Oil Floor Finish Fumes

Green building council reports off gassing of oil based finishes can last for months or even years.

Oil floor finish fumes. Oil finishes have a matte finish allowing for a subtle design element in your home. But of all types of fumes and toxins avoiding polyurethane fumes may be the most essential due to their potential for harmful side effects. Using polyurethane indoors can expose you to fumes with a number of potential side effects. Oil finishes can be used to give floors a warmer more rustic look.

Even if the dust bags are emptied regularly from the machines into a garbage bag the dust and finish combination is still at high risk of spontaneous combustion. Water based urethanes they have low odor dry clear and quickly. Some lower voc water based products largely finish off gassing within a few days. It does smell when applied but the odors don t linger like oil base finishes.

Also heat created from the friction of the machine and sandpaper on the floor can build up to the point wood dust and old finish starts to smolder inside the cloth bag. I also understand that opening the doors and letting air flow can help remove the odor faster. I understand that oil based polyurethane used to refinish hardwood floors has a strong fumes and can stay for days. Most floor finishers are going to be familiar with using shellac but they likely don t realize that as universal floor sealant is shellac based.

While oil finishes can bring out a wood s natural color they can also make it easy to create custom colors with. Oil based ones are more likely to contain vocs. Here s what you need to know about polyurethane fumes and how they relate to your health. The solvent is denatured alcohol so cures much faster.

Even a second or a third coat may be applied on the same day if necessary. Water based polyurethane can have less of an offensive odor when compared to oil based products but floors require at least four coats to achieve the desired level of protection. Polyurethane finishes these water based or oil based finishes are extremely common. The dangers of polyurethane fumes when installing new wood floors in a home and how to remove these toxic chemical fumes from the indoor airspace.