Jilg Parkett has been laying wooden floorings (or parquet) in homes, commercial buildings, museums and palaces across Austria for decades. Like all companies in the parquet business, each contract the firm wins represents not only an opportunity, but also a risk that may not materialize until years after a floor is laid.
Many flooring companies are under pressure to keep projects on schedule and thus avoid penalties, and this can lead to sloppy work or negligence. Because it costs a lot to buy wooden flooring and have it installed, customers of flooring companies may be quick to file lawsuits if the floor buckles, cracks or otherwise becomes uneven. As such, a flooring company and its customers often end up meeting again in court, with one party blaming the other. Jilg Parkett’s owner, Helmut Jilg, has often served as an expert witness in such cases.
Given the risks of lawsuits for his company and others, Jilg decided in 2004 to develop the fidbox (floor identification box), a tool for measuring floor temperature, timber moisture and subsoil humidity over extended periods of time. Such data can be used, in the event of a claim, to help determine which party is at fault.
The fidbox measures 150 by 45 by 6 millimeters (5.9 by 1.8 by 0.2 inches) and weighs 56 grams (2 ounces), and contains a semi-passive 869 MHz ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tag conforming to the ISO 18000-6B standard. The device also contains sensors that periodically measure the temperature and humidity in the floor above and the subfloor below, then transmits that information to standard readers via RFID.
Measurements are performed at user-defined intervals—usually every eight hours—for as long as 10 years. To measure humidity and temperature, the fidbox wakes up, takes the measurements and then goes back to sleep, thereby preserving battery life. If the sensors record data outside the predefined parameters, the fidbox will collect information at more frequent intervals. This data can then be used to show the environmental conditions around the floor and, if necessary, to establish quality assurance or to settle warranty claims.
Jilg has been selling the trademarked fidbox since the beginning of 2008. During the unit’s development stage, he says, he worked with Austria’s University of Applied Sciences Burgenland, which conducted research on specific building materials, such as concrete and wood, wood-research institute Holzforschung Austria and Tricon, an RFID software provider and integrator.
Jilg Parkett and other users of the fidbox install the device under flooring by carving out a small pocket on the underside of a piece of parquet, then using peel-off adhesive tape to attach the sensor tag. The wooden flooring, along with the embedded fidbox, is then laid on top of finished concrete.
A sensor on the side of the fidbox that is flush to the parquet measures the temperature and humidity of air inside a chamber created when the unit is attached to the parquet. A sensor on the fidbox’s side that is flush against the cement does the same.
The data can then be utilized to calculate the amount of humidity in the wood, as well as the source of the humidity—either above or below the floor. If the humidity is determined to be coming from below, a floor finisher or the company that laid the parquet might be responsible for any damage. If it comes from above, however, the user of a room or building may be liable for damage as a result of improperly regulating the floor or room temperature.
If a person reports a fault in the floor after the fidbox was installed, a worker uses a handheld RFID interrogator to collect sensor data. The employee can go to the spot where the fidbox is installed beneath the flooring, then utilize the reader to collect the data stored on the device. The reader searches for the unit by emitting an acoustic signal that is then returned by the fidbox. The interrogator emits an audible peep that gets increasingly faster as the user gets closer to the device. Once the handheld is within 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) of the fidbox, the operator can use it to read the RFID tag, which remains dormant until interrogated.
The fidbox can also store other types of flooring information, such as timber type, construction information and details regarding the company that installed it.