Wood Floor Buckling Water Damage

Instances of buckling are usually due to very long term water damage.

Wood floor buckling water damage. This can happen when a floor is suddenly flooded with large amounts of water but it can also occur when moisture content builds up over time. Wood floor water damage can also take the form of buckling when you find floor panels that have completely moved away from the floor underneath you can almost be certain that you have water damage on your hands or should we say underneath your feet. The majority of a laminate flooring plank is made with wood pulp much like particleboard or mdf medium density fiberboard. One of the first signs that water has damaged your floor is cupping of individual planks or crowning of several planks creating a hump in the floor.

Fortunately with proper care and maintenance you can prevent and avoid the expensive wood floor bowing repairs. Floor buckling happens most often after a floor has been flooded for an extended period of time. This was a glued down laminate fl. Fortunately this is not a common occurrence.

This material is highly vulnerable to water damage and swells when it gets soaked ruining the integrity of the material. Much warped wood floor due to water damage tends to be unrepairable. Most laminate flooring that is water damaged must be replaced. Warping and lifting of a water damaged engineered hardwood floor.

This is what happens when moisture causes the wood to expand pushing the boards together and deforming them in the center. As the photos below suggest once the wood absorbs water it expands and this expansion reveals itself in the edges of the board turning up or whole planks buckling. When water sits on top of hardwood floors it can permanently ruin the hardwood as the wood will absorb the water through its pores causing warping and discoloration. Floor buckling is the most extreme reaction to moisture in a hardwood floor.

Here are few prevention and maintenance measures. This flooded basement had water damage over a large area. If spilled water sits atop the flooring for too long or if moisture seeps into the wood from the subfloor it can eventually lead to a buckled hardwood floor. Buckling occurs when the wood flooring actually pulls up from the subfloor lifting several inches in one or more places.

If your hardwood or laminate floor buckling or severely raising up you will need to replace the flooring. This leads to the edges of the board being higher than the center. Depending on how swollen the wood.