KNOW WOOD'S ENEMY


Jason Wright at Wagner Meters looks at the challenges of hardwood wood floors and offers advice on how to prevent them.


Most hardwood troubles can be boiled down to one word: moisture.


Moisture on the floor, moisture underneath the floor, and moisture in the air can cause gapping, buckling, cupping, crowning, and squeaking. Moisture issues can make installing and maintaining hardwood quite the challenge.


Many of these challenges fit into one – or both – of these categories: either not properly acclimatising your hardwood floor or, installing hardwood over a wet subfloor.


Let’s talk about these in detail, and stay focused because we will touch on one of the most reliable ways to prevent these challenges.


GAPPING Gapping happens when wood hasn’t been given time to acclimatise to its new setting.


Wood adapts to its surroundings by expanding and contracting. When the air is humid, wood absorbs moisture and expands. When the air is dry, the moisture evaporates, and the wood contracts as a response.


If the hardwood floor is installed before it has had a chance to acclimatise, it might be too wet. When it finally stabilises to the humidity and temperature of the space, the floor will contract, leaving large gaps between the boards.


A bit of separation between boards is normal, but large gaps indicate a lack of acclimatisation.


But gapping isn’t the only challenge that occurs because hardwood has not had time to acclimatise.


BUCKLING Buckling is gapping’s extreme opposite.


Rather than gaps forming from hardwood contracting, buckling is what can happen when boards expand due to moisture.


If boards are stored at an overall drier climate than the climate of their new location, they will be in a contracted position when installed. Because the new location is more humid, the boards will tend to push each other up and off the subfloor as they expand.


Buckling can also happen if floors are improperly attached to the subfloor or if there is extreme flooding. You can’t control flooding, but following the proper installation practices is your duty.


CUPPING Cupping is when a board’s edges are higher than its centre, creating a concave surface.


If hardwood is installed over a subfloor – such as concrete – before it is sufficiently dry, it can absorb moisture from below. Because the underside of the board will not dry as quickly as the surface, the moisture content (MC) of the board will be inconsistent, which will result in a cup-like shape after the surface dries.


26 | FEATURE https://www.wagnermeters.com/moisture-meters/wood-info/can-wood-floor-cupping-be-fixed/


Like gapping and buckling, cupping also has an opposite: crowning.


CROWNING If cupping is caused by excess moisture underneath the board (or excessive dryness on top of the board), then its opposite, crowning, is caused by excess moisture in the top portion of the board.


The same logic applies to crowning as it does to cupping. Because the top of the plank has an increased moisture level compared to the bottom, the moisture imbalance results in crowning. Rather than a concave shape, crowning creates a convex shape, as the edges of the board curve downward and the middle rises.


While these issues are easily visualised, the final one affects a different sense: auditory.


SQUEAKING Who hasn’t experienced a squeaky wood floor?


If a squeaky floor lasts past a change in seasons where the climate changes, it might mean that nails are loose, something is wrong with the subfloor, or the adhesive is breaking down.


All of these might be caused by a moisture-related problem.


It’s generally not liquid water that causes cupping, though that can certainly happen. Often, a high relative humidity (RH) in a concrete subfloor or from below a wood subfloor will be the cause of cupping in hardwood floors.


One very important way to stay in control of moisture is to use an accurate, non-damaging, pinless moisture meter.


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