72 VIDEO MOISTURE METER*

In this video I want to explain the value of a moisture meter, especially in terms of

helping you decide whether you can finish your wooden deck or not. The issue comes down to the

fact that there can be very wide swings in moisture content in lumber. Don't listen to

anyone who says they can tell by looking at it or feeling it or to decide whether wood is dry

enough or not for finishing because you really can't and no matter how much experience you have

you're still not going to be able to decide on moisture content reliably just with your fingers

So here's a moisture meter. It's a fairly simple one. It's kind of old. They have snazzier looking

ones now but they all work on the same principle. This is essentially an electrical resistance meter

So there are a couple of electrodes here and when you check moisture content you press them into

the wood and there's a battery inside and some circuitry and it measures the amount of electrical

resistance between the two prongs. So the wetter the wood the less the electrical resistance will

be and that's that shows up here on this calibrated scale. So these two pieces of wood look pretty

much the same. One is dry enough to be finished safely for your deck and the other isn't quite

dry enough and let me show you the difference. It's quite stark because you can't tell visually

you can't tell with your hand, but look what happens here when I test the moisture content

on this first one. This is a really dry piece of wood. We're down below six. We're approaching

five percent moisture content which is extremely dry. The reason for that is because this piece

of wood is spent the whole winter in my workshop and you know in a heating climate that can be

very dry for wood. Now this wood has been been outdoors. It doesn't have any water on it or

anything like that. It's quite dry but look what look what the moisture content on this thing is

It's about 18% I think. Yeah about 18% so that's that's too wet internally for most deck finishes

It should be about 14% for most. There are some that can tolerate more moisture than that but

run-of-the-mill deck finishes 14% is what you're shooting for. This is 18% so it's too wet. Now

it will dry out if you put it on a deck and you had some nice drying weather for several weeks

then that moisture content is going to go down. But the main takeaway from this video is that a

moisture meter can save you from an enormous amount of disappointment because if you try to

finish a deck that's too wet you're going to have premature finish failure and the whole thing's

just going to be one big mess. Nowadays you can get moisture meters very inexpensively. It's

really just that the tiniest fraction of the cost of your deck so you know I strongly recommend you

you know you proceed with some some insights and some vision of the sort that a moisture

meter gives you. It takes all the guesswork out of it