It’s every homeowner’s worst nightmare – you’ve just laid a beautiful, and expensive, wood floor and after only a few months it seems like it’s is lifting. What’s causing it to do this? And more importantly, what can you do about it to reduce the amount of damage done to your floor? Find out more in our blog post below.
When your wooden floor starts to lift, this process is also known as buckling or bulging. It’s common for this to happen in any area of the floor – at the side near the walls or right in the middle where you can’t miss it.
But why is this happening? Here’s the most common reasons:
- Wood is a natural material, and as such it is very susceptible to moisture in the air and walls. If you have a damp problem in your house, or there is otherwise too much moisture in the room, the wooden floor can absorb this, and over time it will cause the boards to buckle.
- If you have pipes running under your floor and you have a leak or a burst pipe, the same thing will apply – the floor will absorb the water
- Poor installation can also be a reason for your wooden floor to buckle. As solid wood is a natural material, it needs room to expand and contract, and if there are no gaps, it will start to buckle and rise from the floor. Always make sure your wooden floor is laid by a professional, who will take the need for an adequate expansion gap seriously.
- Poor quality underlay – in order to facilitate the natural expansion and contraction, you should have a good quality foam underlay to act as a cushion between these stages.
So do you have a floor that’s lifting? Here’s what you need to do about it:
- Don’t delay. As soon as you see signs of your floor lifting take action. Call a professional installer if you need to lift the floor so that you don’t damage it accidentally removing the boards yourself
- If you suspect a leak, try and find the source. You might need to use the services of a plumber to find out where the leak has started and how much of your floor is affected.
- Be prepared to have your floor lifted and re-laid properly if there was no expansion gap allowed for initially.
- If the problem is damp in your home, or if you moved into a new home and you had to wait for the floors to dry out, then address the moisture issue before attempting to fix your floors otherwise the problem will just reoccur.
- Control humidity levels on an ongoing basis with a dehumidifier plugged into rooms where damp is an issue
- When cleaning your floors, make sure you mop up any excess water so that it doesn’t run into the gaps between the floor boards, and always wipe up any spills straight away.
