Age of Building Flooring Materials - A Guide to Estimating Building Age
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How to determine the age of a building
Building component age: construction materials, methods, including hardware, saw cuts, and other details can help determine when a building was constructed or when it was modified.
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Here we provide a guide to estimating the age of flooring materials in buildings as a guide to determining building age. The age of a building can be determined quite accurately by documentation, but when documents are not readily
available, visual clues such as those available during a professional home inspection can still determine when a house was built.
Here we list some helpful
clues to answer the question "how old is the house?" and we provide photographs of key visual
clues useful for determining the age of a building.
Various types of flooring and the inspection, diagnosis, and repair of flooring defects are discussed at FLOORING TYPES & DEFECTS. Types of building flooring that contain asbestos, a health and environmental concern, are discussed in detail at Floor Tiles Containing Asbestos.
List & History Resilient Floor Coverings Used in Buildings
Resilient floor coverings include organic flooring materials such as asphalt tile, cork tile, linoleum, rubber flooring, vinyl tile, vinyl sheet flooring.
Asphalt Tile Flooring as an Indicator of Building Age - 1920 - 1960 (est)
In 1920 asphalt roofing manufacturers, who had been using asphalt and fiber binders to make asphalt roofing shingles for some time, tried to develop a rigid product that could be a substitute for (more costly) slate roofing.
The material did not perform acceptably as a roof covering, but it led to the development of asphalt floor tiles.
Asphalt floor tiles are 9" square (or other sized) tiles which used asphalt as the main binding material. the original asphalt tiles were produced only in dark colors because asphalt was a main ingredient.
Rosato indicates that the first publicized asphalt tile installation was in 1920 in New York City's Western Union office.
The product was very successful and by 1936 over four million square yards of asphalt floor tiles were being sold annually. By 1940, 5% of floor coverings sold in the U.S. were asphalt tile. -- Rosato
In the U.S. the 1940's saw a tremendous expansion in the sales of this flooring material, largely because other materials were more difficult to obtain. At the end of World War II and combined with the reduction in military consumption of the product, asphalt floor tile sales increased to about 12% of the flooring market (1946), selling 41 million square yards. By 1949 the post-war construction boom led to asphalt floor tile sales of 61 million square yards.
By 1952 "asphalt-asbestos" floor tiles contained much less asphalt or gilsonite. Those binders produced only dark tiles. IN the 1950's manufacturers changed to use of synthetic organic resins and solvents made of vegetable or petroleum pitches. These new synthetic binders permitted manufacture of lighter colored, brighter floor tiles in a wider range of colors. But asbestos continued to be the main filler ingredient in these tiles.
If you encounter black or very dark asphalt floor tiles they are probably very high in asbestos fibers. We discuss floor tiles as an asbestos fiber source in buildings in more detail at Floor Tiles Containing Asbestos.
Colors of resilient floor tiles indicates when they were produced
Asphalt -asbestos tiles manufactured early in their life (1920's) were either black, near black, brown, or a gray-brown tone. Brown asphalt-asbestos tiles were made by substituting gilsonite as a binder. In both cases the tiles were hardened by evaporating a solvent used in the fabrication process, or by cooling of hot asphalt used in the mixture.
Gilsonite could be used to produce a wider range of mixtures, but required some asphalt as a softener. Dark vinyl-asbestos tiles used, for example, a mixture of 40 parts asphalt or gilsonite, 60 parts asbestos floats, 30 parts powdered limestone, and pigments (parts by weight). Another typical mixture cited by Rosato contained 70% asbestos fiber
Cork Flooring Tiles as an Indicator of Building Age -
Cork floor tiles were considered a warm, quiet, but less durable resilient floor covering than some of its competitors. It was sold often for use in residential dens, family rooms, or other warm, low-traffic areas, and it may have been popular (research needed) for use in areas where workers had to spend long periods standing - where it would have competed with rubber floor coverings. In 1952 cork flooring sales made up 2% of total floor tile sales. -- Rosato p88.
Vinyl Asbestos Floor Tiles as an Indicator of Building Age - 1930 - 1976 (est)
Vinyl floor tiles, including vinyl-asbestos floor tiles and homogenous vinyl floor tiles (non-asbestos product) are almost as old as asphalt floor tiles. By the early 1950's in the U.S. vinyl tile floor products were more popular than asphalt-based flooring. The reason is pretty obvious.
Asphalt-based flooring as it was originally produced used heavy asphalt products which meant that the floor tiles could be made in dark colors only.
Soon after asphalt-asbestos floor tiles were marketed manufacturers heard from their buyers that consumers wanted lighter floor tiles and tiles of varying color and pattern.
Organic resin vinyl increased in popularity for this reason, but slowly. By 1952, the production of vinyl plastic floor tile sales in the U.S. was about half the volume of asphalt floor tiles, selling 35 million square yards.
Sheet Flooring Materials That Indicate Age of a Building
Here is a photograph of an early (pre-vinyl) continuous floor covering, ca 1900, in an 1840 historic Vermont house.
Note the fabric backing of the flooring material.
Here we discuss various common flooring materials (rough wood, finished wood, parquet, carpeting,
linocrusta, sheet vinyl, and other items as they assist in determining The age of a building or other building.
Linoleum Sheet Flooring As an Indicator of Building Age - 1890 - 1960 (est)
According to Rosato, "The original resilient floor coverings were developed during the latter part of the Nineteenth Century by Frederick Walton. The original covering was linoleum for use as a floor decking on British naval ships." The composition of the original products included asphaltic binders to which an asbestos filler was added by mixing on a rubber mill.
List of Non-Resilient Floor Coverings Used in Buildings
Non-resilient floor coverings used in buildings that can assist in determining the age of a structure include bamboo, brick, concrete, stone, and a wide variety of wood products.
Determining the Age of Buildings Using Laminate Flooring Products
Contemporary snap-together flooring products that resemble wood or other surfaces, but are made of plastic, and other pre-finished and ready-to-assemble wood flooring products are a much more modern product.
Sadly the laminate floor shown at left was ruined by a building flood.
Pergo™ laminate flooring, for example, was developed by Pergo AB, a Swedish company founded around 1890 as a vinegar manufacturer. Product development for Pergo laminate flooring began in 1977 and was first brought to the market in 1984. Pergo laminate flooring was first sold in the U.S. in 1994.
It's safe to say that if you see a Pergo™ product in building in U.S. the flooring was installed no longer ago than 1994. But because this product is has been widely used as a renovation material installed atop older pre-existing finish floor surfaces, one should not presume that the product age is the same as the building age unless the floor was installed as original material - that is, unless it was not installed over an older floor covering.
Just seeing Pergo™ laminate flooring over a plywood subfloor is not sufficient data to conclude the age of a home. Older carpeting may have been removed to expose a plywood subfloor over which the laminate flooring was then installed.
Keep in mind that even when we can identify specific types of building materials and building methods, precise dating of
the time of construction of a building remains difficult: old building materials were often re-used, so beams, siding, and other
components may appear in a building built later than when the materials were first made.
Also, in the U.S. various
states had machines for making cut nails, screws, and sawmills at different times. For example, New York State was industrialized
earlier than some western or southern states, so machine-made nails appear earlier in New York than elsewhere.
Wood Floors Used in Buildings
The list of flooring types by wood species, widths, thickness, edge types (square, shiplap, tongue & groove), and the history and age of the use of these products in buildings is enormous.
Here we collect and provide photographs of a collection of wood flooring types as an aid to flooring restorers, preservationists, and inspectors wishing to determine the age of a building and its materials.
Please see Wood Floor Types for a detailed inventory of types and eras of use of various types of wood flooring such as wideboard wood floors, solid strip flooring, solid short-strip flooring, and pre-finished wood floor materials. We also distinguish between square-edged solid floor boards, shiplap edged flooring, and tongue-and groove flooring among older types of solid wood floors and subfloors. The shiplap-edged solid wideboard floor floor shown in our photo (left) was in an 1860's frame home restored by the author. Also see Wood Floor Damage.
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Additional technical contributors & reference sources for this article are listed below.
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America's Favorite Homes, mail-order catalogues as a guide to popular early 20th-century houses, Robert Schweitzer, Michael W.R. Davis, 1990, Wayne State University Press ISBN 0814320066 (may be available from Wayne State University Press)
American Plywood Association, APA, "Portland Manufacturing Company, No. 1, a series of monographs on the history of plywood manufacturing",Plywood Pioneers Association, 31 March, 1967, www.apawood.org
Asbestos products and their history and use in various building materials such as asphalt and vinyl flooring includes discussion which draws on Asbestos, Its Industrial Applications, D.V. Rosato, engineering consultant, Newton, MA, Reinhold Publishing, 1959 Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 59-12535 (out of print).
Building Research Council, BRC, nee Small Homes Council, SHC, School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, brc.arch.uiuc.edu. "The Small Homes Council (our original name) was organized in 1944 during the war at the request of the President of the University of Illinois to consider the role of the university in meeting the demand for housing in the United States. Soldiers would be coming home after the war and would be needing good low-cost housing. ... In 1993, the Council became part of the School of Architecture, and since then has been known as the School of Architecture-Building Research Council. ... The Council's researchers answered many critical questions that would affect the quality of the nation's housing stock.
How could homes be designed and built more efficiently?
What kinds of construction and production techniques worked well and which did not?
How did people use different kinds of spaces in their homes?
What roles did community planning, zoning, and interior design play in how neighborhoods worked?
"
Isham: "An Example of Colonial Paneling", Norman Morrison Isham, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 5 (May, 1911), pp. 112-116, available by JSTOR.
Manufactured & Modular Homes: Modular Building Systems Association, MBSA, modularhousing.com, is a trade association promoting and providing links to contact modular builders in North America. Also see the Manufactured Home Owners Association, MHOAA, at www.mhoaa.us. The Manufactured Home Owners Association of America is a National Organization dedicated to the protection of the rights of all people living in Manufactured Housing in the United States.
Pergo AB, division of Perstorp AB, is a Swedish manufacturer or modern laminate flooring products. Information about the U.S. company can be found at http://www.pergo.com where we obtained historical data used in our discussion of the age of flooring materials in buildings.
Plank House Construction: webslog from plankhouse.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/plank-house-construction/ and where plank houses were built by native Americans, see
Large 1:6 Scale Plank House Construction / P8094228,
Photographer: Mike Meuser
06/12/2007 documented at yurokplankhouse.com where scale model Museum quality Yurok Plank Houses are being sold to raise money for the Blue Creek - Ah Pah Traditional Yurok Village project.
List of Online Articles Giving Detailed Information & Reference Materials for Determining the Age of Buildings
Square D Circuit Breaker Recalls, announced by the US CPSC, recalls include a Square D GFCI circuit breaker distributed by Square D, and a Counterfeit Square-D circuit breaker sold through Scott Electric
Flooring Materials: history of types and age of different flooring materials: Asphalt or vinyl-asbestos floor tiles, sheet flooring, linoleum, ceramic tile, carpeting, wood floor types and materials
Foundation Crack Bible, in-depth diagnosis, and evaluation of all types of structural and non-structural cracks in residential foundations [Brick, Concrete, Masonry Block, Stone]
Tremont Nail Company offers steel cut nails for authentic restoration projects and work on historic buildings
Books & Articles on Building & Environmental Inspection, Testing, Diagnosis, & Repair
Our recommended books about building design, inspection, and repair, and about indoor environment testing, diagnosis, and cleanup are at the InspectAPedia Bookstore.
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The Mold Information Center: What to Do About Mold in Buildings, When and How to Inspect for Mold, Clean Up Mold, or Avoid Mold Problems
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