M ajor storms like sandy can cause extensive water damage to hardwood floors but panicked homeowners should not rush to replace what appears to be beyond repair.
Wet hardwood floors fix.
Most often a warped wood floor is caused by standing water or heavy moisture below the floor due to an unidentified leak or other hidden water source.
For anyone who lives in hurricane and flood prone areas that have historic homes this comes as no surprise.
Hardwood floors need to be cleaned maintained but make sure you use as little water as possible while mopping.
Warping causes much more damage to your floors than cupping does.
I agree it sounds like the restoration company is being thorough but how are they evaluating if they are having.
If major amounts of water flood related or not have come into contact with your wood floor your floors will never be quite the same as new again but you can take steps toward saving them from the junkyard.
Floor finish slows water movement but does not stop moisture passage into or out of the flooring completely so wet floors that have finish on them dry out slowly.
How to fix hardwood floor cupping.
Solid hardwood flooring offers the broadest range of options as you can sand and scrape away up to 1 4 of an inch of the wood to remove cupping or surface mold and.
Sometimes even a nearby water.
As suggested in the wood flooring 101 section of our website the type of wood flooring you have limits the range of possible repairs for your wood floor.
So your flooring may show signs of staining from small spills the wet floor may also begin to buckle and cup when large amounts of water are absorbed as the planks swell.
What you really need to know is how wet is the wood floor moisture content how wet is the subfloor and how does that compare to what that wood would have been prior to the broken pipe.
Sometimes if you let it dry out.
The area underneath your wood floor won t dry while the wood is still wet.
Due to the porous nature of wood moisture can be easily absorbed into the material.
As wood responds to environmental changes the boards in a floor can experience forces from adjacent boards and from the subfloor.
It can manifest in various forms of plank disfigurement and should be taken very seriously.
Standing water and hardwood flooring don t mix.
Whether your hardwood floor is made of solid or engineered wood it is bound to react to moisture so ensure you take the precautionary measures to prevent cupping.
If your wood flooring is covered by wet rugs mats or carpeting you ll need to remove them immediately.