How to dry flooded laminate floor?

How long had the water been sitting?

The water is trapped between the slab & the laminate ....get someone (you?) after it with a shop vac.

After you get readily vac'd water, prop the vac floor style nozzle in the "lowest" spot, leave it running and it will draw the water to it.

Set up a couple 20" box fans & also turn up the heat.

Of course there are water damage / flooding cleanup companies but they charge an arm & a leg...since their typical MO is to screw some insurance company.

As Ransley mentioned....insurance deductible?

cheers Bob

Removing the laminate shouldn't be too hard. Mark the pieces on the back so you'll know where to replace them.

Depending on the laminate, the water may not bother it at all.

Ouch. You can see that the laminate flooring has swelled up at the edges in places. That will never lay back down. Those boards will have to be replaced at the very least. It's probably safe to assume that more will swell up. The legs of the wood furniture will also wick up the water ans start swelling or blowing off the finish. You should never let stuff sit in water. I trust you just took those pictures as evidence and then proceeded to promptly vacuum up as much of the water as you could.

Most commercial buildings I have worked on had sealed concrete slabs. You cannot rely on the concrete absorbing much water. I'd remove all of the flooring back to where there is no more water in evidence. A moisture meter would help determine how saturated the laminate and concrete are, and would tell you when you had removed enough flooring. Put the furniture up on some plastic blocks. Dry the place out with fans, dehumidifiers, and/or sweeping compounds. An AC on a continuous run will extract a lot of moisture. Meticulously clean everything before anything goes back down. The worst thing you could do is to put new flooring back down before the place is back to being bone dry. Once mold starts growing it's a bitch to get rid of it.

You are looking at an insurance claim. You are probably looking at a number higher than your deductible. Whether you want to make the claim and risk affecting your premiums will depend on how much higher.

floor:

Does the floor have the foam underlayment like residential laminate does? If so, even if it is closed-cell, that is a lot of little pockets for water to hide in. Can you say mold incubator? Like everyone else said- call your insurance agent. I take it you own the building? Only sure cure is rip out, dry out, and replace as needed. ServiceMaster and similar companies specialize in this kind of work, but at the prices they usually charge, self-help demo and hiring a flooring company to put down a new floor, may be about as cheap. Taking stuff out is easy, if you don't plan on reusing it.

-- aem sends...

get a commercial dehumidifier in there STAT. might already be too late.

nate

Short of having a prof. mitigation company handle it, I would have rented a powerful wet vac. ASAP. After that, if still squishy, lay down old towels and try to squeeze more water to the surface. Then, fans and dehumidifier.

Not very comparable, but we had a flood in our kitchen, shortly after redoing cabinets. Afraid the plywood cabinets would bulge from water, but we got it up fast enough that that was avoided. Particle board would probably have been worse because it expands and then crumbles.

That materials looks exactly what I put in a former office. A floating material - not terribly expensive. The instruction were to only damp mop the floor, and to avoid prolonged periods of water at the edges.

Anyway, I would not hire the same installer. Photo 2, enlarged to "X3Large", bottom of photo shows three rows/courses that are not staggered. Each of the 3 boards end on the same line.

Excellent catch.

James,

IMO, it has to come up and be replaced for all the reasons stated by the other posters. The risk of mold and all that involves is far too great to make any half-way remediation practical.

Colbyt

Good grief! Tear up a floor to prevent mold? How 'bout we wait to see if it gets moldy? I'd try my damndest to dry it out first. But, then, I wouldn't have a pretend-wood floor in the first place.

No, you'd be tearing up the floor to dry it out and replace the warped boards. While you're in there you investigate the extent of the flood, the moisture content of the concrete and remaining boards, and possibly clean the area with TSP or some other mold killer. Anything else is crossing your fingers and clicking your heels three times.

Things like this is the reason I keep a notebook with tile type paint colors etc. Replacing this kind of flooring is a pretty easy DIY project.

Jimmie

Actually that's the design of the floor. Its a wider plank floor made up of three board images.

Look out at the "dry" areas were the light hits it, you can see the edges of the boards puckered up.

But anyway this entire floor is toast. Those edges will never flatten out. They will dry out eventually but as furniture is moved around it will chip and look like crap.

Who owns the sprinkler? If you are a tenant and another tenant or the building owner caused the damage, they have liability.

Given the amount of water, my guess is the floor is pretty well toast at this point. If the boards show any signs of selling, they are never going to fit again. If the water was a puddle in one spot, it may not be a big deal, bug given the saturation, water is probably between the wood and the plastic membrane and the plastic and the floor. It could take months to dry out. The cost of taking it up, drying, replacing, may be near the cost of a new floor.

If someone wanted me to take it up carefully, dry it and replace it, I'd charge double a new floor at least.

People are talking about drying out the laminate flooring. You can reduce the moisture content, but how are you going to eliminate the swelling? It can't be done without heat and pressure that is most certainly not within a DIY or even committed contractor's capabilities. Even if it were, it's not worth it for laminate flooring.

Yeah, the OP's floor looked fairly new, and it didn't seem to be anything exotic, so he might luck out and find it's still available.

With "cheap" laminate, there won't be any "warped" boards. The stuff is (mostly) plastic or similar.

As already noted, you can see the swollen edges of the board. Mostly plastic doesn't mean it has no wood. If it has wood, it will swell when the water hits the wood.