What is happening to my new wooden floors?

10 years ago

My condo unit was flooded with water by a neighbouring unit. Property management sent in a team to remove all my damaged laminate floors and drywall. Many months later, I had all my laminate floors removed and replaced with new engineered hardwood floors as of summer 2013.

Lately, I've been seeing parts of my floor start to "bubble up". I don't know how else to describe it other than swelling or something. It's happening throughout my unit in many different spots. I've included some photos of the bubbling.

http://imgur.com/a/M5cRf

One board's corner is starting to prop up.

http://imgur.com/a/74kXe

Since these floors are new, can anyone give me some insight as to what's going on and why? I didn't have any problems with my laminate floor and was very surprised to see it happening to my current floor now.

Thanks all.

Here is a link that might be useful: Photos of bubbling floor

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Comments (7)

User
10 years ago
That's an engineered floor that's delaminating. Call your dealer and you'll probably need to pay an NWFA or other accredited inspector to do some testing and determine the cause.
drmaryann
10 years ago
Perhaps your subfloor still had some moisture from the flood. Did they check the moisture content of the subfloor before installing the laminate? This moisture could be causing the laminate to buckle.
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snowbean
10 years ago
the poster said this is new engineered wood floor
Vertise
10 years ago
What was the installation method for the floor? What is the subfloor made of? Did they test for moisture levels in the subfloor? How do you clean it?
chrischen377
Original Author
10 years ago
Well, the floor was finally inspected. At first glance, the dealer thought it was cupping due to moisture underneath the flooring but after checking his moisture meter readings, he couldn't find any underneath. In fact, he said the home was too dry by showing me the relative humidity was just under 10%.

It was similar to what happened in the following article.
http://hardwoodfloorsmag.com/articles/article.aspx?articleid=1735&zoneid=1

I thought the worse that could happen would be big gaps in the flooring but I wasn't expecting cupping and delamination.

I was also surprised because some new condos being built nearby will include engineered hardwood as a standard but if condos are known to be so dry during the winter, how could the engineered wood last after one year?

By the way, my floor brand is Mercier in case anyone was wondering.
Vertise
10 years ago
So what is the outcome of your meeting?
glennsfc
10 years ago
Mercier is a good product, however...any engineered wood flooring product can check, crack and delaminate under extreme dry conditions. Even solid wood flooring and furniture can exhibit stress due to
extreme dryness. I had a beautiful maple floor go absolutely nuts in an extreme dry environment...and so did one of the customer's hanging kitchen cabinets.