Wood Moisture Meter Readings

In fact a wood moisture meter should consistently give accurate moisture content readings.

Wood moisture meter readings.

Quality moisture meters do. However this may vary slightly by model and manufacturer. Therefore to truly test a wood moisture meter s accuracy requires putting hundreds of samples from different trees through the oven dry test and comparing those results to the meter s readings. Cheaper models not so much.

Accuracy is a moisture meter s most important feature. This scale is often used in the flooring construction lumber and restoration industries. The closer a moisture meter gets to the results obtained from the oven dry test the more accurate the meter. High quality wood moisture meters are an accurate tool to help people that need to know the moisture content of wood.

Water is an excellent electrical conductor and so wetter wood means better electrical conductivity and that translates to a higher moisture reading. Moisture meters are used to measure the percentage of water in a given piece of wood and are most useful when the percentage of moisture ranges from 5 to no more than 30. Most wood moisture meters are calibrated to cover a range of 6 to 40 moisture content. The wood scale is as the name implies optimized for getting precise mc measurements in wood materials.

Temperature correction is the adjustment that is made to the moisture meter reading to compensate for the phenomenon that the electric conductance of wood increases as the temperature increases and vice versa. The temperature of the wood will significantly influence the readings of a pin type meter.