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Moisture testing, draw the room, and two carpets on one job

New in PlanIt Estimating · 8 minute read · September 2026

In short: September brought four things to the estimator. Subfloor moisture readings are recorded against the room they were taken in, judged against the published guideline and printed as a report. A room can be drawn with a finger and sized with two numbers. A second carpet on the same job asks which rooms it goes in and is priced in its own right. And on the Business plan the estimator's Schedule and the shop's till Diary show each other's bookings. All four are on your account already.

None of these came from a roadmap. The moisture work came from a brief that a reading taken on site and written on the back of a tape-measure sleeve is not evidence when a floor fails. Draw Room came from watching people measure an L-shaped lounge as two rectangles and lose the join. The two-carpets change came from a screenshot of a panel that said "0 rooms" and nobody knowing why. And the diary came from a shop with both products that was double-booking its own fitter.

Moisture testing: the reading, where it was taken, and what it means

A subfloor that is too wet is the most expensive mistake in flooring, and the least defensible. The adhesive lets go, the boards cup, the vinyl bubbles, and the argument that follows turns on one question: what was the reading, and can you prove it?

PlanIt now records moisture readings against the job and the room. Open Site Survey and the Moisture Testing card sits beside the photos, filtered by the same room chip; every room card on Add Rooms has a droplet button with a count on it, coloured by the worst reading in that room; and the job's drawer in the CRM lists every test above the site photos. Each job gets a Moisture report PDF.

Three ways to take a reading

Tramex, Protimeter and Wagner meters are recognised and identified when you connect — the record carries the real make, model and serial from the meter itself — and the screen tells you plainly that live readings from that meter need the manufacturer's SDK, so you type the value against it. Nothing is guessed, and no proprietary protocol has been reverse-engineered to make a demo work.

What the record holds

More than the number. Each test stores the reading and its unit, the measurement type (RH, moisture content, WME, CM, a relative scale), the method (hygrometer, in-situ probe, pinless, pin, carbide, calcium chloride), the substrate (concrete, sand-cement or anhydrite screed, wood, plywood, chipboard, existing), whether there is underfloor heating, the ambient RH and temperature, who took it and when, the location in the room, an optional photo from the site survey and a note. The original value as it came off the meter is frozen and never rewritten, even if the display value is edited.

The assessment is advisory. Each reading is set against the published guideline for its method and substrate — 75% RH under BS 8203 (borderline from 70), 65% RH for a wood finish under BS 8201, 2.0% CM for cement screed and 0.5% for calcium sulphate (1.8 and 0.3 with underfloor heating), 12–16% MC for timber — and marked within, borderline or above. A relative-scale reading, or anything the software cannot judge, says "No guideline". It never says pass. The fitter still decides; the record is there so that the decision can be shown.

Draw the room

There were three ways to add a room: type it, pick a shape, or say it. Now there are four. On Add Rooms, next to Add Stairs and Speak, there is Draw Room.

Sketch the outline with a finger on a phone, a trackpad, or a stylus. When the line comes back to where it started the app closes the shape, straightens the wobble out of it, turns near-right angles into right angles, and tells you what it is: a rectangle, an L, a T, an alcove, a chimney breast, a bay window. Then it asks for two numbers — overall length and overall width — and the room is done. That is deliberately all the default screen asks for, because for carpet the overall box is the room: it is what gets cut from the roll.

The area comes from the outline you drew, the gripper from its perimeter, and the roll cuts from the bounding box — because the box is what a fitter cuts, and the optimiser was never going to pretend otherwise.

Two carpets on one job, priced properly

Since the multi-product work in the summer a job could carry two carpets, but adding the second left it at "0 rooms" and the only way to put it on a room was a dropdown on each room card that nobody knew was there. That is fixed, in two parts.

Adding asks. Press ＋ Another Carpet and a dialog lists the rooms of that type — the carpet rooms, not the vinyl kitchen — with a tick each. Tick the bedrooms, press Allocate rooms, and the panel names them next to the product. Choose rooms on any product re-opens the dialog with the truth pre-ticked; untick a room and it goes back to the job's main carpet. The dropdown on the room card still works, and now says so: "Lounge is now on Lazio ✓".

Pricing has its own place. The second carpet is priced on Products & Pricing, where the prices are, as a chip beside the main one: its own name, rooms, waste, pattern repeat, cost, retail, fitting sell and cost, underlay. You can add another carpet from there too. Calculate runs across all of them and the quote prices each room at its own product.

One diary, when the shop has both

A shop on the Business plan runs the estimator and PlanIt EPOS. Until now each kept its own diary and the fitter existed twice — booked for a survey in one and a fitting in the other, on the same morning, with neither app able to see it.

Now each shows the other's bookings. The estimator's Schedule draws the till's fitting and survey bookings as chips marked 🏪, on the month, the week, the day, Home's Today's Schedule and the Surveys Today tile; the fitter clash check counts them. The till's Diary draws the estimator's survey and fit dates marked 📐, in the grid, the Next 14 days list and the copy-for-the-fitter text. Click a chip from the other app and you get a card with a button to open it there.

It is read-through, not a merge: a booking is edited where it was made, so two apps never fight over one entry, and a booking already held on both sides is drawn once. Nothing about how either app saves has changed.

Every one of these has a guide

The Help Centre has a step-by-step article for each — moisture testing, Draw Room, two carpets on one job, and the shared diary — written against the real buttons and fields.

Open the Help Centre

Also in the last few weeks

Frequently asked questions

Which moisture meters work with PlanIt?

Any meter can be recorded by typing the display value; the record carries the make, model, method, substrate and the guideline it was judged against. Meters that broadcast the standard Bluetooth Environmental Sensing service send readings straight in on Chrome or Edge. Tramex, Protimeter and Wagner meters are recognised and identified; their live readings wait on each maker's SDK.

Does it work on an iPhone?

By typing the reading, yes. Safari has no Bluetooth for web apps, so the connect button is replaced by a plain message and the manual route. The record and the report are the same.

Is the assessment a pass or fail?

No. It is advisory, set against the published guideline for the method and substrate, and it says "No guideline" rather than guessing. The fitter decides.

How do I draw a room?

Add Rooms → Draw Room. Sketch the outline, type the overall length and width, tap a wall for each door. Individual walls and shape tools are there if you need them.

Do I need Business for the shared diary?

Yes — it is the plans that include the till, Business and Commercial. Each booking is edited in the app it was made in.