I installed 600 sq ft of maple hardwood flooring. It was 5/8 in thick, 3.5 in wide. I allowed to acclimatize to the house environment 72 hrs prior to installation. It was nailed as per instructions from dealer.
It is now cupping a little. The reflection of light is now "rippled". I remember hearing lots of creaks and cracks after it was installed.
The dealer says "too bad, you should have controlled the humidity in your house". My question, will running a dehumidifier now (6 months after installation) remove moisture from the wood such that it becomes uncupped? I anticipate a collective NO from the group.
Mike, Do you have a humidistat in your house? Is the house really to humid, or too dry? Either way, correcting it isn't going to hurt anything, it may at least help your problem from getting worse. Any answer you get will be fairly worthless as no one can predict exactly what will happen at your house.
NO. Is there any warranty on the wood? Where did you get teh 72 hours from? As a woodworker, wood often takes a few weeks to acclimate to the surroundings, depending on the original moisture content. But even with a humidifier and dehumidifier, the humidity rate in your house changes with the seasons.
Cupping is due to one side being dryer than the other. Odds are the room was very dry , or maybe you have high humidity from below the subfloor. If you can balance the humidity above and below the floor permanently, it may settle down to a respectable level. Quality flooring is usually so well dried that this problem is unusual. But the way people tend to rush things these days you may have gotten some slightly green stock. The creaking after installation would be an indication of drying shrinkage. So be patient and good luck.
You really have 2 situations here. Your floor was installed and finished at the (then) current humidity situation. Even if you begin to control the humidity, it may not make the floor pretty. For a perfect situation, you need a controllable humidity range, and work installed during and acclimated to that range.
I have, in sight of my main throne, a butt splice; directly in front of an HVAC register. One of the boards will move 1/4 inch laterally winter / summer. It looks right about 2 weeks a year.
dealer told me 48 hours, there is no warranty because the dealer said I am responsible for contolling the moisture in the house, sucks to be me, they are not accepting anything here
Did you allow for expansion of the floor. So the floor was dryer than the house when instaled. Sounds odd. What is your humidity , is your humidistat calibrated. Sand and refinish is the only way for fix it
The question I have for the entire group is what did folks do differently when installing wood floors before modern climate control systems? I have lived in a few older homes in NC with beautiful hard wood floors that were built before central AC (and still didn't have it). To my untrained eye, the floors looked great and I never noticed any changes in appearance between the hot humid summers and the dryer winters. Did the craftsmen who installed these floors many years ago employ different techniques or use different materials? What has changed about hardwood floors since then?
- Bruce
PS: My mother-in-law's new hardwood floors cupped in places. It was slight but very noticeable to her.
On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 21:01:21 GMT, "Mike and Kathy" wrote (with possible editing):
What is your sub-floor? Any membrane over it? Where do you live? How thick is the flooring? Was it prefinished? When (what season) did you do the installation? What were the nailing instructions provided by the dealer? In particular, how did you control spacing?
I agree that you really should have left it in the room for more than
72 hours, but a lot depends upon the answers above.
On a related topic, I was wondering about the finishing of hardwood flooring. Is the underside usually finished? If not, it seems like this would create a difference in the moisture exchange rates for the two faces, which would invite the wood to move.
Is it pre-finished wood flooring? Check with the manufacturer. They may warrant it. They will at least send a guy to your house to determine what went wrong. May have been installed improperly or unsuitable for your house. For example, may have required a moisture barrier or expansion room at edges.
The wood was probably from older trees and the finish probably breathed. Also I've seen lots of old floors in lousy shape so yours might be just a lucky good example.
I have been in the wood flooring business over 30 years. There are several things in your post that stand out to me. First, I notice that your flooring is 5/8 inch thick. I would assume that this is engineered flooring and not solid flooring. Correct me if that is not the case.
Second, You say it was nailed as per instructions. Usually engineered flooring is glued, or floated. Could you explain what the instructions from the dealer were for nailing this flooring?
These creaks and cracks is one of the reasons I am asking about the nailing instructions.
Probably not. The finish on the surface of the wood seals the moisture content where it's at pretty much. Carefully taking up the flooring and then running the dehumidifier might be a solution. after the moisture content has stablized you could reinstall the flooring. Humidity isn't actually your problem from the sound of it. Moisture content of the flooring and moisture content of the subfloor not being equal is more the problem here. The nailing instructions could also be a factor. Nailing instructions should come from the manufacturer with the product and not from the dealer. This doesn't sound like a dealer I would like to buy anything from.
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