The jurors singled out Ainsworth Engineered’s PointSix Durastrand Flooring because the product elegantly resolves problems that they have faced in the field. Conventional oriented-strand board (OSB), when left exposed to the elements during construction, has a tendency to absorb water and swell. When used as a subfloor, the material can expand out of flush alignment and require postinstallation sanding.
Based in the rainy Pacific Northwest, the Ainsworth Engineered team is intimately familiar with the effects of weathering. The PointSix boards are chamfered 0.6 millimeters at the edge to accommodate swelling and curling up at the edges: Instead of swelling too much and requiring sanding, these boards expand to the point of creating a nearly flush surface, held in place by tongue-and-groove attachments. In the system’s design, “there’s an understanding that the building process takes a certain amount of time,” juror William Massie says. Juror Julie Eizenberg appreciated the product’s potential to help mitigate litigation. There have been “lawsuits because buildings were being left out … and when they went to do the next level of construction, everything was falling apart,” she says.
