Ideal Jobs for Pinless Moisture Meters

Posted by Tom Laurenzi on Feb 15, 2016 12:59:00 PM

Pinless moisture meters are perfect for checking hardwood flooring.Pinless moisture meters are a valuable tool for professionals and DIY enthusiasts alike. With these meters, you can quickly take moisture readings in various building materials without leaving pinholes from pin-type meters.

Pinless meters have a few characteristics that separate them from pin-type meters, which makes them useful for a variety of tasks, and less useful in some specific situations. So, what jobs are ideal for a pinless moisture meter?

Here are a few tasks that are perfect for pinless meters:

Checking Hardwood Floors

One of the best uses for a pinless moisture is for checking hardwood flooring materials.

There are several reasons for this, including:

  1. Flat Scanning Surfaces. A pinless moisture meter requires a flat contact surface to achieve the best possible accuracy. Rough or uneven surfaces can skew reading results. Because hardwood flooring typically has a smooth, flat surface, pinless meters will have an optimal scanning surface.
  2. No Damage to Hardwood Floors. One concern that you might have with checking moisture in a hardwood floor with a pin-type meter is that for each section of flooring that you test, you’ll leave holes in the flooring. Pinless meters are non-destructive, meaning that you can take measurements without having to mar your expensive hardwood floors.
  3. Rapid Scanning of Large Areas. Another advantage of using pinless meters is that they can quickly scan large areas of building materials for pockets of moisture. This allows them to cover a much larger area than a pin-type moisture meter can in less time, which is a huge help in checking floors.

For these reasons, pinless meters are perfect for checking large areas of hardwood flooring and similar flooring materials.

Checking Wood Beams

Wooden structural supports such as wood beams are another type of material that pinless meters are ideally suited for. The reasons for this are similar to the reasons why pinless meters are suited for checking hardwood floors.

For example, if you’re checking an attic space for signs of moisture intrusion after a winter thaw or a storm, a pinless meter can be used to quickly check your attic’s wooden support beams for the presence of excess moisture.

By checking large areas for moisture and moving quickly from one beam to the next, pinless meters can help you make sure that your building’s frame is free from excess moisture with less risk of missing a random moisture pocket than the more narrowly-focused pin-type meters.

Checking Drywall for Moisture

While most pinless moisture meters are optimized for checking a specific species of wood, you can also use them to get a quick, qualitative reading of moisture in drywall.

For example, if you suspect that the drywall or greenboard in a bathroom has been moisture-compromised, then a pinless meter can be used to check the drywall for the presence of moisture. Although this reading will be an approximate, qualitative value rather than a precise, quantitative one, it can still be useful for establishing if excess moisture is present in the drywall.

Because gypsum drywall is incredibly sensitive to moisture intrusion, even a slight amount of moisture can cause it to start falling apart. So, an exact reading of the moisture content may not be as necessary as the mere indication of moisture itself.

One caveat for this task is that it’s important to keep in mind the scanning depth of your pinless meter and the thickness of your drywall board. If the drywall is thinner than the scanning depth of your meter, then you might get moisture indications for the space behind the drywall rather than for just the drywall itself.

There are many other uses for pinless meters around the house for DIY enthusiasts that need to deal with moisture issues. For more information about using moisture meters, check out some of Delmhorst’s other blog topics about moisture meters!

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Topics: Wood Flooring moisture meters woodwork

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