Vancouver, CANADA – Eighteen months after the launch of its award-winning pointSIX® Durastrand® Flooring, Ainsworth Engineered announces it is extending the product’s no-sand warranty from 180 days to one year. The revolutionary OSB flooring, whose tapered edges offset the effects of moisture, also retains the industry’s only limited lifetime warranty against delamination.

PointSIX Flooring features patented tapered-edge technology in which a thin layer of the highly compressed fiber along all four edges of the OSB panel is milled off, removing the part of the subfloor that’s most prone to swelling. With moisture, the wood fibers expand to essentially “fill up to flush” the micro-taper. If no moisture contacts the engineered subfloor, it does not require any filler or mastic.

PointSIX Flooring was launched following extensive research and performance testing, including subjecting the panels to repeated wet and dry cycles to simulate severe, wet jobsite conditions. In one rigorous test, the engineered panel was flooded for 14 days; after drying out, the average edge swell was contained to 0.01 inch, not much more than a sheet of paper.

“Industry response to pointSIX has exceeded even our highest expectations, with positive feedback from customers and noticeably few callbacks due to edge swell or other moisture-related problems,” said Mark Sutherland, general manager, marketing for Ainsworth. “Building on its extensive testing and continued field-proven performance, pointSIX Durastrand now carries a longer no-sand guarantee and what is still the only lifetime warranty against delamination.”

Positive reception for pointSIX Durastrand Flooring includes earning Architect magazine’s prestigious R+D Award, which honors architectural systems technologies that exemplify innovation. The 2011 awards jury singled-out pointSIX for “elegantly resolving problems that [they] have found in the field.”

APA-approved pointSIX products are priced competitively, with no additional cost for the new technology. Along with pointSIX Durastrand, pointSIX technology also is offered with Ainsworth’s commodity Sturd-I-Floor® panels, which carry a 25-year limited warranty.

For full warranty details, visit http://www.ainsworthengineered.com/resourcelibrary/ warranties.

Source: Ainsworth