Moisture Meter Review: General MM8 And MM9
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ม.ค. 2019
- In this video I'll review two entry-level moisture meters from General Tools & Instruments and discuss some of the reasons why you might purchase a moisture meter in the first place. Woodworkers and trades people can both benefit from a moisture meter, and at this price point even homeowners might be interested. These entry level meters are designed to give a relative idea of moisture content rather than precise, engineering style accuracy. However, in my testing they were pretty close to the readings of a much more expensive meter.
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Explains exactly what I needed to hear about a budget friendly option vs a very expensive one. I am pretty sure I am ordering the mm8 now.
Nice video
I am a handyman and I have used a similar meter for checking for moisture around toilets and sheet rock. The MM9 meter is very similar to what I have used for many years. And it has made me a lot of money. I would say that two out of five toilets are starting to leak at the floor with no visible signs. Customers love it when I offer to check their floors around the toilets for leaks free of charge or if I am already on the job.
I use the pinless setting which can sense moisture under vinyl laminate or even tile floors.
The easiest way to use these is to first measure an area of the floor that you know is dry and then compare it to the area that is wet. My expensive meter lost calibration after over 10 years of use and when I saw this MM9 for the price I just had to have it. This tool is a must have for any serious handyman.
Interesting use of the tool! I suppose in that situation accuracy is not critical, you just want to know if excess moisture is present.
Exactly the review I was looking for, the difference between both 👍
I was *just* pondering whether either of these would be suitable for me. I want to both check firewood moisture but also walls/floors that I don't want to poke holes in. Very useful to see how the MM9, although it claims to use either pin or pinless function, does NOT give any useful % readout in pinless, which the MM8 does. When I saw this mentioned on user reviews I wasn't clear on it. How could one function give a readout and the other not? But thanks to your video I see exactly what the deal is :) Weird :)
Greetings and thanks for this video! I live in Puerto Rico andmostof ours houses are built on concrete. Due to we live in a tropical island, we have a lot of problems with concrete roof's leaks...It's the MM8 good enough to detect that kind of leak? In my case, I don't need 100% accuracy, just more or less where is coming from...
The thing to understand is that these meters work best on materials. like wood, which are not too dense. It would probably give you some relative reading on concrete, but how useful it would be is debatable. They do make moisture meters specific to concrete so if that's the only material you'll be measuring you could try that. If you know somebody on the island who is into woodworking, there's a good chance they own a meter and maybe you could borrow one and try it before you buy one.
@@enduringcharm thanks a lot!!
Very well done instruction, thanks very much. How well does the MM8 deal with an irregular surface like wood in the natural state before milling, or even firewood?
Any moisture meter can handle an irregular surface, unless it's really rough. As long as you can get the meter basically on the surface or the pins inserted it will give an accurate reading. I'll use one of my moisture meters to check hatchet-split wood before turning, for example.
@@enduringcharm Thanks. I think I’ll follow your preference and try the pinless meter then.
I bought it and it turned out to be a great help. I’m fixing to lay a hardwood floor and it’s a bit of fun watching the new flooring drop in humidity as it acclimated to the room.
It's SO important to get flooring acclimated before installing, and it's a step people often skip. You can use your meter to measure other woodwork in your home to get an idea of what the "natural" state of moisture is in your house.
@@enduringcharm Say, that’s a very good tip. In fact, I have some 3/4 oak flooring boards left by the previous owner that would make the perfect end-state comparison. Thanks very much for that.
I was going to get a pinless one for the sake of my RV trailer so i can check ceilings walls etc... periodically as preventative maintance. Or in the case of using it to inspect another used rv for possible water damage. Would these do a ok job at that? trying to find the best product rather than just relying on look and feel
Eh. I'm not sure how useful a moisture meter will be in that situation. These meters are affected by metal and by different material densities. I would guess in an RV environment accuracy would be limited and false readings likely. They do best in situations where there is one material, like wood or drywall, and a uniform density. When you start throwing mixed materials at them, and include metal, they don't do so well. If the RV has wood or plywood surfaces a moisture meter might be marginally useful, but I would put more faith in visual inspection of the surfaces and the roof exterior.
enduringcharm they all use osb and particle board for walls and flooring. But if the trailer as an aluminum outer skin i figured false readings could be possible. They might do ok on the fiberglass rvs not sure
I bought the combo. Primarily to check my hardwood splits for smoking food. An interesting thing is, I don’t get a reading with the pins after drying my splits in an oven on the same day I dried them. Other splits that I also dried in the oven show a reading when using the pins days after they are dried. When using the scan mode I do get reading from freshly dried splits however it is only a bar graph and I’d prefer a number.
Do the pins work before you dry the lumber?
@@enduringcharm yes, the pins work before I dry the splits.
Possibly the wood is too hot when you are trying to measure or possibly even too dry to be within range. The fact that the pins work on wood left for a few days makes me suspect that the oven process is the problem.
@@enduringcharm I think you're right. I think the wood is too dry at the depth I am able to insert the pins. That is unfortunate because I want to dry the splits to a certain percentage/moisture content. I was hoping to be able to open my oven, which is an electric smoker I use to dry splits and check the reading. My goal is to find the right moisture content for a given wood that creates the best burn rate and smoke quality. Also to fine tune the temperature and time which brings the splits to the desired measurement. I can still do that but it will be a much slower process since I have to wait to check the moisture content. Or, since it's about getting a general sense of things, I can resort to the electromagnetic mode and read the graph.
Thank you for your responses! I appreciate your review. Your input has been helpful.
Will this read moisture through a guitars enamel? Say if I pressed to the back of the guitar as opposed to going through the soundhole on an acoustic. I'm trying to figure out how dry my wood is.
You are probably barking up the wrong tree by trying to use a moisture meter. A hollow body guitar is going to be made of thin veneers and all pinless moisture meters that I'm aware of are designed to measure somewhere around a 1/4 inch to an inch below the surface. So you wouldn't really be measuring anything. On a solid body electric guitar you'd have more luck, probably. However, any playable guitar is already going to have very low moisture content. I'll say below 8% for the sake of argument. If you had a guitar which registered 10 or 12 percent, I'd wager the instrument would be warped and unplayable. Put another way, these moisture meters are generally intended to measure thicker wood which is not yet processed into something yet. You use it in a shop to check the moisture of wood before you go to make something out of it. What you are hoping to do is check something which is already made and which should already have a moisture content at the very low end of the meter's scale. And if you get the pin type meter, you'll damage the finish of your guitar. It's possible there are specialty meters available to read very low moisture content in thinner veneers, but I have not seen any.
@@enduringcharm that makes great sense, for now im just keeping the relative humidity iin the case between 45%-55% using humidifier packs, i would think as long as the humidifier is reading anywhere between those percentages it should keep my wood in range and playable. it was just completely dry when i recieved the guitar a few weeks ago so i was curious... Thank you for the response i really appreciate the information.
How useful would you say these meters (entry level or otherwise) are for thick timber, i.e., "bowl blanks"? I chase local tree services around and snag very green timber they leave by the curb, etc. ...
Well, another thing I should have mentioned in the video, is that these meters all read at a particular depth. Typically it might only be 3/8 to an inch deep. For a bowl blank that might be 12 inches thick that may seem limiting. However, I think it's all in the way you use them. There are certain woodworkers among us who are engineering-focused. By that I mean that they obsess over finite details and often work with wood like it is machined metal rather than an organic material. That's fine if that's your thing, but the reality is that you can get lulled into a false sense of security by numbers. If you think you're going to use any moisture meter like a micrometer reading into the thousandths, you're crazy. "Oh, when this moisture hits 6.7 percent it will be ready!" Instead, use whatever meter you've got as a relative gauge of moisture direction. Green wood outdoors may even be over 50% moisture. When you bring it under cover or indoors to air dry, it will gradually come down to 18-20 percent over time. From there drying usually slows, but if you keep measuring from time to time you'll see a trend toward 10-12 percent. And that's the point--use a moisture meter to determine a trend and to help predict when the wood will become stable, rather than obsessing over a particular number. Use it to weed out lumber from a retailer that may be mixed in with wetter and dryer batches so you know one project has similar moisture throughout. In your case if you are turning bowl blanks you may actually want greener wood for the turning part, since green wood turns so much easier. So, when you see the trend heading for the 18-20 percent mark it may be time to mount that blank to get it turned, and then monitor the bowl as it continues to dry out after turning. I will also use a moisture meter to get a sense of what existing furniture or trim in a house is measuring so that when I install new trim or deliver a new piece of furniture I can match it up as best I can.
Can i use this to measure onion or potato moisture content measurement??
Well, that's a new one! The answer is no. The moisture content of a vegetable would be too high and out of range of these meters, and the density would be wildly incorrect when using the pinless type.
Can the mm8 be used on vinyl plank floor?
Any kind of material which is dense and which doesn't absorb water is not going to work well with a moisture meter or any type. Vinyl doesn't absorb water, although the underlayment or subfloor might.
Does it detects water leakage behind wall and floor?
It measures to a shallow depth so it would only detect moisture that made it's way toward the surface of the wall or floor.
@@enduringcharm thank you
@@enduringcharm appreciate the info. Which mode is best to use on carpet using the General Tool MM8 model ? Thanks
Carpet is really not an appropriate use of this type of meter. They are designed for wood and materials of similar density. You're not going to get a useful reading on carpet, though you could potentially use it for the underlayment or subfloor underneath.
@@enduringcharm thank you. For subfloor, what is the best mode ?
I Bought these and they didn't Even Last 3 Weeks and The Screen Went Out. Needless to Say Readings Weren't Very Acurate.
Did you contact General for a repair/replacement?
Not liking mm9 for simple drywall checks
Doesn't give % without poking hole in wall just bar graph. MM8 better for that