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Deleted member 174758
I doubtbthose are expansion gaps - they are actually where the boards have shrunk over the years! Normally when installing a complete floor of solid wood flooring (planks) you nail the first one down, knock the second one onto the first and use a flooring cramp to pull the joint up nice and tight before you nail it down, and so on. This is the cramp ysed for that process whichbgets cramped ontonthe joists:
In the days before those were invented (100+ years ago) or if you didn't (don"t) have a pair of them (they were/are expensive) the job was done with two or more pairs of softwood folding wedges, thus:
This is because traditional air dried timber was at about 15 to 16% moisture content (MC) whereas houses are now generally a lot drier than that, given that many houses have central heating these dsys - even so I think freshly kilned modern stuff would possibly come in at around the 9 to 10% MC mark these days, but in a centrally heated house might get down to 8% in a bathroom and 6% elsewhere over a few months, especially in summer
In the days before those were invented (100+ years ago) or if you didn't (don"t) have a pair of them (they were/are expensive) the job was done with two or more pairs of softwood folding wedges, thus:
This is because traditional air dried timber was at about 15 to 16% moisture content (MC) whereas houses are now generally a lot drier than that, given that many houses have central heating these dsys - even so I think freshly kilned modern stuff would possibly come in at around the 9 to 10% MC mark these days, but in a centrally heated house might get down to 8% in a bathroom and 6% elsewhere over a few months, especially in summer