Tramex Talks - Clips. Why ASTM F2170 isn't enough.
David: Generally we see manufacturers that they're only specifying to test for vapor.
Andrew Rynhart: Yeah. So, again like ASTM F2170 is a great standard, we've contributed a lot to that standard, but it is one piece of the information that you need. If you just rely on that by itself, first of all, you're drilling right into the concrete, so you're drilling past the top three-quarter-inch layer of the concrete, at least, which is the most critical part of the concrete to be testing. So you're drilling past that. You are getting important information but the idea that it should be used as a standalone test is marketing, it's marketing, you know. So, when and when you discuss this and sometimes you see online when you discuss these things, people get very worked up about these things because they're, you know, relying on this piece of data but it misses a number of different problems.
So, it completely misses dew point and if you have dew point issues in concrete and you drill past the surface into the center of the concrete you're gonna miss it completely. So, the concrete meters will pick up dew point. The way it has it was taught for a long long time was that the F2170 test was a measure of total moisture content and because of that people have got it into their minds that they're measuring a percentage of moisture content. So, they think to saturation, so they think "oh it's 85 RH" then they think "oh it's 85 percent of the concrete is full of moisture" but that's totally incorrect. The RH will saturate at about sometimes at even four and a half percent moisture content you can have a saturated RH, or five percent more commonly, or five and a half in some cases.
That's why you need both. That's why in our view you need to measure the moisture content and you need to measure the vapor. Generally, our meters, like for measuring the vapor, always include a concrete moisture test and there's a reason for that. Because if you just measure the vapor alone you miss so many problems.