It was late March in 2021 as I pulled into the parking lot of a middle school just outside of Billings, Mont. When I opened my truck door, a mix of freezing rain and snow stung my face. When I left Clinton, Mont., at 6 a.m. that morning, the stars were shining. Now, just in time for my 11 a.m. appointment, the weather had deteriorated, but it turned out the weather would be the least of my problems that day.

An unhappy collection of people

I was escorted to the gym, where there were two representatives from the general contractor, two members of the architectural team, the school principal and the district superintendent. No one was happy.

The issue was the gym floor we installed the previous summer. Since September, the heating system had been running more or less nonstop. With cold air being heated as much as 90 degrees during extreme cold snaps, the relative humidity was averaging less than 20% and, on occasion, less than 10%.

The inevitable result? Of course, the maple dried out, leaving gaps between the boards and, in some areas, cracking and chipping paint. Now we had a very unhappy customer! I stood in the middle of six unhappy people and attempted to explain why maple shrinks and how that contributes to chipping paint.

With the relative humidity hopelessly out of spec for months, the paint on the new gym floor was chipping at board edges.

My explanations fell on deaf ears. Finally raising his voice, the school superintendent gave me a verbal tongue-lashing that rivaled anything I had received since Marine Corps boot camp! He said our company was incompetent and the only solution was to tear the floor out and start over. This diatribe went on for what seemed like an hour but was likely 10 minutes. Eventually he stormed out, telling the architect to get this fixed!

A long, awkward pause ensued. Eventually the architect suggested we meet at his office. To the credit of both the architect and the GC, neither entertained the idea of tearing out the floor. We discussed RH and specifications. They both understood the HVAC system had no ability to control the RH, and that the RH was clearly out of spec.

We were able to show: the moisture content of the maple at delivery, photos and the time frame of the acclimation, the MC of the maple at installation, the HOBO meter readings of the RH after installation (hopelessly out of spec) and MC of the maple now. This wasn’t a documentation problem.

Finding an acceptable solution

They wanted a solution acceptable to the owners, and they wanted me to provide the solution! I agreed to do some filling between the gaps, repainting the damaged game lines and recoating the gym floor—at no charge. Not a great outcome from my point of view, but we weren’t tearing out the entire floor.

I could have refused the solution with no legal consequences because we had the documentation showing the environmental specs were not met, but in all likelihood, I would have never worked for that GC or architect again.

As I walked out at 2 p.m., it was now a full-on snowstorm. I had 329 icy miles ahead of me … lots of time to think.

What do customers want?

The question I pondered on the treacherous drive was: “What does a customer expect with a new gym floor?” These four things seemed relevant:

1. No significant gaps between the boards.
2. Paint with crisp edges with no chipping or peeling.
3. Finish with a consistent sheen with no chipping or peeling.
4. No “dead spots” or squeaks.

With today’s great subfloor systems, we rarely have complaints about “dead spots” or squeaks, but the gaps and the resulting paint chips were a real problem.

The problem of paint chipping is not new, and I believe it is more likely with the new VOC regulations. The high-performance subfloor systems have great vertical deflection for the athletes but contribute to paint chipping at the board seams, as well.

Documentation, while important, won’t make a customer who is unhappy suddenly feel better about the gaps between the boards. And anyone who has been in commercial construction knows that getting an upgrade like humidification installed into the HVAC system is going to be an uphill sell.

So, what could we do that would make a difference? I still had 200 miles and five hours to go … We could refuse to bid on projects that didn’t include humidification in the HVAC systems, but someone else would bid the project, and we would be out of business.

So what do we control?

That left the question: What can we control? Somewhere around Homestake Pass, a precarious stretch over the Continental Divide, I thought about 1½-inch maple. A much higher percentage of 1½-inch maple is vertical grain. Plus, if you install it, there are 33% more rows across the gym floor than with 2¼-inch, so when it shrinks, there are 33% more rows to distribute the gaps, making them less noticeable.

Then I thought about nailing up gym floors. I have spent countless hours “on the gun”—probably the single most physically taxing job in our industry. And I was considering doing 33% more nailing on every install we did … but then I thought about getting yelled at by the school superintendent. It wasn’t the fact that he was such a jerk that bothered me—it was that he had a point. We had installed a new floor in the most important room in his new school, and we had not met his expectations.

I reached the summit of the pass. It was dark now. I slowed down to a crawl and headed down the mountain. Before the road leveled off, I made a decision: We would install 1½-inch maple on every new floor as long as I was the production manager of Western Sport Floors. We would control what we could control!

On my snowy drive home, I decided that from now on we would install only 11/2-inch maple in gyms with no control of relative humidity.

I don’t believe documentation is the answer

We would do everything in our power to live up to our customers’ expectations. Why is it important to meet customer expectations? I think this needs to be addressed, because many contractors seem to think documentation is the answer. It’s extremely important, but if the reason documentation is done is to escape responsibility when expectations have not been met, this is a poor business practice. Furthermore, customers have many options. If contractors installing maple gymnasium flooring cannot consistently meet customer expectations, then no one should be surprised when customers choose different products.

One example: A customer could have a great subfloor system, then have a welded seam vinyl product with a printed maple floor pattern. This would cost much less than maple. From the stands, it would be indistinguishable from actual maple. It would never need to be recoated or sanded. In 15 to 20 years, it could be scraped off and a new one installed (at a fraction of the cost of a wood floor). I am not suggesting it would be as good as a maple floor, but the welded seam vinyl floor may meet the aesthetic demands of the customer if the wood flooring contractors cannot.

Think this could not happen? The most installed floor in residential housing today in the U.S. is luxury vinyl plank. The residential wood floor guys thought that would never happen … until it did.

It is the responsibility of every gymnasium flooring contractor in every marketplace to understand customer expectations and then make every possible effort to meet those expectations. Our industry depends on it!

What happened next

Once I made the decision, it was just a matter of implementation. We had gym floor installations scheduled for the next summer and fall. I called the customers and GCs and explained why 1½-inch maple was a more stable product and would result in better gym floors. We then offered upgrades at no added cost.

Going forward, we specified that we would offer only 1½-inch maple in facilities without humidification systems (basically, every job).

This decision has cost us some business. It costs more money to install 1½-inch maple, so our bids are higher, and sometimes we don’t get a job because of this. However, the caliber and quality of work we are doing, combined with the reduced amount of warranty work, have more than made up the difference. The 1½-inch maple has not solved all of our challenges, but after four years I can say with certainty it has reduced them significantly.

Please keep in mind that we work in Montana, Wyoming, Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. These are basically dry, cold, high-desert climates. My experiences here may be very different from a contractor in the Southern or Eastern U.S. where other challenges affect their gym floors.

My goal here was to explain a systemic problem we faced and how we dealt with it in our area. Different areas have different challenges, and challenges are the spice of life!