How To Fix Water Damaged Engineered Hardwood Floors

If minor cupping does occur the floor may be restorable.

How to fix water damaged engineered hardwood floors.

You can use a combination of surface drying and air circulation to help remove moisture from the wood. Hardwood floors are a great choice for home flooring. Solid hardwood flooring offers the broadest range of options as you can sand and scrape away up to 1 4 of an inch of the wood to remove cupping or surface mold and. But if the water damaged engineered flooring is buckled delaminated or discolored it is not salvageable and should be removed and replaced.

Like solid hardwood floors damage to engineered hardwood floors can be the result of either a one time water event or an ongoing issue. Not only do they look good they re easy to care for resist wear and they re even eco friendly. Warping and cupping are the two main types of floor damage and each cause varying degrees of deterioration. Water as with just about any household issue is almost always the cause of hardwood floor warping.

For a larger or deeper area of wood or engineered wood floor damage we try a color matched floor putty or a wax based flooring repair kit. The type of wood flooring you have affects the repair options available. This approach is suitable for both real wood and engineered real wood flooring repairs using a repair putty or wax filler mixed to match the color of surrounding floor. Luckily if you can dry your wood floors they can often be saved.

Cupping also known as wash boarding is the milder form of floor damage. Repair hollow or raised spots in the floor using an engineered wood repair kit. Sand water damaged wood flooring. However heavily cupped wood cannot be sanded down flat.

This is called cupping heavy sanding with a drum or orbital sander can actually take down some minor high areas. As suggested in the wood flooring 101 section of our website the type of wood flooring you have limits the range of possible repairs for your wood floor. However hardwood flooring does have one draw back it can t stand up to prolonged exposure to water so if water is allowed to stay on a hardwood floor the wood will be damaged either stained or warped. To use this kit first drill a hole into the center of the damaged board.

After drying a wood floor you may have some concave or convex floorboards. These problems occur when the glue fails to bond to the subfloor during installation or when a single board is damaged by moisture or humidity. Wood floors are susceptible to moisture and many may have been damaged prior to the single event that finally required action to be taken. However because of the way it s made the flooring can only be sanded one or two times due to the thin surface layer of hardwood.