Using the Moisture Meter ME5 on Flooring and other Building Materials - Tramex Talks

Steve Phillips - Mast Partners, LLC, Flooring Consultant, talks about how he uses the Tramex ME5 for finding moisture on a variety of floor covering products and mentions how this meter is also used on other building materials.
The Moisture Encounter 5, the ME5, is a pinless, non-destructive, moisture meter for various building materials, such as wood, timber, drywall, roofing, plaster, tile, and masonry.
In this video, Steve explains how the ME5 is the best non-destructive moisture meter for inspecting flooring failures, as it allows you to find hidden moisture without removing the flooring material.
The ME5 provides quantitative % moisture content for wood and timber. For other building materials, it gives a comparative reading from a known dry area in relation to a wet area.
The ME5 is a dual-depth moisture meter. It can give moisture readings into the material up to 1 1/4" (30mm) with standard settings and 3/8" (10mm) with the shallow-depth setting. This allows you to compare different depths and have a better understanding of the moisture condition.
One example of a way to use this meter for testing wood flooring material is to use the ME5 alongside the CMEX5, or CMEX2, or MHR, with a pin-probe attachment. Take a pin reading on one plank, and take a reading with the ME5 on the same place to correlate the readings. With the correlated reading on the ME5, you can determine your dry standard and quickly test the remaining wood planks.
Different types of wood have different specific gravity numbers, and the ME5 wood scale can be used in conjunction with a specific gravity table that comes with it, to evaluate moisture in different types of wood. Steve also explains that different types of plywood also have specific gravity that can be associated with the meter's wood scale.
Another important point discussed is Ambient Conditions, from which the most relevant is Dew Point. Checking Dew Point at the time of installation can help avoid failures, and checking it after a failure can help understand the conditions that led to the failure.
Steve also talks about using the ME5 on installed tile to check for moisture behind or beneath the tile using both the Tile setting and the Shallow Depth setting. The tile setting uses the comparative scale and therefore you should always begin by determining a dry standard. In the case of inspecting a failure, you would take a reading in an area away from the failure with the same tile and from that reading determine the dry standard. That dry standard can then be compared to the readings in the area of the failure to check for increased moisture levels. You can do this in both the Tile and the Shallow depth settings keeping in mind the different depth readings also give another point of comparison to give further indications of the moisture condition behind or underneath the tile.
It is also discussed the use of the ME5 on the Water Damage Restoration industry, to determine when the material is dry enough to move on to restore the building.
"I carry, as you know, a DataLogger, a CMEX5, an ME5, and a lot of other tools with me. Sometimes not knowing what I'm going to get into, the ME5 is used literally on every job, of an installed job, every job."
"You use it every day. if you don't carry it with you, you're crazy."
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