How We Research This Site: Sources and Methodology
This site publishes cost information and installation guidance for Missouri. It does not sell or install flooring, and nobody from it will call you.
Where the housing figures come from
Every housing statistic on this site is from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year estimates — table B25035 for median year structure built, B25034 for the year-built buckets and B01003 for population. Place codes come from the Census Gazetteer, and every one was verified by name against the same data response the numbers were read from before it was used.
That verification is not ceremonial. Place codes are easy to get wrong and a wrong one returns entirely real-looking numbers for a different town.
Where the soil information comes from
The shrink-swell characterization of western Missouri’s clay soils reflects published USDA soil survey classifications. We describe what the ground does; we do not diagnose any individual building, and nothing on this site is an assessment of a particular house.
Where the cost ranges come from
Installed cost bands are published planning ranges for Missouri, expressed as a low and a high per square foot. The estimator applies your area, your material, your conditions and a regional labor multiplier to those bands. The regional multiplier is applied to the labor half only, because material is a national commodity and inflating it would be inventing a number.
The low and high bounds are computed independently — the low figure is every low rate, the high figure is every high rate. That is a deliberately wide band. Narrowing it by averaging would make the result look more precise than the inputs justify.
What this site does not do
- It does not sell or install flooring, quote jobs, or pass details to contractors.
- It has no crews, no completed jobs and no customers, and it does not publish testimonials or reviews, because it has none to publish.
- It does not collect email addresses to release a number. The estimator runs in your browser and shows its arithmetic.
- It does not tell you your foundation needs work. Ground movement is normal here; that is a flooring specification issue, and anything structural is a question for a qualified engineer.
Photography
Photographs are licensed stock used to illustrate materials and rooms. They are not work by anyone connected with this site.
Corrections
If a figure here is wrong, it should be fixed. Contact details are in the footer.