MY WOODEN FLOOR HAS BOWED - WHY AND HOW TO PREVENT

You may be forgiven for thinking you'll need to tear it up and start again if your hardwood flooring has bowed or buckled. While they may be a true nightmare, you'll be happy to know they are easily fixed when caught in time. From sub-par setup to bad floor prep, we'll look at a few reasons why your wooden floor might bow and how it is possible to remedy the circumstance.

EXCESSIVE MOISTURE

Frequently the most typical reason for a bowed floor is that there is excess moisture coming from someplace! Either from a flow of water, such as a flood, burst pipe, very large relative humidity, poor ventilation and inadequate heating etc.. .or if the sub-floor had not been prepared and permitted to dry out sufficiently prior to the floors being installed, even though this can be avoided by employing a liquid membrane before installation.

POOR INSTALLATION

We know that folks like work done as inexpensive as you can, but often it can come back to bite you. By obtaining some mates to install the floors or a inexpensive fitter, they could occasionally to neglect to leave an adequate gap to the wood to expand into or cut door frames etc to allow the floors to enlarge if necessary. The old adage"buy cheap, buy twice" and"pay peanuts get monkeys" is most often the case.


WHY IS AN EXPANSION GAP IMPORTANT?

Every time a wooden floor is interlocked, every plank will expand depending upon the humidity of

the room, meaning that if there were 60 rows of flooring in a space and each row expanded during the course of the day by 0.5mm the entire floor would potentially enlarge by 30mm based on the floor kind. Obviously you can't always leave a 30mm gap on your floors that's why it's important to think about expansion rates in combination with humidity and heat.

HOW DO I FIX IT?

If you've noticed your floor is showing signs of bowing, it's important to identify where the floor is butting from the perimeter and it is occurring. Measuring the room's humidity and buying a dehumidifier if the air is too moist can be an easy and cost-effective short term solution, if the reason is just the time of year.

Whether there are small bows, a repair can be relatively easy as all you possibly have to do is wet the area and set a heavy item on the bow. When it is a large one then you will need to rip up the board and then replace them. When"cupping" has occurred, this may be sanded out, even if not overly bad, however, the flip side of this, is the flooring could"crown" at a later point, due to the planks being thinner at the edges when compared with the center, which is the lowest aspect of the bow and consequently does not get sanded just as much.