic test but the meter showed a huge wet spot under where the old fridge sat, would've been a fail in six months. Basically the plastic tells you if there's a problem, the meter helps you figure out how to fix it.